(PRLEAP.COM) New York art patrons will have their first opportunity to see at first hand the work of self-taught Tasmanian-based Australian artist , Elizabeth Turnbull, when the Raw Art Festival 2007 (RAF2007) opens at the Carrozzini von Buhler Gallery on 16 January 2007.

Elizabeth began her painting career some thirty five years ago in Brisbane (Australia) when the last of her four children commenced school. Since then she has painted constantly and exhibited both in Australia and overseas but her work only came to the attention of the outsider art world in 2000 when she participated in the 6th International Festival d’Art Singulier, Roquevaire-Aubagne in Provence. Immediately following this event she was invited to take part in the first ever exhibition of outsider art in Spain - El Arte Singular - at the Monasterio de Veruela, near Zaragoza (June-August 2001) and four of her works were later chosen for inclusion in the permanent collection of Spain’s first museum of outsider art.

Since this auspicious beginning she has been a regular participant in overseas ousider art festivals and exhibitions. Her credits include the 7th International Festival d’Art Singulier, Aubagne (2002), Raw Art Festival 2005, London, The Other Face of the Moon - Raw Art, Lastra a Signa, Florence, Italy (March 2006)and Raw Art Festival 2006, Valencia, Spain (October 2006), as well as a number of important Postal Art festivals in France. From 2002 to 2005 she also had four Australian exhibitions, two at Gallery 482, Brisbane, and the others at the Burnie Regional Art Gallery, Burnie, Tasmania and e.Scape Tasmanian Wilderness Gallery, St.Marys, Tasmania.

Speaking about the inspiration for her more recent work Elizabeth says: -

“Strongly intuitive, my work has always celebrated female spirituality in general and the oneness of all humankind and nature. Early in 2002 a symbol emerged for me crystallizing thoughts and feelings I had long held of ‘The Ancestors’- as all humankind and all nature, present in all of us, in our very cells and in everything that exists, and also seeing us and all nature as being present in them: this resonates to me with many of the concepts of Taoism and, more recently, of quantum physics.

We are very, very old - the stuff of stars and the sea - yet ever new.

“From this concept and from the earth and nature of rural Tasmania, where I came to live in late 2002, evolved an ongoing body of work – ‘The Ancestors’ - consisting of paintings and sculptural assemblages, the latter incorporating found objects from the Tasmanian natural environment and elsewhere, giving these otherwise worthless things a new life.

“As my contribution to Raw Art Festival 2007 I have chosen a number of gouache & acrylic works on paper from ‘The Ancestors’ series.”

Elizabeth’s works together with those of the other participants in RAF 2007 will remain on view until 31 January 2007

Exhibition: Raw Art Festival 2007
Venue: Carrozzini von Buhler Gallery, 407 West 13th Street, New York, 10014
Dates: 16-31 January 2007. Check gallery for opening hours

For further information re: -

RAF2007 : - http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061127/nym068.html?.v=56 & http://www.raf2007.com/

Elizabeth Turnbull: http://www.elizabethturnbull.com.au/