drawgasmic show and book

The team from the Drawgasmic show sent some photos through of the show and the book. It looked like an amazing event (too bad I couldn't pop over to St Louis, Missouri to take a closer look).

My work and the book are still for sale for a little while longer.

Lots more photos of the show on my portfolio site...
...Where Mr You and I have been making some small improvements this week.

big city art

I pretty much spent my whole time in Sydney visiting friends and seeing art. It was a busy but fulfilling schedule :)

In the town where I live there are lots of people that do art, but there are very few places for them to show it. So this time I hit the galleries and soaked in as much as I could...

Starting with a yummy brekkie at The Yellow House in Potts Point for sustenance:




Next door to the amazing Martin Browne Fine Art Gallery, with it's open roof and lilly pond, showing beautiful paintings of trees in eerie light and odd dreamy settings by Alexander McKenzie:




Onto the Art Gallery NSW, where there are two installations outside at the moment. Both fantastic and quite amusing:






Inside to revel in an exhibition I absolutely adored! Garden and Cosmos, Paintings from the royal courts of Jodhpur that flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries:



I loved it so much I wish I could go back RIGHT NOW!!!! Let me tell you why... Quirky concepts, bright colours, very fine detailed patterns, in cheerful compositions. This is work from 1739 and it's bright and pops, no murky brown dark candlelit scenes to be seen. I find it so validating to see art that is similar to this current illustration style we find ourselves immersed in, that is culturally and historically significant. Stuff that is considered art, and not pushed into an underground scene.




Still in the AGNSW, this time in the Dobell Prize for Drawing:




Another day, another gallery. The MCA:



"What's this" I hear you ask... Why it's my feet, swimming in corn of course.
A room of the gallery filled with corn where you were invited to remove your shoes, and walk through to look at photographs by Fiona Foley. The sensation was too great to miss, so I too off my shoes and swam on in.




And finally a bit of art in nature. I sat under the shade of this tree, people watching and admiring it's amazing bark:




So much art, so refilled with inspiration... and I haven't even started telling you about the Finders Keepers Markets yet!!!!!!

it's working

The International Art Exchange I mentioned last week seems to be working!

In the past few days I have received another 3 parcels of lovely art.


From Helena Tay of Little Mo and Friends:



Helena is from Western Australia, and has sent me a print of one of her sweet homely gals. Mine is cookin' up a recipe of love! Thanks Helena, your work is so sweet, so detailed, and has such personality!

100 good swap karma points for you!



From Patricia Frisella of www.patriciafrisella.com/:



Patricia is from New Hamshire (US), and has constructed a lush romance-filled collage for me. Deep rich colours coupled with pops of detailed pattern, and 3D elements like a feathered horse tail. I think the poem may be one of hers too, but I'm not sure.

I love the line in the poem "She'll loose her hair and corset and bounding over hedgerows gallop to the glade..."

Thanks so much Patricia it's beautiful, 100 good swap karma points for you also!



From Pat Spiller of Pat Studio:



All the way from Maine (US), Pat has sent me 3 of her gorgeous cards. Based on her textile art, these cards look so real, you have to touch the fronts to grasp that they are prints. I can't look away because my brain keeps insisting I should be feeling texture. Either way they are incredibly alluring!

Thank-you so much Pat, I love them. 100 good swap karma points for you too!



Not only that, I actually received a really lovely thank-you email from my Art Exchange recipient, Alisa of Ink Caravan.

Good karma points flying all over the place this week people.
Grab one if you can.
They are worth their weight in gold!
******

free art!

That got your attention. ;)

Have you heard of the Feed Your Soul project yet? Jen from Indie Fixx started up the Feed Your Soul art project earlier in the year, inviting artists to create works to give away. It's her way of keeping art flowing into peoples homes throughout the GFC. Clever, isn't she?

Each month a new bunch of works are offered as free PDFs for you to download, print off, and hang in your home. I've been collecting my favourites over the past few months, and am excited to know there's still more to come.

