KEN
SEARLE
Ken Searle grew up around the Cooks River and
the Wolli Creek, where he still lives. He always says
that he
like to walk into a painting. Whether he is doing a
large oil painting or an illustration for a picture
book, he begins by exploring the area and sketching
on site.
Ken
demonstrates this method in workshops suitable for students
from Years 3-12. Using the theme 'Letting
the Landscape Tell the Story', he discusses
art and illustrating, and shows works in various
mediums (charcoal, pencil, gouache, oil and crayon) as well
as explaining how he gets his ideas from place.
Ken
is also available for hands-on drawing workshops,
in which he shows students a number of techniques,
including perspective.
Together
with author Nadia Wheatley, Ken gives environmental workshops
that combine writing
poetry
with art and
design.
After
work with Ken and Nadia, one NESB student wrote: 'I really
liked art and I learnt how to shade, and how
to draw things faster, but most of all I really improved
my writing'.
Although
in recent years Ken Searle has designed and illustrated a
number of highly acclaimed
picture
books,
he is best known for his oil paintings of areas
as diverse as the Sydney suburb of Newtown, Ballarat
in regional Victoria, and Papunya in the Western
Desert.
Since 1975, he has been represented by Watters
Gallery (Sydney), where he has held thirteen solo exhibitions.
A selection of Ken's paintings can be viewed
on www.wattersgallery.com.
In
1993 Ken Searle worked for the first time as
a book illustrator, producing the cover and twenty
clack and
white line drawings for the novel Lucy
in the Leap Year, by Nadia
Wheatley, an Honour Book in the 1994
CBCA Awards.
Over the period 1998-2001 Ken Searle and Nadia Wheatley
worked as consultants at the school at Papunya, an
Indigenous community 250 kilometres west of Alice
Springs. This led to the production of Papunya
School Book of Country and History (2001).
Ken was the designer for this book, as well as facilitating
the illustrations
done by over forty Anangu staff and students. Papunya
School Book of Country and History won a
number of awards, including the Eve Pownall Award
(2002) and
the History for Young People section of the NSW Premier's
History Awards (2002).
With Walking
With the Seasons in Kakadu (by
Dianne Lucas), Ken Searle was illustrator as well
as designer.
As research, he explored the flood plain - gathering
plant specimens, taking photographs and sketching
the landscape.
Ken Searle's most recent book is the Going
Bush (2007). Ken was designer as well
as illustrator for this innovative publication
which
incorporates Ken’s
photographs, illustration, design with a narrative
by Nadia Wheatley and children's artwork, poems
and prose. This book came out of a project developed
by Nadia Wheatley and Ken Searle for the Interschool
Harmony Committee of Muslim, Catholic and public schools
in the south-west region of Sydney.
Back
to Ken Searle page
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