Painting Demonstration | Patrick Hromas

Patrick Hromas. Image courtesy of the artist.

What: Demonstration | Introduction to Grisaille: A Contemporary Approach
When: Saturday 28 March 2026, 1:00 - 2:00pm
Where: Gallery 3, M16 Artspace, 21 Blaxland Crescent, Griffith
Cost: Free

Introduction to Grisaille: A Contemporary Approach

Join artist Patrick Hromas for a short oil painting demonstration. In this session, the artist will demonstrate a timeless oil painting technique that allows for almost limitless adjustments as the painting develops. The demonstration explores a a technique used by Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael: grisaille, but with a twist! 

About the Artist:

Patrick Hromas has recently exhibited in three group exhibitions in England and participated in Arte Laguna World, Italy. His multidisciplinary practice spans oil painting and works on paper, drawing on theatre, cinema, and the landscapes of the Blue Mountains, NSW as key conceptual foundations.

At the age of sixteen, Hromas performed in an ad hoc production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a park in Turramurra in 1989. This formative experience shaped his enduring engagement with theatricality and performance. In 2003, he produced a drawing of Neil from Dead Poets Society, the first work in what became the Film Still Series.

Influenced by Henri Matisse and Édouard Manet in motif and composition, and by Toulouse Lautrec and Edgar Degas stylistically, Hromas combines historical reference with contemporary imagery. His recurring interest in archetypal characters and his commitment to resolving complex compositions underpin a practice that bridges landscape, history, and staged narrative.

Exhibition

Poetry Workshop | Brenda Goggs

Brenda Goggs, Medieval is not old, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.

What: Poetry Workshop with Brenda Goggs
When: Saturday 7 March 2026, 2:00 - 3:00pm
Where: Gallery 2, M16 Artspace, 21 Blaxland Crescent, Griffith
Cost: Free

Writing the landscape: Seeing is believing

In a short writing workshop participants will have the opportunity to write poetry or short prose inspired by pieces in the exhibition, Holding up the Sky. The artist will be on hand to lead, challenge and encourage would-be writers.

About the Artist:

Brenda Goggs has a foot in two worlds as a practising Visual Artist and former teacher of English. Exhibiting woven tapestry over the past 25 years, she has focused on Australian identity and the landscape as an ‘object’ in an imperial ‘cabinet of curiosities’ and during this time has witnessed a national shift towards a search for understanding of our colonial past and our culpability in a quest for ownership.

She is excited by connections between things, where art and literature, words and pictures collide and where everyday moments reveal the sublime, just for a moment. She insists that the world continues to be a place of wonder, even in the suburbs, and even when things go wrong. These ambiguities provided the inspiration for her first published poetry collection Cracks in the Path, (Ginninderra Press, 2025), about living in the national capital surrounded by the public monuments which frame suburban life.

As a visual artist, Brenda has interrogated literature and interpreted work by Gerald Murnane, Patrick White and David Malouf, and collaborated with poets Geoff Page and Alan Gould.

Exhibition

Floor Talk | Kerry Shepherdson

Kerry Shepherdson, Things and Thoughts, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist.

What: Floor Talk with Kerry Shepherdson
When: Saturday 7 February 2026, 1:00 - 2:00pm
Where: Gallery 2, M16 Artspace, 21 Blaxland Crescent, Griffith
Cost: Free

Join artist Kerry Shepherdson for a floor talk that looks at the everyday objects we collect and live with, and the memories and experiences they carry. Through her still life paintings, Shepherdson slows things down, focusing on familiar spaces and the quiet details often overlooked in daily life. Her work plays with colour, pattern, and texture, using fluid paint and expressive brushwork rather than light and shadow. Influenced by her formative training in Chinese Brush painting and her years living overseas, Shepherdson’s practice invites audiences to pause, reflect, and see the beauty and meaning in ordinary things.