Winning piece product of “bittersweet agony”.

Artist and designer Shelley Poole won the new Avondale College of Higher Education Fine Arts Prize for her painting Formed Out Of The Earth/Birth at the 2012 Manifest Creative Arts Festival.

Shelley, a Master of Arts (Research) student at Avondale, speaks of a “rich depth of experience during the creative process.” At times, she says, it’s “shifting, stirring and almost a confronting kind of bittersweet agony.” Formed Out Of The Earth/Birth is a product of this “bittersweet agony.”

“[It] reminds me that opals, among other precious treasures, are created only under intense heat and pressure, and that there is often purpose behind the periods of life that are hard to handle.”

Brenton Stacey

Author

Brenton Stacey

Brenton is Avondale University’s Public Relations and Philanthropy Officer. He brings to the role experience as a communicator in publishing, media relations, public relations, radio and television, mostly within the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific and its entities.