Monograph

$24.94 AUD or purchase with our  Order form

Way Out West is Joel's second monograph on the big state of Western Australia, the first focusing on the Kimberley region (The Kimberley Series). Way Out West documents the entire state with full colour high quality reproductions of Joel's drawings inspired by his travels. This quality A4 publication has 96 pages bound in soft cover and makes an ideal gift or souvenir at $24.95.

In 1983 Joel Smoker took up a position as an Arts Advisory Teacher with the Education Department, based at the Kimberley District Education Office in Kununurra, East Kimberley. The job involved travel to schools around the Kimberley. The brief was to teach the teachers art making techniques and advise them on the Visual Arts curriculum. He figured that the best way of doing this was to do demonstration lessons for the teachers' classes. One of the art making techniques that he taught was pastel drawing on paper and to do this he took the students out of the classroom to suitable locations around the school to draw from observation. He figured that he may be able to do something with the demonstration drawings that he was doing so he began to take good quality Arches paper with him on which to do his drawings. At the end of 1985 he took up a job as the Art Coordinator of Waringarri Aboriginal Arts in Kununurra, which became a six-year project. During this time he continued with his drawing building up a collection of drawings of interesting places in the Kimberley, which he then exhibited in Kununurra and Broome.

On return to Perth in 1991 Joel registered as a relief teacher with the Western Australian Education Department. This meant that he had a two-week holiday at the end of each school term, so he began to go on camping trips with his wife to places out of Perth to continue with his drawing. The first trip was to the Abrolhos Islands, west of Geraldton, where he completed a series of water colour paintings and pastel drawings. This set the pattern for subsequent trips out to regional Western Australia and over the next twenty years he built up a collection of pastel drawings called the Way Out West series. There are fifty drawings in this series and forty-five of them are featured in this book. He hopes you like them and that you are encouraged to go and see these places for yourself.

$24.94 AUD

The fifty drawings of the Way Out West series are available for sale as originals or reproductions.

For more information please contact Joel Smoker by email at joel.smoker@bigpond.com