Old Black and Blue Signs

Black Blue Sign

Lately life has got in the way of my blogs.  Then a little orange cup at the top of my dashboard told me it was my anniversary.  I thought I had the blog for a few years but when I took a closer look it has been four.  So, this is a blog of reflection in a way.

I started the blog as I had been contacted by someone wanting to buy one of my works.  I had asked my talented artsy daughter to create a website for me, instead she said “You don’t want a website, you need a blog”.  She knew I was a writer, my sketchbooks have scrawled notes just as much as scrawled drawings.  My aim was just to have an online record of my paintings and drawings.  It evolved into writing, quizzes, exhibition reviews and more so, a connection to the world through my passion for art.

Anyway, looking back at the very first blog, it was no writing, just a work “Black Blue Sign”.  As an anniversary present I am going to smick up that first tentative blog and beef it up with some words.

The swapped work

This work was part of my Garage Sale series.  It came at a time when I was sorting out what I wanted from paint.  I was still using collage like material and testing out mixing paint.  I had copper shavings I was using for sculptural works and mixed these into the black within the work.  It was hung in an exhibition with other works from the series.  Somebody remarked at the opening they could see Jesus in the top left corner. Someone else had bought it and then swapped it for another painting not in the exhibition.  I then sent it to a gallery and it was sold from there.  I don’t know where it lives now and often wonder if the copper within the paint has altered the colour.

If you are out there and it is hanging on your wall, thanks for liking it enough to take it home and let me know if the black is now a coppery green.

 

 

My Turtle Ran Away to the Carnival

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.

Don’t Stand in Front of the Painting

MOMA Stranger and Duchamp

I have seemingly collected some great photos trying to take snapshots of art works. Just as I press someone looms into the shot. At the time I usually just take another, I’m certainly not an avid photographer, it’s more for research on the painting that I was looking at. What I have found though is I really love these photos of strangers.

 

 

 

MCA Louise Hearman and Harry Who

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biennale Sydney and Betty Bob-up

Guggenheim & Whosit Face

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More recently I’ve been trying to take the strangers on purpose. If you happen to read this and you are my stranger – thanks you’ve made my day.

MOMA Picasso and nancy no name

The Ping-Pong Table

I’m still rolling up paintings, tearing paper and burning stuff.  As I go I am photographing the stuff I have had to say goodbye to once and for all.

This one was hard. Not a great work by any means but one of those that I remember every mark, every mix. It was based on my old studio.  I had a large ping-pong table in the centre of the space – it was great to store bits and pieces, cut paper, mount works, paint flat.

The table was a conglomeration of collectables. Pieces of paper, bones, paint but it was where I was happy for a long time. I had hung on to this work for that reason. It was a series of 6 large boards -each 1 m x .700 so difficult to dispose of too.

One board had 3 ping-pong bats glued to it and on top of the bats, cassette tape boxes and inside the boxes, pieces of paint palette and on the paint palette, fish bones.

It was produced at a time where I was in transition, I wanted to paint but loved the exploration of materials and this work was about that.  Perhaps I was sensing the time to leave that ping-pong table behind.

I often dried fish bones after eating fish and my clothesline would have smelly fish carcasses hanging precariously from time to time. I liked to do this when I had caught the fish myself. I sometimes lost my “washing” to kookaburras.

There is something very primal about fish bones. Their role in this work also related back to my youth at the boatshed. The actual fish bones glued within the work had long since gone – to delicate sustain countless moves.

I don’t know if I could have discarded the work at all if they had still been adhered to the work.  Either way it has now gone and it definitely looks better in hindsight.

Going Going Gone…

I’ve been weighed down by paintings. They have been in no man’s land.

In the darkness in storage, maybe a few night scurrying visitors.But I was determined to rid myself of them so over the last month I have been emptying the shed.

After countless trips, rips and tears I can now see the back wall and it’s empty. Well almost….just the few odd boxes of pointless paperwork and paintings too big for the wagon. I’m still unsure of their fate.

Apart from the endless self-pitying  I have had moments of surprise for lost friends and the occasional shame. What was I thinking? I guess artists all go through it.  The trial and error. But in amongst the canvassed oily years I found diaries. Records where I was learning to paint. I was obsessive then as I am now, I guess that’s why I blog. I kept a record of each day at art school and photos of the work produced apart from my sketchbooks I have since got rid of the majority of that work but it was fascinating to read the enthusiasm for new-found techniques and mediums. Maybe the fodder for a new blog if I can wear the embarrassment.

Then after picking the stretchers clean, posting the photos and blogging my blubbering I had the thought that these images of the storage shed, the oranges and rusts of the bricks and deep grey shadows along with the signage would make a great series of paintings. Mmm, wonder what I would do with them after? I can see a vicious circle appearing.

Roadside Studio

Posting a view of Grayson Perry’s studio reminded me of my old studio. This morning I found a small box of drawings, cards and stuff I had pinned up in my temporary studios.  The bits and pieces inside a studio give you an idea of where you’ve been and how you work.This shot was during the work for the Roadside Exhibition.  I had rigged up a door over two trestle tables for a drawing.  On the floor I had discovered the benefits of gadgets so that I had a constant source of music or podcasts.  I can’t work without music.  I have an eclectic taste which includes blues, jazz, punk, classical and even disco. At one stage I remember saying there was only two types of music I disliked, country and western but I really like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson so I guess there’s not much I dislike apart from Mariah Carey and Celine Dion type divas.

