ART: Graceful by intuition

At Cessnock Regional Art Gallery until April 13 is a survey exhibition of the paintings and graphics made by these widely shown artists to mark 25 years since they first hung work at the von Bertouch Galleries.

Brian's paintings of Nobbys are well known; its instantly recognisable fin dominating the horizon, with choppy eye-level waves in the foreground and the abstract forms of harbour markers another regular presence.

This conjunction of moody, animated paint with strict geometry has appeared so basic that a series of deft, closely observed portraits comes as a surprise. He is a painter who thinks in paint.

Shirley Cameron-Roberts also surprises with a series of large tinted drawings incorporating wildlife studies into detailed depictions of ferns, branches and forest floor.

A small, shy quoll explores a dominant clump of graceful ferns. A family of tawny frogmouths watches us watching them. Swathes of lines from the artist's intuitive pen or pencil discover an image in contrast with earlier wide vistas.

The two artists have a further exhibition later in the year at ASW. Perhaps they will surprise us anew with works based on the human figure, for each of them a re-discovery.

IN November 2013, James Murphy lived through the bushfires south of Swansea.

His professionally presented photographs at Four Point Gallery until April 4 document the aftermath on a landscape shockingly transformed. The colours alter, with green becoming brown and forest floor now blackened or white with ash. Nature quickly starts the process of regeneration, but at the moment James Murphy was exploring newly revealed topography, open vistas and strange dumped discoveries in a lyrical visual essay.

ACROSS the Bank Corner intersection, C Studio is presenting graphic-based work by Linda Swinfield as its first solo exhibition.

In the past year, Linda has had increased time to expand her printmaking skills into new areas, moving out into the landscape and embracing photo collage in a series of evocative layered images. She is also developing the use of three-dimensional form, applying a printed surface to woodland timber cutouts.

Also on view in the gallery's many spaces are works in various mediums by a truly eclectic line-up of artists.

ANYONE seeing Bliss Cavanagh's fantasy sculpture environments is unlikely to forget her use of illuminated fake fur or the brightly coloured ceramic structures, like trees and flowers from an alternative universe. For the next few months, they are on view at Inner City Winemakers, lending to wine-tasting a psychedelic edge.

THE human face is compulsive viewing. At Maitland Regional Art Gallery, several exhibitions confirm its power.

Faces dominate the Showcase exhibition of art works from high schools in the Hunter. They also immediately attract the viewer in the Maitland International Salon of Photography, whose 101 works remind us that this is one of the major photographic forums in Australia, with entries from more than 50 countries. Both exhibitions close on April 6.

The human image is also the principal subject animating the large showing of extraordinary photographs by Mark Tedeschi at Maitland until April 27. He creates instantly involving but apparently unstaged images of people he meets on his travels, as well as at home in Sydney.

A multiracial group of boys happily confront us in an inner-city laneway. An Italian woman sits musing among her familiar kitchen objects. A black-clad old man waits stoically at a subway station in New York.

But perhaps most startling are the many pictures of lawyers in their robes of office indulging their spare-time pursuits. Raising geese and kids leads to some surreal conjunctions. What about a killer martial arts side kick in wig and gown?

Tedeschi, AM, QC, is himself a distinguished member of the legal profession who happens to take expressive professional photographs. Undoubtedly, an empathy with people of all kinds is an invaluable gift in both parts of his life.

In the gallery's always tempting shop are sinuous silver brooches by Esther Belliss (1926-2002), a legendary sculptor of horses from the Upper Hunter.