MANDY Martin’s new paintings in her “A Change in the Weather” exhibition at Beaver Galleries, reflect her vision of the impact and anxiety for the changing climate during the past 20 years of living on a large property in the central west of NSW.

For an artist with a long list of artistic and environmental credentials, this time has been used not just creatively but to coordinate art and environment practices. Her paintings, with the burning, smoke haze, firestorms, snow, mega fires and cooling rainstorms, are of weather of the here and now.

As a lecturer at the Canberra School of Art little did Martin expect that one of her students, Nicola Dickson, would one day share the limelight at a joint exhibition.

And what a glorious contrast as the luminosity of Dickson’s works shows how the drawings of Austrian draughtsman Ferdinand Bauer has influenced this collection with the “bizarre beauty of Australian flora and fauna”, that she references and gives a hint of chinoiserie to, especially in the stunning triptych.

The opening-night crowd was again well served by Beaver Galleries at Deakin.