Capanart Gallery
Quality Local and Investment Art including Portrait commissions.
Blog
Happy 2012
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Here's hoping everyone has a wonderful and successful new year of 2012.
After a very busy Christmas build up we are now getting all the families on school holidays coming through and getting great prices on original paintings and prints and the parents who are getting hurried through the gallery to see the other wonderful sights of Tamborine Mt. by their excited children, I throw business cards at with our website for them to look at in leisure after the kids go to bed, ha ha.
Come in now for some great discounts on quality artwork!!
Spring is sprung!!!
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We have recently returned from a wonderful two and a half months in Europe and feel fully rested refreshed and inspired. We started in Milan and stayed for a week on lovely Lake Maggiore in Stresa, then travelled through Italy by train stopping in Florence, Rome and Sorrento where we were sitting in a row (there were five of us) outside a little ice cream parlour licking our ice creams when Pierce Brosnan and a female assistant came racing up the adjacent alleyway and jumped into a pink Fiat and sped away but not before my sister got a photo. We found out they were filming a James Bond movie! Talk about right place, right time, hehe!!!
Next we flew to Santorini, how fantastic it was, and then on to Croatia where drove from one end to the other including the inland Plitvice waterfalls which were amazing (although we had been there before) and wanted to show my sister and mother. On to Slovenia where we stayed on Lake Bled and were blown away by the magical beauty of the place including fairytale castle on a cliff overlooking the lake. Then Venice for a week to live like a local and shop 'till we dropped, and Switzerland, Paris for a week, UK and up to Scotland which was a nice surprise at how lovely it was. Even the weather stayed nice most of the time.
Anyway back in the gallery now and just finished painting a big splashy pink Splodges of red and orange which I actually painted most of outside the gallery one fine day. So I put it out on the easel after opening and a woman spotted it and took it straight away, ha ha. That's what happened with the other cockatoo painting, sold first day of putting it out. Lucky I managed to get some prints done so I didn't lose it completely!
Also just sold one of the serious investor paintings by artist Robert Hagan and one of his more impressionist paintings called 'On The Run',which has proved popular with customers and was priced at $9,500, so wonderful start to my return. Two new Hagan's just in now. (see his page)
Passing of a good friend.
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Four years ago Paul and I were invited to dinner by friends to meet at the local pub The Fox and Hounds, and they brought a couple of other friends with them. One of these was Sonia Borde, with whom I clicked immediately and we became instant friends. From that date we emailed constantly and then would meet up for lunches and coffees and talk like there was no tomorrow.
She lived at the other end of my street and would refer to herself as 'The Northern Long Rd. correspondent as I was 'The Southern Long Rd. correspondent, ha ha.
We would fill each other in with local items of interest and she would send me humourous emails as I would her. She was going to put paintings etc. in the gallery but when her illness came back she was just happy for me to email her with the building of the gallery and everything new that happened, saying she was so proud of what we were doing.
We shared so much in common. She had many artistic pursuits whether it was painting, sewing, gardening, writing, painting backdrops for theatre and films etc. and had so many stories of the interesting life she had led to that point.
She would talk about how she had travelled on the high seas and had many adventures and lived in exotic countries but I never got the complete picture as we would run out of time. I wish she had written a book about it all really. There is so much more i would like to know now that she has passed.
At her memorial service I got to meet Camilla and Charlie who have so much of her spirit in them. Her gentleness, sincerity, creativeness and warmness as human beings. She was so proud of them too. She was such a private lady though and wouldn't tell us a lot.
It am so pleased to have met her and shared a little of life's journey and now met her wonderful family too. Rest in peace, Sonia.
Twelve Month Anniversary!!!!!!!!!!!
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Wow, twelve months has flown and we (Capanart Gallery, Tamborine Living - really classy homewares - and Bling Indulgence - lots of bling accessories and handbags - are getting ready to celebrate our aniversary with some drinks and nibbles on Wed. 22nd at 4pm. outside the front of the shops. Everyone welcome.
Can't believe twelve months has gone and we have really enjoyed our little place here in Gallery Walk, the tourist strip in the Gold Coast hinterland. We all love meeting and greeting the public and dealing directly with our buyers, as artists, as much as they tell us they enjoy dealing directly with the artists of their artwork purchase.
Here's to another year of success !!!!!
Passed the six month mark!
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1st August 2010.
Well, we have passed the six month mark now and things are going well. We started slowly and sales have been steadily building. We have adopted a bit of a co-op style set up and share the manning of the gallery between artists allowing ourselves time to paint.