Here are an example of some (but not all) of the lovely works on offer so far:


(Featuring: Abigail Halpin, Mandy Sutcliffe, Lindsey Carr, Belinda Hemp, Marcy Davy, and Gemma Correll).

My contribution, along with a short interview, went up this week too.



I couldn't really show all the works on offer here, so you'll just have to go choose your favourites on your own. Go on. Feed Your Soul...
What are you waiting for? It's art, and it's free!!!! Scooot.

sea serpent

After the big storms and floods a few weeks back, we discovered the most amazing thing washed up at the end of the beach.



It was a long, thick, twist of twigs... like a giant sea serpent washed up onto the rocks.



So long it would have covered the length of one and a half tennis courts, and stretched straight it surely would have been longer.



Winding and weaving its way between the rocks, left resting heavy where it lay.



It must have been formed by the constant rolling motion of the waves against the shore. Unable to escape. A dense felted twine of dried sea forestry, dislodged from deep below the sea surface.



One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

We felt as though we stumbled upon one of Andy Goldsworthy's artworks, honoured and amazed (who doesn't love his work). Only even more so because it was a completely natural formation, proving again that nature is Queen!


For anyone unfamiliar with Andy Goldsworthy's work....

the incredible print show

While in Sydney I was super eager to go see the Curvey Exhibition (and see my works hanging with such amazing others). Unfortunately for me, when I went to the gallery it was closed, it said it should have been open, and there was a sign outside saying it should have been, but it wasn't. So I missed out.

Oh well, never mind. I did go to the Art Gallery and restock my greeting cards! :D

In the meantime, this week The Incredible Print Show has opened at artstream studios in N.H. Susan from artstream has done it again, this time pulling together the most amazing, comprehensive, and ginormous collection of affordable art in the form of anything "printed".

There are some big names in this one too, Anke Weckmann, Penelope Dullaghan, Ashley G, Lisa Solomon, Kristen Doran...

These chubby little bluejays are my contribution.



- - -




You can take a virtual tour of all the works available here:The Incredible Print Show! Thanks Susan. It's such a pleasure to be part of something so great.

tiki owl

What do you get when you start with a block of hebel stone, a box of tools, and a weekend ahead?

When you add some physical exertion, a very necessary dust mask, and some helpful instruction from an expert?

Then finish with a bit of sand paper and a splash of oxide?

Well, for one you need a really good scrub in the shower...

But you've also got yourself a chubby little tiki style owl! :D

Mr You made an awesome stylised cat face, but I don't think he'll let me show it (he's a bit hard on himself).

Anyway, we had a great weekend at the sculpture workshop. We keep talking about all the things you could do if you had more time. I think we'd definitely both love to try it again. But, all in all not bad for our first attempt.

clear the air

Now, after that hostile rant, I need something to clear the air of all the bad vibes, and make this space a nice place to be again.

Something lovely, creative, unique, colourful, cheerful, and inspiring...

This should do the trick!


"Bloom" By Sam Spencer (via Appartment Therapy)

Gorgeous! I WANT one :D

Yay, happy happy joy joy.

renee's picture

Now that Christmas has passed I can start showing you the commissions I was working on during the last few months of last year.

The first was a commission for the lovely Renee in Canada. She wanted a picture to give to her baby granddaughter Josephine for Christmas, (although if Renee's generosity towards me is anything to go by, I doubt that's all Josephine was given for Christmas, hehehe).

This was a special commission. One that took me ages to know where to begin, one that needed to carry a great deal. But one that I knew needed to be joyous at the same time.

I won't say too much more than that... I'll just show you instead.








The words written on the pages of the books are from this post that Renee wrote about her granddaughter, that to me summed it all up.

I hope Josephine loves it! :)

figbird and mulberries

I've been preparing a couple of new works to go in a gallery nearby. I'm really excited about it as this is a completely new gallery for me. I don't really know how my work will go there, but I'm putting in 4 completely different works as a bit of a litmus test.

This new painting is part of my hidden birds series. Although I've strayed from the native plants here, I'm still documenting new discoveries from within my yard; in this case mulberries and the figbirds that eat them.

