Our Members

BRAG is a member-based community arts organisation, established in 2002. With more than 100 members across all aspects of the arts, keep checking this page for the month's featured artist!

Each featured artist has their work displayed on the Arts Centre's Members Wall for four weeks.

Our artist for November - December is

Geoffery Pollard

NOVEMBER - DECEMBER

Geoff Says:

I have been working in stone for over 30 years and was initially attracted to stone carving as a set of hand skills with a long human history, a slow meditative practice with a very tangible outcome. I learnt for 5 years with Sydney sculptor Noel Gray and took over teaching his classes for 12 years after he moved to Italy.

I began to understand the language specific to stone sculpture, that which gives it a unique power to communicate –

- Its 3 dimensionality can approximate our experience of the physical world.

- Texture, grain, polish, weight and type of stone combine in the sensation of touch as we look. The Braidwood granite, diorite, basalt, serpentine are hard stones in a range of colours.

- Most importantly – light. As one sculptor put it “you think you’re carving stone, when you’re actually carving light”. Curves, planes, edges, colour, all reveal a complex connectedness as one moves around a sculpture and the light and shadows change.

Like many others, I draw inspiration from and feel deeply connected to the natural world. The endless play and variation of forms in plant, animal and microscopic life, the massive structures of landscape and weather, the gestures of the human body, are sources of delight and wonder. They can be seen as tension, relaxation, outward form – as well as the expression of inner energy and growth.

Over time, my interest has moved from direct representation to abstraction. A stone carving of a leaf (which I have done many times in the past), no matter how accurate, ends up being neither stone nor leaf! By simplifying the underlying geometry of natural things, abstraction can reveal something essential, dynamic - a kind of truth to the originating subject and the material.

In ways that I admit I can’t fully articulate, “Embodied” gives me the vivid and simultaneous impression of the energy of a human body and its internal life.

Deb Griggs Oct- November 2025

Deb says:

"In loving memory of Dad

Fishing at the Junction

Micalong

Our treasured place

This painting is a very special project for me. This is my dad who passed away three years ago. He never saw this photo, and not long ago it was recovered, and I immediately thought what a lovely painting it would be. In our earlier years, Dad was a surfboat builder, and he built many other types of boats. Boats and fishing were among dad's great passions, and he always enjoyed the serenity of fishing quietly on a river or on the beach.

Last year at Christmas, my children gifted me this Paint by Numbers uploaded image of the very same photo. I was overwhelmed to say the least.

I have spent many months carefully working on this, with every tiny stroke of the brush, spending time with dad. I used the numbers as a guide to follow, and along the way created my own directions and not really sticking to the rules as such. I am still in the process of final touches, and I am struggling with the shoreline, but I will get there. I learnt to trust the process, and it was incredible how the image comes to life on the canvas as you work through it. It was so encouraging to keep going.

I am proud to share my dad and my story and hope my Paint by Numbers painting may encourage someone to try it and discover they can create a piece that is beautiful and means something very special to them too.

Kate Marshall Sep - Oct 2025

Kate says:

I’ve always been involved with textiles. Knitting, stitching, sewing for as long as I can remember. My mother was my first teacher.

Multi shaft weaving captured me in my early 20s, when I studied at Strathfield School of Textiles for 3 years. Then a move to Canberra to do the 4 year Bachelor of Arts (Visual) at the Canberra School of Art, majoring in textiles.

A move to Braidwood, three children and farming life saw my looms relegated to a shed. Now out again for another chapter I continue to learn and move forward with all the ideas that have been bubbling in my mind my whole life long.

My next love affair is with Indigo dyeing. Started at Art School, but in the foreground for the last ten years. I have been exploring Shibori stitching, Katazome stencil dyeing and Kasuri.

I make cloth. I celebrate the serendipity of dyeing where no two pieces can be exactly the same. A delicious counterpoint to the exactness of weaving. The latest digital printing of fabric, often with licenced “characters” from the big studios leaves me cold.

I can only follow my heart to perfect the slow craftsmanship of what I am driven to create. Building my skills is my goal. The work is the teacher. The journey is the joy.

Grace Reid Aug-Sep 2025

Grace says:

Semi-retired, I have come to painting rather late in life, joining Amalia Alegría-Wolfe's Tuesday Art group about 7 years ago. I began with acrylics but was soon persuaded to try oils, the water mixable variety, and was immediately enthusiastic. Landscape is where I feel most comfortable, I think, but I do get the urge to produce a still life occasionally. I feel that I have such a very great deal to learn about so much, I want to be more bold, go bigger, be
more playful, try different techniques, follow new directions.

Though still uncertain about where my art practice is taking me, for now I tend to choose local subject matter, painting from photos taken by myself or family. I am most interested in capturing light in all its moods and contrasts. I tend to layer the paint to reach the effects I want, often subtle, sometimes
dramatic. I find painting and use of colour endlessly fascinating and frustrating, absorbing and daunting, exciting and grounding ..... and strangely liberating. I have been most fortunate to find such a wonderful teacher in Amalia and to be part of both our own small diverse and wonderful group, and more recently the wider BRAG community.

Grace Reid
040174622
grei2204@bigpond.net.au

Karen Warburton July-Aug 2025

Karen says...

I retired to Krawarree near Braidwood and work in a bush studio. I work towards a sustainable practice. Mine is a nature inspired practice; creativity with a view.

I use wood that has been somewhere, was part of a greater whole and then
discarded. This wood has had a history. It is headed back to earth, and I have
elevated it to have one more use before it is degraded. 2-D materials to 3-D. Simple things. From simplicity you get profundity.

My art began with textile printing for architectural works in the 70’s. I then taught Design technology for 30 years to senior high. This background gave me strengths in graphic design, and I employ elements and
principles of design as strong compositional fundamentals.
My works cross between sculptural and 2 -D; between strong and subtle; simple and complex. I cut, sand, colour, glue, assemble and reassemble and then reassemble again, this is how I discovered my concept of creating wood assemblages.

A late Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2012 was my formal art training however being a visual learner was a more realistic and valuable way of training. I began exhibiting at the age of 57, the first exhibition, held at Braidwood in the Fyre Gallery was in 2019. I have enjoyed participating in BRAG and local galleries ever since.