First Prize ....and there's more...

Hooray... the 'art account' is looking much healthier these days.  Just won a $200 1st Prize for Drawing in the Noosa Show.

"Rainforest"... charcoal

.....AND.. have done a replacement painting for my 'A Carpet Of Purple' which was sold at the COMA exhibition at the Maleny Library.  That exhibition has moved on to the UpFront Club for a month, with my new painting.

"Cactus Flower"... acrylic, with digital image on fabric collage.

This was based on the imported weed, Prickly Pear.

Prickly pear is in our history books as one of the most invasive weeds ever imported into Australia. Special acts of Parliament were passed to enforce control measures in an attempt to halt its spread through Queensland and New South Wales.  

Prickly pear first came to New South Wales with the First Fleet. It was to be used to establish a cochineal dye Industry.  What a disaster!

Acknowledged as one of the greatest biological invasions of modern times, the introduction and subsequent spread of prickly pear into Queensland and New South Wales had infested millions of hectares of rural land by the 1920s, rendering it useless for agriculture. Prickly pear proved so difficult and costly to control by chemical and mechanical means that enormous areas were simply abandoned by their owners.

The eventual control of this pest, mainly by one insect and in the space of a few short years, is an amazing story, which has encouraged further, successful developments in the field of biological pest control.

Interesting yarn...AND true!!