The Write Gallery is a large and inclusive space that seamlessly transmogrifies to accommodate every exhibition and the creative vision of each artist. Anna Battle’s Shiny Happy Art + Ideas Show is big. It is colourful. It is exuberant. It is a celebration. It fills the space but with room to manoeuvre and take time to appreciate the variety and the versatility of this remarkable artist.

The exhibition is a joyous welcome to spring and also a well-timed tribute to Toowoomba’s Carnival of Flowers in its seventy-fifth year. Anna Battle is a local artist with a profound involvement in the community. Through the business extension of her practice, “Shiny Happy Art”, Anna offers an array of possibilities that range from illustration, graphics, design, painting commissions, and on-line classes. Her belief in the creative spirit has encouraged many hesitant potential artists to gain confidence, and “have a go”. It was the German artist, Joseph Beuys, who famously said: “Everyone is an artist…everyone has the potential to create, and potentially change society”[1]. For Beuys the term “artist” went beyond the obvious, he saw it as symbolizing the essence of being human. He believed that we all have the capacity to shape our lives and the world around us, that life itself should be an artwork.

It is a brief that could be said to drive and guide Anna Battle’s journey of creativity. In the ‘shop section’ there are tea towels, hand painted vases - many decorated as homages to artists such as Whiteley, Frida Kahlo, Matisse, and Margaret Preston. There are record albums by Flamingo Blonde with the cover design by Anna. Puzzles, mouse mats, post cards, and beanies also vie for position. The exhibition marks the launch of a new Anna Battle line of personalized merchandise: Turkey Smugglers, loose, comfy, and roomy board shorts decorated with clever scrub turkey motifs. An art vending machine adds novelty and interest with its selection of gift cards, pens, water brushes, bookmarks, and gingerbread men.

An Instagram throne invites patrons to pause to take a happy memory portrait, while the western end of the gallery is resplendent with the lively pattern designed by Anna for the wallpaper company, Milton and King. The walls pursue the floral theme with flower and tabletop still life paintings of vibrant colours in dramatic compositions. The celebration of good times and happy associations bursts in bouquets from a series ‘top drop’ champagne bottles. A landscape, wildlife studies, and four abstracts in bright swatches of colour attest to the artist’s diverse interests.

However, arguably the most rewarding part of this exhibition is contained in the central display case. Here we have a series of the artist’s notebooks, snippets of paper with quick sketches, journals that document captured moments, drawings, and small watercolour studies. Tellingly, they define the true artist, the keen observation, visual stories, experiences witnessed, recorded, and savoured. The spontaneity, honesty, the sense of exploration and discovery are tangible elements that will hopefully encourage the artist to allow a little time to paint purely for herself. Anna Battle’s exhibition is a bright, cheerful, and alluring experience of colour, harmony, incentive, and opportunity that invites further participation offered through a series of structured workshops.

Sandy Pottinger is a local artist and writer. She is a retired lecturer in Visual Arts, University of Southern Queensland, and wrote the Toowoomba Chronicle’s art review column “Around the Galleries” for twenty-five years.

Sandy Pottinger September 2024

1 Tisdall, C., 1974, Art in Society, Society in Art,” ICA, London, UK