Biography
After completing five years of arts training at the University of Wollongong in the mid eighties Crane gained an Associate Diploma of Creative Art followed by the Bachelor of Creative Arts graduating with Distinction. Lorna has been involved with many artist run initiatives and community arts projects over many years, including Art Arena Gallery Inc, Megalo Access Arts and the ANCA Dickson studio complex in Canberra. During this time she participated in many solo and group exhibitions. She was also awarded the Sir William Keys Churchill Fellowship researching community arts and mental health in 2002. She moved to Pambula South to set up her studio and to work full time on her practise in 2003 and loves living and working in the far south coast. Her work has been represented in many group and selected exhibitions – regionally, nationally and internationally. Since her arrival to the Far South Coast of NSW she has participated in eleven solo shows. Residencies since 1995 till the present have included the Bundanon Trust, Alice Springs, Broken Hill Art Exchange and most recently Berlin, New Zealand and Venice. She won the Illawarra Art Prize in 1986 and has been acquired by the Alice Craft Acquisition 2007 for mixed media. In 2008 she was the joint winner of the Calleen Acquisition. Her work is in the collection of the Bundanon Trust and the National Irish Visual Arts Library.
‘Over the past few years my work has been about the landscape of place. To me the most important aspect places I inhabit is an essential part of this process.
My abstract landscape inspired works speak about moments of time where narratives are formed via my own visual lexicon in an experiential and gestural manner. It is from place deep within where shapes form and are distilled into fragments of past and present, merging together in an abstract form. It is about seeking questions and revealing an intimate personalised glimpse into my inner landscape – both physically and metaphorically – known and unknown, from the land and of the land.’
Since February 2015 she has been teaching brush making workshops within NSW, Victoria, ACT and QLD. Now known as The Brushmaker she sources materials from her natural environment including driftwood, bamboo, organic fibres along with found objects making unique rudimental and utilitarian brushes in a variety of shapes and sizes.
Robert Hollingworth sums up by stating > ‘Lorna Crane belongs to a group of artists who feel a reverential connection to the earth (the elements, wind, rain, heat, dust, growth and decay) and immerse themselves in it: their body, their gestures, their choice of materials. Their work is a kind of choreography of the bush, a down-and-dirty embracing of it, utilising methods that often mimic how nature itself behaves, how it evolves, forms and dissolves. As such, the works rely less on what is before the eye and much more on what the senses tell us; the resulting imagery being an experience rather than a depiction of something.’
Career highlights include residencies with the Bundanon Trust, Alice Springs, Broken Hill Art Exchange, Berlin, New Zealand, Venice, Italy. During September 2016 she traveled to Barcelona for a two week residency at Art Print Residence to make a series of unique prints. During February/March 2017 she was an artist in residence at Bull Bay, North Bruny Island Tasmania. Upcoming residency is at Cloudbough in Kandos, NSW March 2021.
July 2020