Amanda Penrose Hart lives and works in the mid west of NSW. She paints the landscape, working en plain air, and from her studio in Sofala. Her landscape painting is the subject of her most recent solo exhibition at King Street Gallery Sydney, including paintings of the land around Sofala and further south and west, but she is also noted for her portraits. She has exhibited widely in both solo and group shows since the late 1980s, including shows in commercial galleries, public museums and regional events, her recent outings including Inside/Outside at King Street Gallery on William, Sydney, the Brisbane Portrait Prize at Powerhouse Museum, Brisbane, the Portia Geach Portrait Prize, the Clayton Utz Award 2019, Brisbane, Art for the wilderness, at the Wilderness Society, Queen St Galleries, Sydney and SALIENT, at the Tweed Regional Art Gallery.
To draw and paint is a strange yet humbling occupation. The only job where you work happily and often don’t get any regular salary! To paint is to unravel, deconstruct, explore and repack the truth. To look isn’t to see – to see is what is most important – sounds obvious but to see is everything. My studio sits on a hill in a small town called Sofala (near Bathurst) – Russel Drysdale country. He made the town ‘famous’ with his series of paintings, The Cricketers’. The dirt road featured, now covered with bitumen, but the Pub still stands. The town isn’t much bigger than it was in the 1850s, when it was erected, but the locals exude the same warmth. Other painters that have worked there include Donald Friend, Brett Whiteley and John Olsen. I like to walk in good company.