David Hawkes: Study for a Beautiful Day 2

Wedderburn is a small place, just out of Campbelltown west of Sydney.  You would expect with the concentration of most of Australia’s best abstract artists that it would be a remarkable place.  It’s not, it’s the bush and a gully and like most of the Australian landscape, scrappy gums,scrubby undergrowth and patchy pinkish rock.  Beautiful but not exceptional.  It’s the translation to art that makes it remarkable.

“I could spend the rest of my life just painting this bit of bush.” Elisabeth Cummings Wedderburn

Elisabeth Cummings is the humble queen of the Wedderburn bush and her current exhibition at King Street Gallery is testament to her rights to that crown.  Regular readers of my blog will know already of the influence of her work on mine.  This exhibition has some truly notable pieces, especially Crossing the Gully and Small Billabong.

Looking at her work I am inspired to get back painting in oil and at the same time insecure in that I feel I would never be able to produce anything so exquisitely complete and complex.

Just down the road in Watters Gallery, David Hawkes also paints the Wedderburn Bush. Like Cummings, Hawkes takes the essence of that landscape and pours a rhythm of the bush into his work in slathers of paint. His 49 studies for a beautiful day seems to indicate every day is a beautiful day in Wedderburn.

A beautiful day in Sydney too.

Taking a photo at the lake on my walk, why not give the old Tate Ball a shake?

This was my treat on a hot summery night.

I think when I heard the Sesame Street rendition of “There’s an app for that…” I knew my excitement for apps was justified.  I can’t say that I’m a tech expert but I can negotiate around the app store like a book shop.  I head straight for the art section (surprise,surprise), do a bit of opening, browsing, reading reviews.

The Magic 8 Ball Tate Ball

A grey day at the lake, a shake and presto!

So my phone now has a great selection of art apps and one of my all time favourites is the Magic Tate Ball. It has it all. At any time of day, anywhere you can give it a firm shake and magic chance along with a little GPS tracking and sensing your surroundings, it will predict an art piece specially selected for you to make your day a little brighter. Todays treat was Barbara Hepworth!

Along with apps from most of the major galleries, there is also a variety of arty games and another favourite time-waster is Art Museum. It is similar to the old card game of patience where you flip over and match the pair – in this case art works, you then go on to match the painting to the artist and even further to match the title to the painting.

There is a great variety Dali Watches, Draw Something, Muybridgizer, and Magritte It are a few fun ones.  Let me know if there is the ultimate art app that you would love to share.

If you think all of this may be just too much to take in, check out this fun animation that sums up my problem.

No, I didn’t get locked out but I was a little paranoid.

Sometimes the unexpected can lead your mind on a merry dance through some strange stuff.  Yesterday while walking my dog on the jetty at the lake at Boonerah Point, I was reminiscing. The smell of the lake and the jellyfish and weed combine to recreate my childhood. I suddenly saw something swimming toward me, moving slowly through the water, larger than a jellyfish, larger than fish. It was a sea turtle.  I fumbled for my phone for a photo but unable to unravel the dog-lead and swipe for the app, all I could do was stare. It came closer and closer almost breaking the surface, the dog scrambled to the edge, the turtle took a swift left turn and swam away at high-speed.

Boonerah Point

It’s unusual for sea turtles to venture so far from the entrance but a good sign that the lake is healthy and it definitely looked uninjured and in good condition.  I have had  some limited turtle experience so I figure I knew one when I saw one. I’ve snorkelled with them a few times in Queensland waters and on the Great Barrier Reef. I’ve helped my friend Carla feed worms to her hungry turtle hatchlings for WIRES (wildlife rescue).

The one turtle experience however that has stayed with me was a turtle whose name I can’t remember. Dad had found him at the boat shed and he had a hole drilled in the base of his shell. Dad put him in the garden behind the shrubs next to the tap where it was dark and damp and we left lettuce.  The next morning he was gone along with most of the lettuce.  It was near Xmas time and the usual carnival had set up over the road in the park. I always thought that my turtle had run away to the carnival. I hope he had a happy life and his fairy floss was mostly green.

Why not test your cat-love in this quiz on famous artists and their cats, you can even try the dog quiz. I’ll tally the results in this cat vs dog and let you know the outcome. Just to let you know -I don’t see individual results so don’t be ashamed if you secretly turn out to be a cat-lover while flaunting your pup. Good luck and I’ll post the answers next month. If you can’t wait that long let me know.

Click here to have a go:  The Painted Puss

Joan Mitchell

The bombardment of information through internet sources has meant that I hear about more and more artists that I like.  ”Great!”  You might say.  I’m not so sure.  My current reading material is an essay by Elaine De Kooning on the artist Earl Kerkham and I had earlier read an article on American abstractionist Joan Mitchell.  I really didn’t know about these artists and rather than just a name printed in black and white, I wanted to see their works, give them time and recognition.

I was really enamoured with Joan Mitchells work and was surprised that I had not discovered her work earlier. I don’t know if it was a case of seeing and forgetting or never looking.  How many others have escaped me?