Last week I painted a large sulphur crested cockatoo with his wings outspread and some flowers of a waratah tree against a stormy purple sky and even though the paint was still drying, Paul displayed it on an easel in the gallery only to have a lady come in and buy it for her husband before I managed to get some Giclee prints done. She is letting me have it for a few days to get that done luckily, ha ha.
More portrait commissions have been pouring in too which usually happens at this time of year for some reason : )
Kerry Nobbs work has been very popular and we have sold lots of originals as well as lots of his Giclee prints which are such good quality and guaranteed for a lifetime. They look so good on the canvas and are a great option at a fraction of the price of the originals.
Customers (as well as myself) are totally in awe of his lovely work and amazed at the subtle shadow colours in his sand dunes and the soft atmosphere he captures in his works.
Also his water reflections are to be marvelled at too.
The Robert Hagan paintings we have are also creating lots of interest as very enjoyable to look at, investment art. What a bonus to have such beautiful impressionist work when they can only rise in value. More will be coming in soon and hopefully of his vibrant galloping horses.
We have his books with collections of works and also lesson magazines which are the best I have seen. $7 each and $25 for the thick lesson book and $30 for the books of his art.
The opening of Capanart Gallery and other shops.
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The grand opening for our new shops was on 21st December 2009 and was a great success!
We sent out the invitations and stocked up with nice nibbles and plenty of refreshments and had a great turnout of nearly one hundred people.
The morning of that day though was difficult because we had not recieved the hanging wire for the paintings or the lighting that fitted with the tracks until lunchtime and so were frantically throwing the paintings onto the walls right up until the guests arrived at 4pm.
The wiring was coming from Melbourne and was ordered weeks before but got recalled and then reordered without them telling us!
Thank goodness for the help from artists Kerry Nobbs, his partner Nelly and Glenda Garrett and husband Charlie, who hung around working hard to help us meet the deadline.
We were exhausted but satisfied when we had hung the last painting just as the crowd was spilling in through the gates. The marquis were up and wine chilled and boy did we need a drink after that, not to mention how hot it was that day too.
New Gallery opening Christmas '09
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The story of the building of 'Capanart Gallery' and two other shops......
This was the original old house we have been living in and we have now pulled down half of it to make way for three new shops including one as my new art gallery. Our residence is still at the back which is handy.
The bulldozer made short work of the remants of the house.
The remaining part of the house looked pretty funny and confused people as to where the door was so we painted a sign saying door with arrow. We had people walking all around the house knocking on walls and windows looking for the entrance, ha ha.
We had a very good supervisor who ran security checks on all site visitors, see above. He was very loyal and never shirked on the job. He didn't ask for big bickies either, ha ha.
Early October '09.
Building is coming along nicely, floor is down and walls started.
Late October '09.Whoo hoo, walls are finished. Exciting stuff!
The right hand shop has been taken by a lovely homewares and soft furnishings business called 'Tamborine Living' and the middle shop will be my new art gallery.
The shop on the left is now "Bling Indulgence' and is run by the lovely Gae and Carol. It contains beautiful ladies handbags, stunning manmade diamond jewellery, scarves and other accessories. There is a range of especially made mineral makeup coming to the store with free demonstrations every month or so.
Please contact them or me for more information or to book.
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Susan Capan Artist
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Hi to all reading my first entry in my blog, thank you for your interest!
Here is a 'little' about Susan and Paul Capan's story.
Leaving Victoria
Having grown up, an hour south of Melbourne, with a view of the Dandenong ranges, I didn't realize I would be building my second home there one day, in Belgrave. Surviving the first winter there, with two babies and no central heating was hard and when hubby was asked to accompany a friend delivering a handbuilt caravan to the Gold Coast, where neither of us had been before, he took one look and came back telling me we were selling up and moving there. The only question I had was, were there any tree ferns there?, Ha ha, as I loved the forest and ferns. He assured me there were, so we left 26 years ago on Ash Wednesday in 1983.
lt was a horrific last night in the house, with a temperature of 46 degrees at midnight, and black ash falling like snow. We slept on the carpet with our babies and with phone calls all night from the owner, who had bought our house, ringing every couple of hours to make sure the house was still there!! We left in the early hours of the next day, with our van and trailer, (packed with all my beloved plants, stupidly), not realizing how lush Queensland was and how fast everything grew. We drove until late afternoon and then looked at our trusty map and decided it looked quicker to turn off at Casino and head in the back way to the coast.........anyone who knows these roads realize what a big mistake that was.
