Melbourne Artist Highlights Peace Walk

Melbourne Artist Uses Sydney Art Exhibition To Highlight Brisbane To Canberra Peace Walk

Kiwi-born Australian artist Sara Catena is using her peace paintings at an exhibition in Sydney to highlight a landmark women’s peace march from Brisbane to Canberra.

The exhibition opens at the Arthouse Hotel in Sydney on May 3 and ends May 29 and has been inspired by the Footprints for Peace global event to highlight peace in Australia. Ten percent of the Catena art exhibition sales will be donated to the event.

Catena said the women's peace walk Footprints for Peace from Brisbane to Canberra will culminate in a message of peace, environmental sustainability and anti-nuclear proliferation to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The event is expected to end in June after a journey through many towns and cities before finishing in Canberra at the Canberra Aboriginal Tent Embassy where the message will be presented to Rudd.

``I am passionate about greater peace and harmony in our world. My paintings remind us of the simple joy of life, through color and I believe it is an essential balance to the high-tech, cold and busy lives we lead," Catena said today.

One of the works has a large dancing peace angel with her arms around a kangaroo with olive branches framing the background - symbolic of peace in Australia.

Last year Catena, who paints in her Mornington Peninsula studio in Melbourne, donated one of her paintings to the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital annual appeal.

Walk organiser, 69 year old grandmother, June Norman said with the announcement of Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory as the preferred site for a nuclear waste dump, it was important Australia were aware of the consequences endangering lives of future generations, and threatening the natural environment.

Catena said she hoped her paintings would heighten Australians’ resolve for peace and to support the march to Canberra.

``I am inspired by the big events and the visionaries, the Dalai Lamas of the world and people like Mandela, Gandhi and Aung San Suu Kyi……. but I know that for all of us, peace begins at home….around our kitchen table.”

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