When I dropped it in to be framed today the lady asked me what the title was. I'm not sure yet, so I told her "Mulberry". She thought the girl is too pretty to be called Mulberry, so now I'm trying to think what I should title it. Any ideas?

I usually work from a title backwards, but this one was the other way around, so I'm a bit stuck. I kind of like succinct titles with a positive slant, eg. my others were called things like "Aspire", "Curiosity", "Honour" etc. What do you think?

red

So close to the end of BLOGTOBERFEST now... so close, I'm really really running out of things to say, but being the stubborn one I am, I can't let myself skip a day so close to the end, I just can't.

So how about a picture? Will that do? Hope so...


"Don’t forget there are flowers blossoming beneath you"

final week

Not only are we into the final week of Blogtoberfest, but there's also only one week left of my exhibition at artstream too.

The exhibition is called Affirmations, and if you haven't already had a peep, you should go have a looksee over here. It was a really lovely coincidence that Penelope, Amy, Sian and myself all seemed to turn to nature as our way of expressing what we see as the positive elements in our world. I know for me I find it both grounding, and uplifting all at the same time.

My works were all based on elements from my new neighbourhood (in fact most of them are in my garden), that are all so new and amazing to me. Both birds and plants, and the idea that it's all closer to us, more a part of us than what we'd probably give it credit for. For this body of work rather than creating something new, it was about excavating what was already around me. Making a practice of seeing.

So if you're looking for a special handmade gift for someone, perhaps a joyful piece of art would hit the spot... wink wink (sorry, it's the last week, I have to get a plug in there somewhere) ;D

The work above is titled "All the blessings are present in my thoughts today", which follows on nicely from how I ended my post yesterday. And indeed they are.

affirmations, virtual exhibition opening

Hi :D
You made it, it's so nice to see you.
Did you find your way here okay?... Great!
Well, thanks so much for coming along. :)

Please help yourself to a drink...



Would you care for a champagne? Or we have mineral water with lime down the end there...
Help yourself to some yummy snacks too, go on, you know you want to. ;)

Well, welcome to "Affirmations", the new show here.



There are four artists featured in this exhibition:
- Amy Rice makes these beautiful vibrant stencil artworks, often directly onto found objects, making each work unique.
- flossy-p is from Australia, and has sent a range of watercolour paintings inspired by her local environment.
- Penelope Dullaghan needs very little introduction as a well loved, award winning illustration artist. Her works for the show combine figurative works with text based affirmation works.
and...
- Sian Keegan fills the centre of the gallery with her stunning soft sculpture works of animals made from unique and vintage fabrics.

As you can see all these ladies have utilized various forms of nature when interpreting their ideas of what affirmations are for them, and where they find their positivity. As far as I know this was not an organised plan between them, which I think says alot in itself. And don't you think it brings a gorgeous unity to the show as a whole?

Well, I'll let you be the judge.
Please go and have a gander, take your time...

Have a look at all the work that make up the show here:
- Slideshow or
- Images on Flickr

And remember it is all for sale online here:
- Online Shop
(My works range from $25 to $200)

Call out if you have any questions, and by all means come back and tell me what you thought of it once you've had a good look. Enjoy the show! :D

* Credit to artstream for photos of their gallery above

i invite you

All the work I've been showing in my sneak-peeks over the past few months are being hung as we speak, alongside works by Penelope Dullaghan, Amy Rice and Sian Keegan, for the Affirmations exhibition at artstream.

The exhibition opening is on tonight at 5pm to coincide with the art stroll in Rochester. So if you're in the area; North Main St, Rochester, New Hampshire, go along!

For those, like me, who are nowhere near the action, I'll be hosting a wee virtual opening of my own here tomorrow during the day. Join me if you like. Bring your spectacles and your best art critique banter. Of course there'll be nibbles and wine.

See you then :)

flannel flowers in progress

This is: a work in progress.



This is my final painting (in various stages of progress) for the body of work I'll be sending to the exhibition at artstream gallery for September/October. I hope to finish painting this one by tonight. Next week is my final stretch before I ship all these works off to the grand old U.S. of A on Friday.

