By Tania Phillips
Artist and PHD student Peter Osborn has always loved art but he’s now living the dream and is about to head back overseas for a two-month art residency.
The Warwick grandfather and former structural engineer heads to Finland, Denmark in late May to continue his work towards his PHD in visual arts through the University of Southern Queensland.
The trip, which follows a similar one to Domaine de Boisbuchet in France last year, will give the predominantly ceramic artist a chance to work in new environments finding new things in nature to use as glazes for his PHD works.
“I’ve been more seriously involved in art for about 15 years now, I have a profession as a structural engineer,” Peter explained said.
“But I’ve gradually in past few years, moved out of engineering. At the moment I’m doing a PHD at the university of Southern Qld in visual arts. I’m in my third year of that.
“I’m pretty much full-time as a research student which was not planned at all,” he laughed.
Peter said he started his degree at the university, looking for a little bit more than just what he could get as a hobby artist.
“I was interested in theory and looking to try to express concepts with the art rather than just make nice pictures,” Peter explained.
“I’ve also had a fairly long background in ceramics but in the sense of sculpture not pottery.
“The uni at Toowoomba has a very good ceramics facility so that also attracted me. About eight or nine years ago I started the bachelor’s degree part-time while I was still working and kept going. It sucked me in I guess, it’s very rewarding.”
The degree allowed him to further explore ceramics but has also brought him back to painting and drawing both mediums he is enjoying.
“At times ceramics can be a bit frustrating,” he chuckled.
“I like going out and doing water colours and drawing and doing what they call plein air painting.”
The talented artist particularly loves to get out into nature, living on acreage near Warwick has certainly helped that and it’s this love that has informed and inspired his PHD subject.
“My PHD subject is based on how art can capture the human relationship with nature and it’s turned out to be a very broad subject but it’s looking to see how art, in a way, can create connections for people with nature when we’re in a very technological age,” he said.
“A lot of people are living in a very urban environment. So, this is about how art can do things that science can’t do. Science can provide a lot of data and a lot of very good information but the emotional and identity that people find with nature is something that art can express.
“I’ve lived on rural property for the past 40 years – two different properties – in the Warwick area, in the bush. It’s given me an enormous amount, living in that rural environment. So, I was sort of questioning myself a little bit on what I do to connect with living in that environment and how I could share that with other people.”
And soon he will be exploring more outdoor regions and getting a chance to interact with other artists in a very different and new environment when he heads to Finland to complete a residency as part of his PHD.
“It’s one of the unexpected perks of the PHD, that it assists you greatly when you apply to do residencies overseas,” he chuckled.
“Last year I was in a residency in France – that was really good, it was in a regional part. I met a good group of artists and interviewed them for my PHD. You get this lovely exchange when you go into a residency.
“And one of those artists said look at this one in regional Finland – it sounds just what you would like to do. I applied and was accepted.”
Peter leaves at the end of May and is in Finland for four weeks and will be working with six other artists.
“One of them is a ceramics artist, the others are filmmakers, painters and textile artists,” he said.
“Then after that, I’d applied earlier and didn’t think I’d got in. But I go to Danish Institute for Ceramics research – an hour and half plane ride from Finland. I get to spend another four weeks there which is pretty exciting.”
So, what does he get out of a residency like these?
“I think the biggest thing is the exchange with other artists, which can be every-day chatter, but you can also see how they’re working and what they’re looking at and you can do interviews with them like I did in France.
“What that gives to my research was how other people are looking at that sort of subject and how they go about doing their work.
“The new environments are very stimulating; it was a very beautiful place in France. When I go to Finland, I’m on the other side from Helsinki in a little town on the gulf that divides Finland and Sweden. I’ll be in the forest and water ways.
“The other ceramics artist has a very similar practise. She’s from Toronto and she’s Ecuadorian and we have very similar interests, I think they probably picked us for that reason so that we could work together which is lovely.”
The Warwick-based artist hopes to finish his PHD, which he’s been studying and working on a lot at the university in Toowoomba around February next year.
“I think it’s fulfilled something; I really loved the arts when I was younger, but you needed to have a career especially if you have a family,” he said.
“So, I picked a design job with a lot of outdoors, and I also practiced in regional Qld not in a high rise in the city. You learn as an engineer to visualise things very strongly, it’s a great assistance to being an artist.
“But there’s something in me that feels at home with the art.
“Being a consulting engineer you’re problem solving all the time and in art – something like ceramics, there’s a lot of that too.
“What I’ve done with the ceramics project for the PHD is get the local soils, you know the black soil, and make glazes out of it. There’s a bit of engineering in that. I’ve had some pretty beautiful results.
“I’ll be doing more of that overseas. What I hope to do with the other ceramicist is gather materials and make things from that. It’s probably what got us the acceptance. It’s fairly competitive (residencies) with people all over the world applying. I was surprised I got it but when they sent the letter, they said they really liked the project I was proposing. I’m a fair way down the track now, I know how to make the glazes with found materials, so the results are all going to come in the next six months.”
“Taking a journey like this – the other big thing it gives you is the ability to create networks. There aren’t too many people in the world doing what I’m doing, so to find people working in that field of art is fantastic.”
