“O WIND, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Percy Bysshe Shelley asked in  “Ode to the West Wind.”

Yes it’s that time of the year and, to adopt an obvious pun, Michael Winters’ exhibition “A Class Act” (also a pun) well reflects the end of winter and a glimpse into spring.

As the title implies, this is an exhibition by 30 of Winters’ students in the ANU Centre of Continuing Education’s visual arts access program classes conducted at the off-campus venue of Strathnairn Homestead.

As a veteran of many mass exhibitions by Canberra painters, I found the show of 120 works, mostly in medium to large format, refreshing and inspiring, yielding imaginative and desirable works and that is in no small measure a tribute to Winters’ inventive approach to teaching this popular art form.

It wasn’t easy to explore the paintings at the launch last Saturday, so packed was the Woolshed Gallery at Strathnairn, but after  the crowd dispersed somewhat, a number of pedagogical gambits became obvious, ones that that brought out imaginative responses in the artists.

Chiefly, Winters has steered some of his newcomer artists towards work of unusual simplicity, often employing a technique used by the late English artist Patrick Caulfield to limit the colour palette, often to blues.

Another is to eliminate the brush from the work so that one exceedingly sophisticated landscape was achieved through the use of rag and paint. The same artist experimented with a complex collage.

The ‘fish out of water’ motif seemed prevalent, with the odd marine creature surfacing above water in the paintings. Then again, there were Mediterranean, scenes reminding that Winters is a self-styled ‘Philhellene’, having spent many years living on the Greek Island of Leros, where he was made an honorary citizen.

If the smiles on the faces of staff from the ANU Centre of Continuing Education was anything to go by, this a great triumph for the centre. It’s well worth a look. And the bulbs are shooting up at glorious Strathnairn.

All images courtesy of Bron King Photos

“A CLASS Act” Woolshed, Strathnairn Arts Centre, Stockdill Drive Holt, until August 14, Thursdays to Sundays, 10am to 4pm.