‘Your art is loving, personal Christian meditations on everyday life…open ended. They grow one’s ‘spent spirit’. Usually Christianity = Judgement. BUT not your art. Meditations for the spirit. You are the only ‘Christian’ artist who is doing what you do….doing art directly from the heart. Other Chr artists seem to rehash what they think is acceptable – afraid of being judjed. You are the thirteenth disciple!

(Chapel on Station, Box Hill, VIC, 7^th April, 2016)

• Introduce self and art background – Michel and me

“art as timeless beauty versus expressionism that speaks to people”

• Relationship with Flossie

• Creative Art reflects time/place/culture/ beliefs of the artist in a

Confusing complex world – therefore ways and approaches to art expression

• My examples: – abstract expressionism of Rothko color-field – “finding the sublime after the trauma of 1920 -45” – Fred Williams You-Yangs

• Art as teaching us to see and understand more (picture worth 1000 words)

• By aligning herself with Ai Wei-Wei FLOSSIE builds on the influences of great artists – Marcel Duchamp (influenced by cubism and self-expression over 100 years ago) who first introduced “object as art” (bicycle wheel attached to a stool by its fork).

And New York pop-artist Andy Warhol was inspired by Duchamp to produce the material objects of Heinz cans of soup and bottles of Coca-Cola for the newly emerging consumer society.

• Living in New York, Ai Wei-Wei was in turn influenced by

Warhol‘s interrogation of community values – using objects and the media to critique the repression he had experienced from the Chinese government. In regard to both his life and art he stated that “Once you have tasted freedom – it remains in your heart”.

• In line with all artists, and these in particular, Flossie’s art practise is more interested in our responses to what we see in our lives every day. As a follower of Judeo-Christian beliefs and ideals, Flossie wants to challenge her viewers by drawing on typical everyday objects to encourage reflective, loving and worshipful responses that focus on family values and the ties that bind. (Refer to LOVE COZY)
• She asks us to free ourselves from the habitual moralistic restrictions and prejudices that hinder our spiritual growth and prevent us from truly loving ourselves and others as Christ instructed.

• Flossie’s work thus aims to help “loosen the soil in our souls to allow beautiful new ideas to germinate and flourish!”

• Refer to “LEIB FRAU MILCH” and FLOSSIE

On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 5:36 PM,

Emma Woollard, Reporter for the Leader Newspaper wrote:

Glad the photo went well 🙂 they look great! I will send through the link once it’s online too 🙂 If you could jot down a few words for these questions, that would be great!

Where did the inspiration for the exhibition come from?
I have produced quite a number of small sculptures over the past ten years which have never yet been exhibited together as a themed exhibition. It seemed a perfect opportunity to group them in this suitably-sized gallery on their perfect-sized plinths. The art looks excellent in this space!

What were your major influences for the works?
The sculpture is eclectic in medium and theme but each one relates to spirituality and community. My work relates to the current NGV exhibition by Chinese artist Ai Wiewie. But far from being influenced by Wiewie, as contemporaries we were mutually influenced by Warhol.

How many pieces are there and how long did it take to put it all together?
There are 13 pieces. The work has been gathered over ten (10) years.

Can you tell me a bit about your past as an artist and what you hope to achieve with your art?
I have been practising as an artist since I was eight years old. It is my ‘day job’ I hope to continue to excellent postmodern art and one day I hope to be recognized by Max Delany, new Director at ACCA and collected by the NGV.

How has your work evolved over time?
I come from a drawing and painting background but changed to sculpture when I moved from Adelaide to Melbourne and started my MA at Monash University. Later, I continued with sculpture and did my PhD at Victoria University. My art is more fun and better ‘resolved’ with each exhibition.

BTW, I have another exhibition Opening at the Centre for Theology and Ministry in Parkville on May 13th. The theme then is BELONGING. Shall I send you info on it when it is a bit closer?

Many thanks, Emma!

Hi Christina,

Thanks for coming to the Opening! It felt very supportive to have you there. you asked good questions. Yes, I do like how the art looks in its space and ‘the feel’ of the Opening excellent. The food / drinks my kids helped serve were great and the response from the directors of Chapel wonderful. About half of those attending had never been to an Opening or even an exhibition before. So, they keenly listened. That was rewarding. Petre spoke from her heart. It was easy to follow on from the art scene she set out.

Today I am moving into BELONGING’s catalogue – as I must. There is always a ‘let down’ after draining all the adrenaline needed to make an event like this happen. I am trying not to link it to any part of PETITS FORAYS but rather as it being part of the artist’s job. You have the same experience. Might I use your comment on my blog site? With or without your name? http://myblog.flossiepeitsch.com/2016/03/petits-forays-bite-sized-theology/

Cheers,
Flossie

On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 2:47 PM, CHRISTINA GREEN wrote:

Thanks Flossie Really looking forward to moving into this in the week ahead. Your exhibition opening was great, and the work beautiful and inspiring. Hope you felt it went well – it was great to hear you speak about it.

