Mark Tronson is a retired Baptist minister who founded in 1982 the Sports and Leisure Ministry (under Heads of Churches), was the Australian Cricket Team chaplain for 17 years to 2001 and a receiptent of the Olympic Ministry Medal presented by Olympian of the Century Carl Lewis in 2009, an author of 25 books and a prolific writer.
In this series on Miracles, Mark Tronson is taking the reader of a journey of faith through his own ministry illustrating time and time again how the Lord's touch blossomed a situation where the only response was to offer praise to the Almighty.
Christian Ministries and Missions across the centuries can point to similar outcomes which has resulted not so much in new buildings but in both the intangible and tangible such as changed lives for Jesus or the excess of alcohol converted into children's shoes.
In this fourth article on miracles Mark Tronson says that the art ministry is another of those timing experiences where everything fell into place.
In 2000 Mark and Delma Tronson were released by Heads of Churches from the national leadership of the sports ministry after 18 years, whereby it was believed he would have collapsed with the stress of such leadership of 250 volunteers.
Mark and Delma Tronson were established in a new ministry "Well-Being Australia" as so to concentrate on the respite ministry, his cricket ministry and other area of ministry interest.
One of these "other areas of interest" was art as during his stress period he began painting seriously, but this was not his only ambition in this area, rather it was a community and ministry interest.
They were based in Moruya on the 10 acre allotment where the Basil Sellers House athlete respite facility was located and having become a member of the Moruya Arts Council he recognised that Moruya did not have a community art gallery.
He approached Mr Basil Sellers who himself was a patron of the arts, who agreed to financially support a Basil Sellers Art Centre on the 10 acre allotment in 2001. The site for the art centre fell within the tourism ministry's Australia's Bush Orchestra, a bush walk under a canopy of Ironbark and the birdsong of the bell-miners.
The Basil Sellers Art Centre was opened in 2003 by Mr Basil Sellers to the acclaim of the local community where he also announced a $10,000 Basil Sellers Art Prize for 2004 for the local Eurobodalla Shire arts community.
The Basil Sellers Art Prize was handed over to the Eurobodalla Shire to co-ordinate in 2006 and has since been increased to $15,000 on a bi-annual basis to broadened to the five surrounding Shire Councils.
The Basil Sellers Art Centre hosted art classes and local artistic exhibitions and a monthly wine and cheese evening for local artists.
When Mark and Delma Tronson relocated to Tweed Heads they established a Basil Sellers Tweed Art Studio and instantly was provided opportunities to exhibit art as a fund raiser for Well-Being Australia in local exhibition centres, galleries and restaurants.
It was the Basil Sellers Art Prize in Moruya that Mr Basil Sellers AM extended his art sponsorship to a Sport-Art $100,000 prize at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at Melbourne University and it's been a privilege for Mark and Delma Tronson to have been guests at each of these prize's opening nights.
One of Basil Sellers' original ideas shared with Mark Tronson was to recreate the Heildelburg Art House of the sixties where artists lived and dreamed together and part of the Basil Sellers Laguna Quays Respite facility on the Whitsundays is to open it for artists to live on-site for 2-3 weeks at a time.
The artistic community is right behind this and already one of the Basil Sellers Art Prize judges has become the volunteer PR person to promote the use of the facility as an art house.
Mark Tronson whose art persona is Tronson du Coudray (historic name) has produced many works of art himself, including a commissioned work for Basil Sellers, a trilogy on Sport Anguish. These large paintings: Despair, Confusion, Hope, hang in
Basil Sellers' private collection.
His latest artistic creations have been at the opposite end of the scale, A4 framed on specific themes which has bought considerable critical praise. For Mark Tronson, art is as much about his own respite as it is his creative impulses.
The miracles associated with the art ministry have been the volunteers to make it happen, the remarkable timing, the gifting of Basil Sellers and the Lord's hand upon Christian service within the community.
