Red Hill Gallery is excited to present two great friends and collaborators:
This April, Dale Leach & Fiona Groom are IN CAHOOTS to bring us our latest exhibition!
Fiona Groom and Dale Leach have been friends ever since they met several hundred years ago. They met at the Cooroy Butter Factory where Fiona was Artist-in-Residence, and Dale came along to have a look at her work.
Fiona and Dale have now shared a studio since 2017, during the Noosa Open Studios event, and work in various volunteering roles at the Cooroy Butter Factory. Including working behind the scenes in the Artisan shop and being part of the Install team.
Fiona and Dale share a love of art making and love learning new skills and sharing their expertise with others. Fiona and Dale also refuse to take themselves too seriously. They believe laughter and joy are part of our lives and should be part of the art experience.
When thinking about a joint show they didn’t want to take away from each other’s practice. That meant Dale stays with her local landscapes and Fiona continues to work with her delightful cast of animals.
The title of the show In Cahoots refers to the ongoing collaboration between these two artists.
Come and join Dale and Fiona, Fiona and Dale at 2-4pm on Saturday the 1st April at Red Hill Gallery to see In Cahoots opened and Sunday 2nd April at 11 am to 12.30pm Fiona and Dale will be doing a painting demonstration, giving tips and hints and happily talking about their work, cat videos and magpie stories. Just follow the laughter to find them.
Dale Leach
Dale’s artwork is a result of a long gestation process. As a child growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s Pop Art and cartoons attracted Dale’s interest. Her father, a painting contractor and art enthusiast, introduced Dale through many visits to art galleries to Mark Chagall and Picasso and other modernists. Colour surrounded her in the form of her father’s mixing sticks, tints and paint tins and brushes. After travelling to Europe in 1976, Dale decided that she would work towards getting accepted into an Art School in Melbourne. In 1980 Dale was accepted into Prahran College of Advanced Education and became drawn to the German Expressionists and the Fauves.
It was only after seeing David Hockney’s wonderfully colourful landscapes that Dale found inspiration to tackle her local landscapes and undertake her first series of Noosa Hinterland landscape paintings. Since then, Dale has been using photography to see the different elements that make up these landscapes and she is continuing to explore different techniques and colour combinations to bring these landscapes to life.
Fiona Groom
Fiona Groom’s creative journey started with a selection of art courses which included Certificate II Visual Arts, Diploma of Visual Arts (Fine Arts), and concluded with a BA Double Major Fine Arts, Visual Culture.
Professionally, Fiona’s activities have included exhibitions in a variety of State and National Exhibitions as well as Group and Solo Shows. Her work has also been displayed in Florence, the US, Scotland, England and in addition to those shows Fiona has donated and displayed various works for the Explorers Against Extinction presentation in London, Twitter Art Exhibit Worldwide and was also featured in a TV episode of Put Some Colour in Your Life, resulting in her episode being sent to the moon in 2023 as part of a cultural library being setup in three different areas of the moon by NASA & SpaceX.
Ms. Groom is very active in the local Artistic community and works/volunteers in several Community Galleries on the Sunshine Coast. This has given her plenty of occasion to work with other Artists, organize and present art and become involved in an assortment of local community events, including Noosa Open Studios, group exhibitions, exhibition installation and facilitate art projects, children’s art workshops, painting workshops, plus art group tutoring and community based Artisan Markets. Furthermore Fiona has also had the chance to make her Animal Art large scale with the creation of a variety of murals that can be found on the Sunshine Coast and its surrounds.