Coast Care to benefit from exhibition in Heritage Month

Pauline Allomes with a blank canvas and an idea for a painting. Photo / Paul Brooks

Heritage Month's programme is printed and published and one of the major attractions is artist Pauline Allomes' exhibition, A Line in the Sand.

The exhibition celebrates the work of Castlecliff Coast Care and 25 per cent of sales will go towards assistingit in its work.

For this show Pauline will feature an array of beach paintings, some in styles not often seen in her work. This reporter got a shock to see paintings of plants so realistic I thought they were photographs.

"I resort to different paint and tiny brushes because you couldn't do these with a palette knife," says Pauline.

Paintings of plants include spinifex (male and female — and there's a story!), cabbage tree flower, iceplant (a garden escapee), pittosporum, korikio, bindweed and more. She has included landscapes in the exhibition, including a portrait perspective landscape with 3D elements.

Pauline began the series in lockdown and, because she could not go out, contacted Graham Pearson of Coast Care for photographs on which to base her paintings.
"He sent me some photographs to start me off but I've since made several trips to the beach. I also got my art class at CES (Community Education) involved and Graham took them on a tour of the dunes."

One of her paintings has put the Coast Care aims and objectives into a work combining micography (word art) and paint.

Pauline has mastered many styles and her work ranges across a broad spectrum of artistic perspectives.

"I think it might go back to The Learning Connexion: they made you explore all sorts of genres ... so I can work in lots of different media and styles.

"It sets you free. The only way to teach art is to let people follow their own path, with guidance."

A Line in the Sand is on show at Pauline's historic cottage at 4 Barrack St from October 3-11, daily from 10am-4pm.
Pauline's art will also feature at the Bushy Park exhibition and high tea on the weekend of October 17 to 18, also part of the Heritage Month programme.