Fantastic Journeys: Paintings and Music

Come see Dragons! Wizards and magic! Underground labyrinths, enchanted islands, and overall, the Yin and Yang of Light and Darkness.

Reading American fantasy and science fiction author Ursula Le Guin’s “Earthsea” novels on a summer holiday on the South Island a few years ago, Featherston artist Astrid Nielsch was overwhelmed by a rush of images inspired by the author’s strong imagery. In December 2008 she began to work on the series of paintings which form the backbone of this exhibition.

Set in a waterbound world of islands and wizards traveling in boats, the fictional world of “Earthsea“ is much inspired by the cultures of the American Pacific Coast, and the Pacific Islands. Incidentally, in some languages “Earthsea” translates to the same word as “Zealand”!

In her musical incarnation as Asni the Harper, Astrid will perform on the harp twice daily during the exhibition, at 12.30 pm and 6 pm, Sun 5.30 pm.

Prints of the artwork and CDs will be for sale during the exhibition.

More information: conceptart.asni.net

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Fantasy as a genre is not usually known for promoting an avant-garde view of society. Ursula Le Guin has taken the fantasy genre and turned its stereotypes on their head.

Profoundly influenced by the Chinese philosophy of Daoism and the I Ging, her work stresses the importance of keeping a balance between light and dark, and acknowledging the shadow side of one’s self. Her stories may be all about wizards and magic and dragons, but they contain a deep psychological and spiritual truth.

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Astrid Nielsch has been trying to make sense of the world around her by painting pictures since she was two years old.  Reading the works of J.R.R. Tolkien as a teenager inspired her not only to give shape to her imagination with paint, but to pick up the harp and embark on a career as a professional musician that has taken her across the globe, and ultimately to New Zealand.

The intense visual experience of the New Zealand landscape and light compelled her to take painting more seriously again. Astrid is largely self taught, but since 2004 she has been participating in several online art communities, where she found the peer support that has enabled her to develop her painterly skills more systematically, and where she was encouraged to explore the connections between the fine motor skills she had acquired as a musician, and the art of the pencil and brush.

In 2008, Astrid completed the Diploma of Multimedia at Natcoll Design College, and was awarded an Enterprise Allowance Grant to set up her own business, Asni: Multimedia Art & Design. She runs her own website www.asni.net, where she sells prints of her artwork, sheet music and CDs, and designs websites for other artists and musicians, independent professionals, and small businesses in New Zealand and abroad. “Fantastic Journeys” is Astrid’s first solo exhibition.

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Ursula K Le Guin, the Grande Dame of American fantasy and science fiction, was born in 1929 in Berkeley, California. She discovered her love for writing early, but it would take until the 1960’s to publish her first science fiction novel. Her work soon began to attract major awards: her fifth novel, “The Left Hand of Darkness”, published a year after the first “Earthsea” book, won both the Nebula and Hugo awards, and can be considered a 20th century classic.

Social anthropology, feminism, ecology, xenophobia and racial discrimination are constant concerns in Le Guin’s work. The “Earthsea” novels break with a long tradition of eurocentric fantasy writing, in that their hero and most of the other characters are a dark skinned people, their culture inspired by American First Nations as much as Europe, living in a water-bound world of scattered islands reminiscent of the Pacific.

The author lives in Portland, Oregon. Her latest book, “Lavinia”, appeared in 2008.