This Saturday, October 8, at 3pm Glenys Holmes will launch her second exhibition at Blackstone Gallery on Hunter Street, A Novocastrian Canvas 2022.
Gallery owners Tim Moran and Marguerite Tierney met Holmes a few years ago. Tierney met her first when she was teaching her in an art class. The couple bought one of her works as a Christmas present (for $100) for Moran's mother.
"Marguerite kept an eye on her work and it just progressed so fast," Moran says. "We did her debut show and it was a sell-out. We sold more art on that, more than anything we'd ever done. People went bananas over the Newcastle imagery."
They told her to let them know if she wanted to exhibit again, and now the 69-year-old physio-cum-oil painter is coming back for round two with a body of works including highly anticipated images from Newcastle Ocean Baths.
Born in Newcastle, Holmes moved to Sydney when she was five but returned regularly as she had family here. Now, she's lived in the same house in Merewether for the last 40 years.
This is her second career, after 45 years in physio, and Holmes could not be more excited.
"My father died at 101; I reckon I've got another 30 years of painting," she says. "It's like letting a dog out of a gate. I am so happy, and it's this whole new world. I go traveling; I do tours with other artists. I don't give physio a thought, but don't tell my patients."
Throughout her physio career she just wanted to paint. When she was young her mum told her very strictly that she was to get a proper job and not pursue art. But the desire to paint has always been a strong passion for Holmes, and she didn't realise how powerful it was until she actually started painting late in life. Now, her mum's not around anymore to pass judgement. For the last four years, all Holmes does is paint.
"Honestly I paint anything; I've just put a portrait into a competition. I'll paint anything, but my special interest is people and how they interact with an environment. I have a special interest in doing people, but there's so much to paint in Newcastle and people are passionate about Newcastle," she says.
Holmes loves to share the work she's done of local places again at Blackstone Gallery. The collection is made up of 38 oil paintings, and the work will be for sale including artworks of Newcastle Ocean Baths before they were renovated, the marina and a collection she did at Nobby's Lighthouse inspired by her recent artist residency there.
"I've got a nice collection of Cooks Hill. I think the character and charm of that suburb is very nonrealised. You walk through those streets, you see they're very detailed. They're all collage; I've used wood and cardboard to bring out the different elements of those terrace houses," she says. "My style is all in the detail. It makes people look and see things they don't usually see when they're walking around."
