Patricia Coombe has a secret to capturing the misty images in her award-winning work: a triple pinhole camera.
The Bachelor of Fine Arts student made her own version of the camera, which has three tiny pinholes, to create images of buildings that interested her around Hobart.
“I’ve always been interested in architecture,” Ms Coombe said. “As I drive along it catches my eye and I think about how it could be composed into a painting.
“I started by photographing them, then cutting them apart and putting them back together as a collage, which became the composition of my work.”
That’s how Abstraction on Evans Street, an oil work on linen press paper that has been awarded the Executive Dean’s Acquisitive Prize at the University’s Graduate Art Show, came about.
“After discovering a pinhole camera and the overlapping, warping, transparencies and mistiness that it gave me, I started doing the same thing: cutting apart, putting together, creating an image I was happy with and then attempting to paint it,” Ms Coombe said.
The work is among a showcase of graduating students’ work at the University’s major annual exhibition in Hobart and Inveresk.
It features painting, photography, drawing and printmaking, object and furniture, sculpture and time-based media.
Ms Coombe has just finished her Honours year, but her pathway to university brought with it plenty of life experience.
She completed printmaking and graphic design courses, sold advertising and ran her own cafes before returning to her number one interest.
“I didn’t feel confident, I didn’t really know where to start,” she said. “It was something where I think I really had to be at uni to get me going.
“I never had a chance to actually come to uni earlier, so this late in my life I decided to do it and I haven’t looked back.”
The Executive Dean of the College of Arts, Law and Education Acquisitive Prize was established in 2022 to support and showcase a work by a graduating student who is not represented by a commercial gallery. The winning work is added to the University’s Cultural Collection for display in its creative arts precincts.
"We have so much talent in our creative arts courses and a great tradition of producing some of Tasmania's most accomplished artists," Executive Dean Professor Kate Darian-Smith said.
"The College of Arts, Law and Education is very pleased to be able to support an emerging artist by acquiring one of their works."
Ms Coombe said she’s not yet done with study and is considering enrolling in a Bachelor of Design. She’ll also continue to paint.
“I’m really happy with what has evolved, this year in particular,” she said. “I’m where I want to be with my painting but I never, never expected to win an award.
“I’ll definitely be collaging and drawing more little pictures to make into paintings. There is so much material out there that I can use that I think it would be endless.”
If art is your passion, find out more about the University of Tasmania’s Fine Arts courses.