Cherie Lidbury, a New Zealander that has lived most of her life in Western Australia, she currently lives and works on the East coast, in Newcastle.
Cherie studied for her BA in Fine Arts at Curtin University in Perth and then carried on to do Honours, majoring in painting and drawing, graduating in 2002.
When Cherie arrived in Newcastle she started teaching Life Drawing at the Hunter Street TAFE and taught there for 8 years, retiring in 2013 so she could concentrate on her own art practice.
Most days you will find Cherie in her home studio either painting, drawing, keeping her website up to date or developing new painting techniques.
Cherie has a strong background in drawing and has been trained in the traditional Atelier which is dedicated to the continuance of Classical and Realist drawing and painting. Cherie adores the Renaissance era and highly respects the Masters like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, and de Ribera. Therefore, she has the belief that her students should have a comprehensive life drawing doctrine which includes visits to the anatomy lab at Newcastle University to teach them anatomy. “As an artist, it is important to learn the fundamentals of drawing techniques and then develop your style through adaptation, you should be constantly evolving”.
A few years ago, Cherie had the opportunity to live in Florence, Italy for 12 weeks so she could attend the Summer Workshop program at the Angel Academy of Art where she learnt painting techniques associated with the Italian Master, Caravaggio. Cherie still uses these techniques in her paintings today with her figurative pieces and the commissions.
The figurative pieces are made up of several steps, the first by laying the support on a flat table and pouring the paint, letting it do its own thing, dancing and flowing around the surface, the outcome is unknown but exciting.
"I try not to control this stage too much however I do want to have areas of dark hues for shadows and light hues for highlights on the figures. When dry, I chose an image from the array I have either taken or collected. The painting process is intuitive as I reveal or conceal the figure, allowing 'delicious' parts of the ground to be seen through the flesh of the figure and some to be concealed. The recent paintings have been embellished with tattoos, decorative imagery, flowers, and birds, some of which have taken flight from the confines of the body. I grew up in New Zealand so people with tattoos were common place within the Maori culture displaying the 'Moko' tribal tattoos."
Cherie also works with ‘encaustic’ which is an ancient technique using melted wax medium and pigments ‘fused’ to a ridged surface. The surface has a beautiful translucent quality as it is built up of many thin layers of encaustic. Surfaces are a spectrum of texture, slathered with brushstrokes and oozing with drips. The medium is perfectly suited to my latest theme about the sea.
Most of these works are poised between representation and abstraction. Some are an aerial view, looking down at the sea, the luminously transparent layers of turquoise, indigo, viridian, and emerald greens, the white surge of the wave, swirls over the lush colour. Others are seascapes where land meets the sea either from a distance or a close-up snapshot of waves crashing on the shoreline.
Cherie found this quote by an unknown author “An artwork that can give you an emotional response should be its only destiny!”
Apart from the original paintings and commissions Cherie has diversified her practice by adding Limited Edition prints and t-shirts to her repertoire.