Earl Kerkham Head 1962

The trouble is there are so many artists out there past and present and the more time spent looking means less time spent doing.  I admire artists who are single-minded and focus on one or maybe two artists and can develop their own work as a result. I thought I could do that and if I really had to choose, I could only narrow it to three – De Kooning, Giacometti and Antony Gormley.

But what happens to all the others I discard to focus on the big 3?  Do I chuck them all into the second drawer that is my head and rummage through it when I’m working on a painting or series? That scares me, I know what that drawer is like and there is always a fabulous instrument that lurks at the bottom, sharp and edgy and when you go in to retrieve it you could possibly be hurt or come out with something you really can’t use.

My Lake series is bubbling and I am looking at artists that I think might be relevant to what I need  - Puccini, Arthur Boyd, Rembrandt and Elisabeth Cummings are in the pot. And if I could give them a stir with the tool at the bottom of the drawer it would be Rauschenberg.

Weeds from the Lake

Sometimes a day is never what you plan.  I wasn’t feeling particularly creative today but after a vigorous bout of gardening and junk throwing-outing I went into the “studio”.  I jotted down a couple of ideas for the lake series that had drifted to the front of the brain. Drew a few thumbnail sketches to see whether a bull in a boat was feasible.

There was no more room in that sketchbook, another one had bitten the dust so I grabbed the next empty. It was a small black moleskin that I had started a collage on the cover. I was using body bits out of an anatomy text-book. I love doing this, simple cut and pasting. I lost focus pretty quick and went from collaging body bits to checking emails.

There was a great podcast on the future of museums so I went outside once more and sat in the sun and listened, watching the counter going down and down. From there I found a link to another creative blogger who had a Vimeo treat for me so off I went watching a selection of  Vimeos, looking at more counters counting down minutes and seconds.

Miniature Melbourne from Nathan Kaso on Vimeo.

I felt I had a counter on my weekend. I tried to remember how it had started but I couldn’t grasp that slide bar to take me back.

Car parks. When I go grocery shopping I see shapes and colours. Concrete wet or dry can transform into wonderful shades of grey. Angles and extensions and roof-top vents make interesting subjects against rectangular skies.

The book is a wonderful collection of essays by Elaine De Kooning that gives an insight into the work of artists such as Franz Kline, Hoffman, Rothko, Albers and many more. Some of the essays go into interesting details first-hand of technique and materials and written by herself as an abstract artist so I am finding this book has a unique perspective.

A bit like my view of car parks.

“Drawing is a very important way of thinking without words”

It’s turning colder and there is nothing like autumn sun streaming through the window to warm the bones and that means my life model stays still for longer.  At times she lays on her back, stretched out and her belly turns a soft pink.

Every now and then during a drawing session she will fall into a deep sleep and I can see her twitch in her dreams.  It’s when this happens that I know I can grab my little orange book especially for these moments. I use my favourite Lyra colour-giant brown pencil.  There are other times I draw her and use pens or whatever is handy but I like this little ritual.

I also like that the end of the pencil is a little chewed from leaving it behind.

Anish Kapoor Memory

Multiple exhibitions in one venue can sometimes be a mixed bag of lollies.  There’s usually the big musk stick that pops out the top of the bag and draws you in and then there are the ones  at the bottom, the three for 5 cent  jubey things.  My trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney was like that.

Anish Kapoor proved musk stick-like to be as good as it looked. Something sweet and distinct at every bite, leaving a unique taste in your mouth.  The promise of more sweets inside was the huge mirror dish reflecting Sydney Harbour on a perfectly blue hundreds-and-thousands sparkly day.  Having been impressed by his work for a long time I was hoping for the best and I got better. As usual looking at the works on line, in books, on DVDs doesn’t cut the musk stick.

At the same time the other exhibition South of No North jubes proved to be strawberries and cream. Delicious with no fan-fare, three for one. The exhibition was based on works by Noel McKenna, Wiliam Eggleston and Laurence Aberhart. Noel McKenna’s work has always made me smile. From his doggie poster series to big things. This was a wonderful exhibition and although it is hard to compare the  monumental work of Anish Kapoor, there was a similarity in the complete paring down of subject and the strength in simplicity. I especially loved these small tiles of simply drawn ordinary objects and one of the best known useful products ever deserving to be lauded in glazed ceramic : liquid nails.  It was also wonderful to see his influences in Aberhart and Eggleston.

So my little bag of MCA mixed lollies proved to be quite sweet . It wasn’t too sickly and way too tempting to refuse.

If you hadn’t tried this before, click here for my Doggie Quiz inspired by Noel McKenna.

How Much is that Doggie

I can’t believe the Lifeline Big Book Fair has rolled around again so soon and today is half price Sunday. I expected the visual arts section to be dessimated by the last two days of hungry art students but the pickings were great and I chowed down on a Guggenheim publication, an old botanical art book too big for the shelf as well as some lovely old 50′s mags.

Of course I ended up leaving …heaving the same two bags I had arrived with, more fresh old books. The smell of musty books and scouts cooking sausage sangers makes this Sunday in March delightful.