PERTH-based artist Judy Rogers is set to showcase her Out of the Suitcase exhibition at the Collie Art Gallery this month.
Rogers captures the everyday life in her art, often portraying mundane moments in intricate detail with her subjects usually being the things that surround her.
“There are pictures of my children, my dog, the surrounding flora and fauna and in the sort of snippets of everyday life, there is no aggression, I live a very happy life,” she said. “People sort of rush in their lives, there’s no stopping, so I capture the moment, there’s sort of a sentimentality in it, but I don’t apologise for it.”
Rogers said the idea for the exhibition stemmed from works she put together whilst on an artist residency in her homeland of Budapest, mixed with some old works.
“I wanted to go back to Budapest, where I am from, to exhibit what I do here, so I went on a residency and I spent some weeks in Budapest doing an artist residency,” she said. “I sort of really visited old ideas and have done some new work.”
Rogers uses mostly wood as a base for her art, a medium which she describes as being very tactile.
“I use the design of the wood as well, the texture of the wood is an important part of the design, the sort of three dimensional aspect,” she said. “Everything is sort of hardware store bought, but the major art-look is the classical training drawing.”
Rogers said the title of the exhibition, Out of the Suitcase, came from the fact they packed their lives into one suitcase when they immigrated from Budapest to Australia. “One suitcase, ten kilos, for all of our life,” she said.
The mostly self-taught Rogers said she only decided to pursue her lifelong passion for art when her children were older.
“I did high school art, but my mum said ‘hell no’ when I told her I wanted to go to art school,” she said. “So I went to do business and went to a technical college and spent quite a successful time in the printing industry and publishing and then as a paper merchant, and then we came out to Australia and I was a house wife. “I had to sort decide what I wanted to do when the children grew up so I decided to pursue my lifelong love of art.”
Rogers said people can expect her depiction of everyday life from the exhibition.
“It’s sorts of banal subjects but I think I have the right eye to see the important bits in life and this is what I convey,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with portraying everyday life, artists don’t seem to be doing it because they think the drama is more important.”
The exhibition opens on Friday July 22, and runs until September 3, 2016.
