Billy Shannon's Studio

This painting is part of the memory of watching the snow come in as I walked along a dirt road, my heart beaming at the contrast between where I was living, and The Bronx in New York, where I was born.

Left: Quamby Bluff from Jackey's Marsh Rd, Tasmania  ·  Pen and Ink, 1993
Right: Mountains of Gold — Quamby Bluff, Tasmania  ·  Acrylic on canvas, 86 × 102 cm, 2020

I lived in Tasmania on and off for about 10 years, late last century. I had just finished working as Production Manager at La Boîte Theatre and was planning on travelling around Australia. My intent was to visit my sister in Tasmania and do a Vipassana meditation course that she had organised for me, then stay in the country for a month or so… A lot of those years were spent in Jackey’s Marsh, an 800m mountain valley cradled between Quamby Bluff and the Western Tiers.

The Black Shouldered Kite is an endangered bird of prey, native to south east Queensland. This was painted for a friend’s mother, who loves them.

🐁 Ratty in the year of the Rat 🐀

“Although a zodiac’s year is traditionally the most unfortunate, laden with bad omens and mishaps, 2020 will perform reasonably well for the Rat. Success will come in the form of career; celebrate the fact that your efforts will be rewarded and seen.” — chinesenewyear.net

And it has proven to be true! Both a globally challenging and personally very busy year with a huge upswing in commissions! Many thanks to everyone who loves and buys my work. I think that as people are home more and not travelling, they have decided to decorate, and many of our visual arts friends have been very busy.

I love creating artworks on commission! It is always work that comes from my heart, but is inspired by the desires and sensibilities of the specific buyers.

My brother Chris and his partner Ella commissioned a painting of him as part of the Sleep series. We were all really happy with the results!

The finished painting of Chris dreaming

My studio days, with commissioned work at present! I love coming in here each day to work!

In the process of creating, artists disappear before our work. I feel that we are just an instrument of flow, creating by love and thought.

I started this painting of my friend Nirvana a few years back, and had just started working on it again when Nirvana contacted me saying she’d love a painting of mine. I love synchronicity!

A commissioned work that gave me a great deal of painting pleasure because it was based on images of the coast of Tasmania.

Plexus Gallery

Sona and I created Plexus Gallery, a commercial gallery representing Brisbane-based, independent artists. We actually started creating it at the end of 2019, and had planned a launch early in 2020, but of course, the pandemic hit and everyone’s plans changed… However Plexus was mainly an online gallery, with local delivery for the Brisbane market. It turned out to be tailor-made for the challenges that 2020 brought.

Sona created the logo. I love how it indicates the interconnectedness of things Plexian.

We had a great time setting up the gallery. It was several months of organising and web design to start with.

Wrapping up the first works sold from our site for a local delivery! Very exciting!

Our first ‘virtual’ show! We enjoyed the experiment with 3D, but preferred to put our energies into promoting the site and artists rather than coding.

After that, the atrocities being visited upon the beautiful Armenia inspired Plexus Gallery to create a fundraising exhibition to raise awareness and some money to help the families of the fallen Armenian soldiers, who were trying to protect their indigenous lands and their own lives.

Art for Armenia  ·  An online exhibition to raise funds to help the families of soldiers whose lives were lost defending Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), 17 October – 15 November 2020.

🐁 2020 draws to a close 🐀

The end of 2020 involved many difficult and pleasurable elements. I have been quite lucky to have many commissioned works to paint. I completed a few before I needed to put the rest on hold whilst I looked after a dying friend at the end of this year.

In difficult times, I always find it healing to create beauty and benefit for people. Donald, my closest friend of nearly 40 years, hit a fever pitch of creative outpourings in the few months preceding his death. He wrote a novel, an opera, a few plays and played an enormous amount of music. Being his full-time carer for those (far too few) months, we filled our days in conversation and art. In the end, he passed surrounded by those dearest to him, in a night of music, poetry and love.

My dear friend Donald Hall. This is a photo I took of Donald in the late 80s, on one of his visits to me when I was living in Tasmania.