I loved this studio for the breeze I would get from the beach down the hill.  It was also the home for possums and lizards. It also backed on to the train tracks and I would love to sit on the step outside and watch the carriages flashing past.

There was also the drive to and from the studio each day, about 15 mins that also influenced how I was working and part of the impetus for this exhibition.

I always have a collection of photos and sketches for works I produce and I love these shots I took leading up to this exhibition. The by-pass was new and the colours of the concrete were inspirational in these works.

Dishwashing, Driving & Existentialism

I used to think that miraculous trains of thought came to me whilst driving but I realised this morning -it is also dishwashing. My good friend Eva did a portrait of me whilst I was thinking in the same way.  I pull a particular sort of face, one I liken to a cats bottom and my mum’s pout when she watched “Days of our Lives”.

Removing purple cabbage leftovers from a spotty red plate made me wonder why we connect differently with works.  Yesterday I was agape at the work of Elisabeth Cummings at the SH Ervin. Three of us stood in reverence before each painting, studying technique, oohing at colour and not wanting to leave.

On the way out I overheard a women say “now Tim Storrier was a good painter.”  I had to restrain myself from inserting two fingers into her nostrils, firmly hooked and dragging her to each work to explain the intricacies, to explain to her the absolute knowledge of paint, to explain to her what appears as just a mark is an act of extraordinary bravery.

The dishwashing today made me realise Tim Storrier is a good painter and so is Elisabeth Cummings, we all have a different sense of connection to painters and often at different times.

The cabbage and my hostility came off and left me with a fresh lemon sparkle of self-awareness. Perhaps you would like to read John McDonald’s take on the Luminous Exhibition, a great review.  I wonder if he has a dishwasher?

A Big Pink Painting & Bare Bones

Sydney is alive with Elisabeth pink.  Luminous Landscapes at the SH Ervin and Monotypes at King St on William.  Her monotypes are the skeletons ,the bare bones  of her work. We get to see her paintings in a state of undress.  As a celebration I have edited this post that I originally wrote a long time ago. It goes like this……..

My first Elisabeth Cummings was a huge pink job.  I walked into an exhibition of works held by the Shoalhaven City Council; the odd local landmarks, a few portraits and then wham! The Wedderburn Bush.  A Cummings completed in the 70’s.  Not only was I drawn by the size and colour, it was the clarity of the bush that I had seen in Fred Williams.  A simplicity that captured the essence- Whiteley called it Quiditass.

Since then I have delved further looking for her influences in the effort to understand what I want– try and follow the path in the hope that the paint comes off and I find her primer- what has driven her to that point.  It turned out to be not a path but a bit of crazy paving.  One artist led to the next –Whisson, Fairweather, Bonnard & Cezanne until I’m back where I started.    Cumming’s Arakoola Landscape at the AGNSW has allowed me to study the technical process in the same way I’ve looked at De Kooning, Olsen and Tony Tuckson at the NGA.  Studying slashes of thick seemingly unpredicted colour over delicately built glazes.  Unexpected marks in response to an observation. I feel that there is an advantage being a regional artist, the limited exposure to these important artists means that I have to work harder at finding my own way through paint.  My influences are my own environment and the subject at hand.  My paintings are the result of intuition and bravery and willingness to accept a loss.  By studying Cumming’s works I will still never know whether that shard of Bonnardish colour was a confident knowledgable action or an instinctive reaction.

In Deeper II

A Big Pink Painting

Sydney is alive with Elisabeth pink.  Luminous Landscapes at the SH Ervin and Monotypes at King St on William.  Her monotypes are the skeletons ,the bare bones  of her work. We get to see her paintings in a state of undress.  As a celebration I have edited this post that I originally wrote a long time ago. It goes like this……..

My first Elisabeth Cummings was a huge pink job.  I walked into an exhibition of works held by the Shoalhaven City Council; the odd local landmarks, a few portraits and then wham! The Wedderburn Bush.  A Cummings completed in the 70’s.  Not only was I drawn by the size and colour, it was the clarity of the bush that I had seen in Fred Williams.  A simplicity that captured the essence- Whiteley called it Quiditass.

Since then I have delved further looking for her influences in the effort to understand what I want– try and follow the path in the hope that the paint comes off and I find her primer- what has driven her to that point.  It turned out to be not a path but a bit of crazy paving.  One artist led to the next –Whisson, Fairweather, Bonnard & Cezanne until I’m back where I started.    Cumming’s Arakoola Landscape at the AGNSW has allowed me to study the technical process in the same way I’ve looked at De Kooning, Olsen and Tony Tuckson at the NGA.  Studying slashes of thick seemingly unpredicted colour over delicately built glazes.  Unexpected marks in response to an observation. I feel that there is an advantage being a regional artist, the limited exposure to these important artists means that I have to work harder at finding my own way through paint.  My influences are my own environment and the subject at hand.  My paintings are the result of intuition and bravery and willingness to accept a loss.  By studying Cumming’s works I will still never know whether that shard of Bonnardish colour was a confident knowledgable action or an instinctive reaction.