From Where You'd Rather Be

New works in watercolour
“From Where You’d Rather Be”

Native Berliner, singer, accordionist, watercolourist and now Katoomba resident Deta C. Rayner has, with her new exhibition “From Where You’d Rather Be”, borrowed somewhat cheekily from an advertising slogan for a popular Mexican beverage. Emphatically pointing the compass north to warmer climes, “From Where You’d Rather Be” highlights the lush labyrinths of Far North Queensland’s tropical rainforest, Deta’s destination on a recent tour with her duo The Beez, who will also be performing on the Saturday afternoon of the exhibition.

Although a radical departure in subject matter from her two previous exhibitions (“Abandoned Places”- fascinating portrayals of urban decay - and “All those Pretty Things” - devoted entirely to Tulips), Deta remains faithful to her distinctive style - a riot of highly saturated bright tones executed in a style reminiscent of the Decorative Arts; nods to William Morris, or even the formalism of Alphons Mucha, sit comfortably alongside contemporary, almost digital photographic light effects. Deta’s works feature at least five and sometimes up to ten layers of colour, lending a three dimensional depth and intensity not often seen in watercolour. 

As an autodidact and relative newcomer to painting, Deta notes the many parallels in the learning process to that of her integration of the accordion into a pop/rock band - successive attempts and exhaustive experimentation culminating in an unorthodox but unmistakable style imbued with an almost quirky humour. By degrees focusing on, and finding beauty in detail while working towards a unified whole, Deta follows a Lebensphilosophie based on the here and now. For her the appreciation, admiration and enjoyment of that beauty are approaches common to music and visual art and, after all, It’s where we’d all rather be!

Photos of all the works featured in the exhibition can be seen here from Saturday, 30th of March.

Paintings can be purchased from Saturday 6th of April from 11am and not before. 
If you can´t be there and want to buy text Deta 0482 581 610 from 11 am for your red dot.
It´s first in best dressed.
  

Love Hurts

Hunk O´ Burnin´ Love

The Magnificent Seven

All These Pretty Things

An exhibition inspired by the music, album and book by Tracey Yarad  
Tracey Yarad is a Katoomba jazz pianist, singer and composer now living and performing in New York. All These Pretty Things, the music album and accompanying book of short stories written by Tracey, documents the traumatic yet ultimately empowering breakup of her marriage, her transformational journey to reclaim her dream of playing music in the Mecca of Jazz, and how a certain wedding dress came to be dyed black…  
The music and spoken word performance of All These Pretty Things premiered at the Soapbox Gallery in Manhattan in July 2020, during Covid lockdown in New York, and its success inspired Tracey to extend the fusion of the musical and the literary to embrace a collaboration with the visual.

The exhibition All These Pretty Things is a series of works by visual artists, friends of Tracey’s, who she commissioned to illustrate each of her songs and stories.   
The original image for the All These Pretty Things album and book cover was taken in winter in the middle of a snow-blown Manhattan street, with Tracey, arms akimbo, staring defiantly at the camera wearing a black wedding dress.   
Still the Girl is the song and story of how the dress came to be black, and to illustrate it Tracey asked Chloe Cook-Williams, Katoomba circus performer, aerialist and visual artist. As a long-time friend and woman with Downs Syndrome, Chloe could identify with Tracey´s journey to autonomy. To create her artwork, Chloe began a collaboration with Deta C. Rayner, Berliner musician, visual artist and also friend to Tracey, to produce not one but many collages featuring the empowered heroines who had inspired Chloe’s own journey, from Josephine Baker to Cate Blanchett. Her collage of Tracey on that Manhattan street in that dress became a centrepiece of All These Pretty Things.   
Tracey also commissioned Deta C. Rayner to illustrate the song/story You Never Bought Me Flowers. A native Berliner, Deta was in Australia in early 2020, on the road with Aussie husband Rob Rayner performing in their band The Beez. After Covid disrupted the tour in March, Tracey invited them to lock down in her Katoomba house as she was in New York. That generosity inspired another life-changing decision – for Deta and Rob to remain in Australia and make a new life in Katoomba. Tending to Tracey´s garden inspired Deta to create a beautiful series of works documenting the spring rebirth of the tulips she had planted in that uncertain autumn, which uncannily paralleled Tracey´s own musical renaissance in New York.   
This exhibition celebrates not only Tracey’s personal and professional transformation, but the power of art and friendship to heal, connect, inspire and sustain in good times and bad.

Collages by Chloe Cook-Williams & Deta C. Rayner