Professionals Serendipity 
Tamborine Mountain is a community of creatives, and a hidden gem of that same creativity can be found at Mountain Dreams Gallery. This home gallery displays exclusively the breathtaking art of its owners, local artist Maki Horanai and her partner Hillel Weintraub. We sit down with the two to hear their fascinating story and get their perspectives on art, nature, and mountain life.
by Kyle Hitchmough
How long have you had the gallery here?
Hillel: Our first gallery was opened in 2006. We came to the mountain from Japan, and we had a gallery on Gallery Walk for three years. Then we had a child and we got a home, so we opened this gallery in 2012.
Do you have any inspirations or influences in your art? What style and methods do you use?
Maki: I grew up in North Japan, close to Russia. They had a Russian church with beautiful icons inside the church. It was really beautiful, and when I was studying art in college, I really liked the Italian Renaissance period and those Russian icons also. I studied that kind of style, and just kept going with it. So Italian Renaissance, and a little bit of Russian iconic. It’s all acrylic painting, and I do ceramics too, which I studied in Australia.
Hillel: Maki enjoys making ceramics a lot. In order to stay in Australia, we had to be full-time students for our visa, so we both studied ceramics together down the mountain, and it’s continued to be an important part of Maki’s art. Sometimes she mixes, so you can see a little piece over there has a painting in the middle of it, so she combines them. I think she maintains the same kind of feeling in her ceramics and her art.
Hillel, you’re a writer and you create companion pieces to Maki’s art, correct? Can you tell us more about that?
Hillel: Yeah, I’m interested in writing and responding to Maki’s art. We make books, and I write poems as my responses to her art. It’s not a discussed thing, it’s just that she paints and I write. We made a children’s book that I really like about a cat that we had. It’s a really wonderful book.
Do you have a favourite piece you’ve created?
Maki: Yes, that big piece over there. It’s called Awakening. That was from 2003, maybe. I was still young, and had a lot of energy. I felt something coming from inside, and I painted that. It’s quite special for me, where I felt another kind of energy coming to me.
Hillel: That’s how we met, that painting, so it has special meaning for us. I went to an exhibition and that painting was there, and I fell in love with it and wanted to buy it. She wasn’t there, she hadn’t signed it, so after I bought it she came by and signed it. We became friends, and here we are.
Have you noticed any particular trends in gallery visitors?
Hillel: The people who keep coming back are the ones who have that feeling of connection with the kind of art that Maki does. I think it’s a connection to nature that they feel, some sort of harmony with nature. Maki grew up by the sea and so I think that’s a strong part of what’s behind her work.
As locals, what are your opinions on the Tamborine Mountain area and community?
Hillel: I like every place that I’ve lived. We’ve been here for about 18 years and we really like living up here.
Maki: It’s a beautiful place. The nature is so beautiful.
Hillel: Yeah, it’s a beautiful place to live.
Maki: The people are nice too. I’ve met some really lovely artists on the mountain and we do some things together sometimes.
Hillel: It’s a special place, the mountain. We’re very happy here.
What do you enjoy most about doing this?
Hillel: It’s not really a separate thing from our life. This whole thing is our life, which makes it nice. We used to have to get up in the morning and go into the gallery, and take care of our child, and everything was sort of separate. Having the gallery in our home makes it all one thing, which we like.
Maki: We join the market sometimes.
Hillel: The artists find different ways of supporting each other and coming out into the community. There’s a Maker’s Market every month and we take part in that. A lot of artists around get together and do that. That’s quite nice.
What’s been your most memorable moment from your time here?
Maki: There’s a lot of interesting people. Everybody who collects my art has an interesting story about what their life is. It’s interesting to talk to people who come in. Some people know us and come to our gallery regularly, but some people just pop in and they tell us such interesting stories. We had a policeman come in who was very touched by my paintings!
Hillel: The stories that people feel when they look at Maki’s art I think are not really coming from Maki, but from themselves. We’re really happy that people respond. We try to give people space to respond, and so we make books and prints and things so that people who can’t afford an original painting can still take Maki’s art and have it around. They feel quite inspired by it, I think, looking at it. We’re just in the process now of making another book. The paper in our books come from Nepal, so we’re making a book now with this handmade paper. We like to do things as naturally as we can. I think that’s one important point about living on the mountain, is that people respect nature around here and try to live well and eat well, taking advantage of and living in harmony with nature. I think that’s a good thing.
Is there anything else you’d like to go on the record?
Hillel: People are welcome to stop by anytime because we’re a home gallery, but we prefer people to give us a call first and leave a message to let us know they want to visit on 0424 960 817.
We are always looking for new topics for our blog. If there’s something you like to see more of, email your suggestions to: social@professionalsserendipity.com.au, or email the writer at kyle.hitchmough@hotmail.com.
