Chris Blake 36 Graham Drive Landsborough Queensland 4550 Australia Phone: (07) 5439 9558 Email: blakesart@bigpond.com

South London-born Landsborough artist Christopher Blake has led a varied life – from a stockman roustabout in Australia’s Outback to art teacher on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland. His love of drawing as a child was put on the back burner when he emigrated to Australia as a “£10 Pom” in 1957. He found himself working on a sheep station at Windorah in Western Queensland. This knockabout life in the bush sharpened his awareness, and love, of the Australian Outback and its people.

A few years later, his artistic skills were pressed into service by railway workmates at Alpha who had him penning anonymous satirical caricatures of their foreman and other workers. Although he was always sketching, it was not until the late 1970s that Chris picked up the brushes. By then, he was living in Melbourne and joined many art groups, painting out with well-known local artists.

Chris moved back to Queensland in the early 1990s, taking up art in earnest. He joined the newly formed Caloundra Learning Co-operative, where he became a popular art tutor teaching drawing, oil painting, and pen-and-wash. He has done workshops with Rex Backhaus-Smith, Herman Pekel, Maxwell Wilks and Ross Patterson ,and painted out with artists Brian Allison ,Peter Hudson Ted Young, John Bredl, and the late George Hazzard.

Returning to England in 1996, he bought a small van the size of a decent Esky, which he converted to a camper and mobile studio, allowing him to travel and paint in all seasons.

There, he developed a fascination for the small fishing harbours and the slowly diminishing fleets that used them. Whilst in England, he exhibited successfully, most notably at the 39^th Essex Open at Southend, the Llewellyn Gallery in London and the Best of the West Somerset Show. Arriving back in Queensland in 1997, Chris built on his UK experience, exhibiting in major art galleries in South-East Queensland and is now well represented in many galleries. He also found time to do some community work (e.g. teaching at the Learning Coop and designs for the Landsborough Railway over pass).

Chris has achieved numerous awards and recognition amongst fellow artists. He feels that his most noteworthy achievement to date is winning the Ken Farrow Award for Artistic Excellence at Maleny Art Awards in 2003. The last three years have also seen him win twelve firsts and no less than five open awards, three of them being in pastels. Most open awards tend to go to oil or watercolour paintings.In light of Chris’s successes with pastels,he was made a“Master Pastellist” of the Pastel Society of Australia in December 2004.

Chris's style could be best described as a contemporary impressionist approach to landscape painting in which tone, colour and texture are emphasised. He specialises in outback, townscape and marine scenes. He is currently painting and teaching from his home studio in Landsborough and is available for workshops, demonstrations, show judging and commissions.