Alita Knaags
Fingal Bay, New South Wales, Australia.
Knaggs Alita_Up Close series 50cm x 40 cm_acrylic and mixed media
Knaggs Alita _Roy Wood Reserve, the thong tree_ 50 cm x 40cm_Acrylic on canvas
Knaggs Alita _Roy Wood Reserve, the thong tree_ 50 cm x 40cm_Acrylic on canvas
Knaggs Alita_Up Close series Immersed_50cm x 40 cm acrylic and mixed media
To come
Biography
Alita Knaggs has been involved in the Visual Arts for most of her life and after a long career in art education now paints from her home studio in Fingal Bay, NSW, Australia. Having studied at Alexander Mackie CAE ( now COFA) in Sydney, NSW, Alita subsequently taught Visual Arts in secondary schools. Until 2017 she was Head Teacher of the Creative and Performing Arts at Tomaree High School in Port Stephens. Now pursuing the development of her own art practice, she works in a variety of mediums, including oils, acrylics, gouache and mixed media. Then the challenge as I respond and represent that place in my chosen medium.” In July 2020 Alita was a featured artist at the Artisan Collective Port Stephens where she is now a member and regularly exhibits.
Statement
Captain James Cook on board The Endeavour. On 11 May 1770, during the voyage northward up the east coast of Australia, Captain James Cook sighted, named, and commented in his logbook about Port Stephens: “Friday 11th May — At 4 p.m., past at the distance of one mile a low rocky point which I named Point Stephens—on the north side of this point is an inlet which I called Port Stephens that appears from the masthead to be sheltered from all winds. At the entrance lay three islands, two of which are tolerable height, and, on the main near the shore are some high round hills, that make at a distance like islands. In passing this bay at a distance of two or three miles from the shore our soundings were from 33 to 27 fathoms, from which I conjectured that there must be a sufficient depth of water for shipping in the bay. We saw several smokes a little distance in the country on the flat land.”
Our first European explorers observed my beautiful home of Port Stephens as outsiders and from a distance. This was also the approach of traditional landscape painters. My body of work Up-Close is a series of paintings that also explore and observe Port Stephens (NSW). The series invites the audience to engage in the beautiful landscape, not stand back and observe but to immerse oneself and become involved within, creating a sense of place, with depth and feeling.
I believe in emerging oneself in our environment, seeing, feeling, swimming, walking, sitting, listening, and experiencing this world through the marks and gestures of this artist.