Thanks and talk soon
Christina Green

April 8th,
Greetings Flossie

Colin and I found your Exhibition so very interesting last evening and in such a delightful peaceful setting – what a contrast to the ‘hustle’ and ‘bustle’ outside!!! You are such a gifted lady —- we felt privileged to gain an insight into your lifetime artistic talent both from Dr Petre and yourself…….a world away from our routine world. Please thank Patience for travelling down from Canberra to make such delicious nibbles, also Phillip and Jo for serving the drinks!!!!!!! We missed chatting to Tom – clearly a supportive husband over many years.

Peace
Cherry and Colin Schild

Thank you Flossie.

A lot of viewing and thinking in your catalogue. We hope the exhibition goes well. I imagine that in Melbourne the future is a lot brighter for you as an artist and a mother. Even Patience is not too far away.

Love and blessings
Peter and Kathy Close

It looks wonderful! It seems that art and religion have still a soul. A friend of mine is taking my art to a church sponsored exhibition I was invited to enter and will help me out – hence my comment about art soul and religion i really don’t mind it i am in a new phase of my life and I know i am not a ‘star’ artist but still do good work. I cannot dedicate myself as you do which i admire but me i suppose if i am realistic i cannot bare the pain that comes with it. I love your spirit and miss your energy.

D Daniele Lamarche-Sarvia
B.A. Hon. Anthropology,
B.A. Fine Arts,
Grad. Dip. Education,
Grad. Cert. Development Practice

Dear Flossie,

It was good to see you are arranging several exhibitions and using your art to take people into the deeper place of their inner life. I hope they all go well and that many people connect with what you are offering them. It has been quite busy here and will continue until after Easter – then a few days to rest! I hope all the family are well and yourself included. We will be able to enjoy Easter as Autumn shows its true colours here.

Warm wishes.
Lorraine

Dear Calvin,

Wow! I have been so glad to be inspired by your writings and emails over these many years. Thank yo so much for your encouraging words today! The ice is quite thin where I stand. And this is fore-mostly from the Christians! The others – if interested – in my type of art practice do not credit me with ‘spirituality’! Still, I continue to play to a small audience. Just heard again in church as it is Palm Sunday, that Jesus ‘made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant’. Being a ZERO is still hard for me as it eats at one’s self-confidence (on a good day I really know that is not what Jesus was referring to here). Feeling at least ‘useful’ is integral to being an artist yet ‘being worth nothing’ in a broad sense is what an artist fears most. At this stage in my professional life, I know even less why I am doing art but it feels important to be creating it – all the same. I am so glad it is important to you, Calvin, and to a handful of others. Your response is one of those ‘good surprises’ you hope for me. So appreciated! Could I have your permission to use your feed-back and the reply it generated on my blog (http://myblog.flossiepeitsch.com/tag/artists-life/) which is soon to feature this exhibition in bit-sized bits for the public? With your name? I wish you good surprises too! Nicely put! A fellow worker in the kingdom,

Flossie

On Sun, Mar 20, 2016 at 6:21 AM,

Calvin Seerveld wrote:

Dear Flossie,

I just received and read through your catalogue—extraordinary! The words and images are thoroughly you, in your deepest heart, given trenchant expression that with the artwork is deeply compelling. Congratulations are carrying through, with accessible talk, the fact of God’s creational daily reality which can afford a gracious opening to the saving truth. Thank you for keeping me up to date on your mission in the artworld. Your artwork witness is a great encouragement to me.

God bless you with good surprises!
Cal

Hi Flossie,

Have just read all your materials. It looks fantastic. I really like the workshops, alternate commentaries, questioning where and how we shaped creatively…and your sculptural questions & their artistic manifestation. I am really impressed. I am so sorry I can’t be there to participate. Yeah that ad for weiwei & Warhol drives me nuts. Good on you for subversion!

Cheers & hugs
Wendy Suiter

Hi Flossie!

This sounds FANTASTIC! How I wish I could experience it! You are such an awesome visual thinker. When you gonna get a Facebook page going???? 😀 With the very best of wishes for the Show, Louise Btw, nice try at looking Warhol-ish 😉

Louise Maison, SA

Art has an alarming capacity to unearth personal bias and prejudice. Like a mole it digs into the psychological constructions of the world we experience and evokes reflective material. The Word Bites preceding clearly demonstrate this encounter. When looking at Flossie’s texts, it is not so much a question of what we see; rather, it is a question of what these texts do to us. If, after wandering through her representations of her experience of the world, it is concluded that the texts have done nothing to the observer; even then, it is the case that they have done something.

Hans- Georg Gadamer (1911-2002) the German writer on the subject of hermeneutics, dedicated his life to understanding human interpretive processes. We belong to our world via the way we interpret our world. We connect ourselves to our world via texts -literary texts, visual texts and human texts. All have narratives at their core which have a much more powerful impact upon our sense of belonging than ‘objective truth’. Indeed, we ourselves are ‘living texts’. Sometimes we are disconnected from our world by the way we are understood and interpreted by others. We find we no longer ‘fit’. The end result is marginalisation and alienation. We are all asylum seekers searching for a sanctuary