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Artist Leah McKinnon, enrolled as a mature-age student at the Canberra Art School when it opened in 1976 to complete a Diploma in Painting. McKinnon began exhibiting her work in 1976 in individual and group exhibitions. Between 1976 and 2012 her work was hung in exhibitions in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle, Armidale and Moree. She also had installations at the Canberra Goethe Institute, Central Gallery Sydney, New England Regional Art Museum, (NERAM) Armidale and Canberra School of Art.
In 1979-1980 she was artist-in-residence at the University of New England, Armidale, followed in 1992 by a residency at the Canberra Institutes of Art (now The Australian National University School of Art, Canberra).
In 1980 McKinnon purchased the old Literary Institute in Uralla which she converted into a home and studio, and this was her base between 1980 and 1990. She was appointed a Trustee at NERAM, then a new institution which combined several collections – the Howard Hinton Collection which had been gifted to the Armidale Teachers’ College, 1929-1948 by Howard Hinton, the Chandler Coventry Collection, gifted by Coventry (also a founding Trustee), the Armidale City and the NERAM Collections. The gallery opened in March 1983.
During these years McKinnon curated exhibitions ‘Women in the Arts Festival’ for Sydney College of the Arts (1988), and McCrossin’s Mill in Uralla (1988), and held teaching positions at Armidale College of Technical and Further Education (TAFE), Sydney College of the Arts (1980-1989), and in the late 1980s was a Post Graduate External Assessor for both the Sydney College of the Arts and the University of Tasmania.
Also, during the 1980s, McKinnon collaborated with Margaret Somerville and Patsy Cohen and created a series of large diptych drawings – ‘Ingelba and the Five Black Matriarchs’ – now part of the Parliament of Australia Art Collection.
McKinnon moved to Isisford, Queensland in 1990 and spent six years establishing and operating a Landscape Interpretation Centre there. Returning to Uralla in 1996 her interest in the environment saw her undertake further studies, completing a Bachelor of Land Management (2002), and a Master of Philosophy (2007), both at Sydney University.
Leah’s interest in art and environment culminated in curating and participating in a collaborative community exhibition held at NERAM in 1998, ‘Nova Anglica – a Web of Our Endeavours’.
While undertaking field work for her Master of Philosophy, McKinnon studied, worked and lived in Moree, Wee Waa, Narrabri and Gurley, and in 2011 relocated permanently to Narrabri.
McKinnon’s work is held in the National Art Gallery Canberra, High Court Canberra, NERAM Armidale, Benalla Regional Gallery, University of New England Armidale Collections, as well as private collections.
- Writers:
-
artwomen
- Date written:
- 2024
- Last updated:
- 2024