We were still driving at 10pm that night trying to get out of the mountainous, heavily treed forest. We crossed a border in the thick of it and the bleary eyed guard took one look at us with the babies and the trailer full of plants (and a knowing look), and let us through. We got to a motel, late at night, in Beaudesert, having no idea just how close we were to Ashmore, where we were heading, and slept like babies ourselves.It took us about half an hour to reach the Ashmore Caravan Park, that would be our new home for the next six months, while we found land and built the first of three houses there.
Gold Coast
The sky that day was a sort of brooding purple black and very heavy with humidity. It was not a good first impression for me then, but very quickly things improved. We built three houses in 15 years and our girls grew up loving the Gold Coast. Each house we built had glimpses of the mountain ranges (reminding me of where I grew up with the mountain view) and Tamborine Mt. was calling me. We put our third Queensland house on the market and looked at land that might be suitable for a cottage industry ie. gallery, on the mountain. A property came on the market, but when we looked at it we thought the four and a half acres of horse paddocks full of fallen trees, old tyres and long grass, with a very run down gloomy A-frame style chalet on it would be too much for us.
Then the auction came and we stood back as important looking property owners, in their drizabone coats and akubras stood in front of the auctioneer ready to bid. There were even a couple of Jewish millionaires (with their caps and curls at the sides of their faces) We thought we had no chance and just hung back to the side. The auctioneer started but no bids came in. We had decided earlier that we really wanted the property and had also found out that it was in the preferred area for cottage industry and decided we would take on the hard work. After the failed bidding we ushered the auctioneer around to the other side of the house away from the others and and put in a ridiculous (but all we could afford), bid. He had been trying to sell it for ages and rang the owner who gave the okay! We were ecstatic and went to the bank for a loan, got knocked back 3 times and finally got it. We still hadn't sold our other house and that took so long that we had both on the market again for a while but finally the house sold and we moved into the grotty A-frame. We found out later the Jewish men were serious in wanting to buy the property but had never been to an auction and we beat them to it, lucky for us.
The Secret Garden
We ended up applying to council for a cafe and gallery because even though we were on a main road it wasn't going to get customers like the famous 'Gallery Walk' and we would have to entice customers in. We called it 'The Secret Garden Gallery & Cafe', because I just loved the name and it had a big existing hedge across the front, about 12ft tall. When we had finished brightening up the A-frame and clearing all the rubbish off the property, we started the new building which was house and gallery joined together.
We didn't have any money left to do gardens but got cuttings from friends, swapped my portrait paintings with a local nursery for plants and put seeds in and so ended up with a really beautiful garden with lots of specimen trees on the back which you could see from the large verandah. When it was finished we had about $50 in the bank and I cooked everything and Paul did the coffees and drinks, and maintained the property while I taught art lessons during the week and did some picture framing as well. Mother's day was the most popular day and we got 70 people for lunch! We managed though and it became a very popular place for locals and visitors alike. I wasn't getting a lot of time to do my own paintings though so after a few years we decided to sell and it sold in 6 weeks!
Gallery Walk
The plan was to buy an old house in Gallery Walk and just build a gallery, so I could concentrate on my painting, but nothing was available. So being 'homeless' we bought another old chalet to fix up. For two years we kept trying to find something in Gallery Walk. There was an old house that we used to walk past and often saw an older couple gardening behind the big cyclone fence. We asked them if they ever planned to sell and they said no. I think people asked them all the time annoyingly, ha ha. Over a year later it came on the market. Disappointingly though it was out of our price range. We offered a lower amount and got knocked back. Over six months later it still hadn't sold and we put in an offer $100,000 less than the original price and got it! We were ecstatic but scared as we were over extending ourselves. We moved into the house in late March '08 and have been renovating the residential part while waiting for the approvals. We also visited Croatia, Paul's birthplace, for four weeks and were amazed at the beauty of the country, as well as going on a whistlestop tour of Europe and two weeks driving around London and the countryside. Standby for lots of lovely paintings from Susan's photos.
At the present we just have to get our building plans approved and we can start demolishing the front of the house (while living here, oh joy) to make way for the new gallery and two more shops. We have a very nice position in Gallery Walk and all our dreams have come true, almost. We had a man giving us a kitchen quote saying "It is not the Taj Mahal, is it?" which highly offended me, but he obviously hasn't got the vision we have, ha ha.
09-09-09 UPDATE - Paul single handedly demolished the front part of the house spending lots of time up on the roof not withstanding lots of interruptions from friends who saw him and and didn't know we lived there and who ended up coming in for a cuppa. We actually found some friends we had lost touch with when Paul saw them strolling by, oblivious to who was making all the banging, ha ha.
House looks so funny now as we have no doors or windows on show and Paul had to actually paint "door" to one side of building to guide people in. They were going round knocking on walls and windows!!
Builder starting this Friday, can't wait.
