Anna Stewart

Flinders Island provides the ideal environment for watercolour painting. Essentially a cool temperate pursuit, watercolour needs the wind to dry the medium and the sun to exhibit its brilliance. Painting the variability of this island's coast is an ongoing challenge. My purpose is to capture the essences of merging light and colour whilst at the same time finding a key to illustrating the continual movement of landscape. Sometimes the force of the wind and the sea motivate the art, and sometimes the eerie stillness of the land is utterly impelling. Painting with a group of women has been an important part of my art in the past three years. Their wisdom, companionship and friendship bring inspiration to each fresh page and make Tuesday expeditions most memorable.

Artist and illustrator, Dr. Anna Stewart has worked on Flinders Island since 1974. Her work includes watercolour painting, botanical and natural history illustration.

Her work is represented in private galleries in South Australia, in the recent botanical guide to the Flora of Bass Strait (One Hundred Islands - The Flora of the Outer Islands, Harris, S., Buchanan, A., and Connolly, A., 2001), and in the Material Girl Exhibitions 2005 - 2006.

The Tsuneichi Fujii Fellowship Award (1992) enabled this artist to work in Osaka and investigate the art of sumi-é painting. Some elements of this style have influenced the watercolour paintings now regularly being undertaken by the artist on Flinders Island.