In the next few days I'll be documenting and mounting all of them, before wrapping them up with as many meters of bubble wrap that I can get my hands on, and packing them inside a giant flat screen TV box I picked up (sans giant TV) at a local electrical store... nice and sturdy. Then I'll be holding my breath and keeping my eyes shut tight until it all arrives safely in Rochester.

It's been a very busy couple of months working on this collection of paintings - the whole process has been a work in progress in itself. If I get all the fabric pieces finished next week, I will be sending 19 to 20 works in total. The best part has been feeling like a "real artist" drawing and painting every day, and working at a pace where I can't over-think things. Just go. Just do. It's been fun watching how one work leads to something new in the next. The most challenging part has just been the endurance it's taken. Knowing if I was going to get it all done I couldn't stop. Finishing one piece and having to start on the next one right away, without inbetween down-time. That was hard, especially in this last week.

But right now I'm on the home stretch and I'm so excited! I can't wait for the show to open! (I'm almost tempted to book a last minute flight to America just so I can be there!)

The show opens on the 5th September, but I'll mention it again when the time arrives, and I'll show the "sneak-peeks" in their entirety too. eeeeeeeep. I'm. So. Excited.


Thanks to Debbie from Kept in a Jar, for this week's topic.

molly's commission

A little while ago Molly contacted me with the request of an illustration, a gift to her friend, a friend so dear they know each other as sisters. The illustration was to mark the event of Kelly's first pregnancy, and was to be given as a gift from Molly at the baby shower.

I'm learning that when you're asked to do a commission it's always significant. It's never just "paint how we spend Sundays", it always seems to entail capturing the entire character of a person and the relationships surrounding them. When I'm first asked to do a commission it's fair to say I feel daunted by the task, but then incredibly honoured that someone I barely know has entrusted me with such faith. Upon reflection, I love it.

This, again, was one of those times.

I became privy to wedding photographs, blog posts, favourite flowers and colours, family trees and histories, pets, and tales of the strongest friendship I've ever encountered... plus the emotions of expecting your first child. I guess my part is to re-tell that story, in a form that can be hung on a wall, immediately identified and read by others. In a way that can both capture time and evolve to mean news things as time passes.

Of course I love getting feedback, especially when I can't be there to judge the response in person. Molly wrote me an email, but also the most beautiful post about what she can see in the painting (she has a magical way with words), plus photo's of how she had it framed. Then Kelly herself wrote a comment for Molly:

"...I cannot thank you enough for this beautiful gift. And I'll probably cry everytime I look at it. I can't wait to show Baby the painting and explain every intricate detail to him. Show him what family is and how much he is loved and wanted."

...a perfect example of how a mother keeps nothing for herself, she shares and gives everything, as her whole being becomes all about what she can give to her child. And unexpectedly the painting took on another meaning again.

Now my part of the relationship has ended, the painting is no longer mine... it has found it's fate, and becomes another ribbon of bonding between those within it.


Thank-you Molly. I'm so glad both you and Kelly liked it. Wishing you the very best for the arrival of baby boy.
It's been an honour.

nasty business

I was half way through my fine art course at university when a new government was elected in, the arts funding was cut and quite literally over a month we lost enormous amounts of staff and resources (while still paying the same fees). We were left with not much more than our own devises to make art. And although artists are excellent at adapting, we were left unsupported and somewhat quashed.

When I heard about Orphan Works legislation that is before US Congress, it really caught my attention, and in a flash I was signing a petition to oppose it. Up till now even if everything else has been taken from our grasp, the one thing we do still have is our art.
In a nutshell, as an artist you currently own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. But the Orphan work legislation means that you will have to register and pay fees for every work you create with a registry to keep your rights to it. It’s apparently being considered in the US and Europe.

So if you’re interested you can read more here or here, and sign the petition here.

Honestly, who comes up with this stuff?

It makes me wonder, as gallery fees and access to funding has become unreasonably expensive and difficult, more and more art has taken to the streets. Made in back alleys and on public walls, under the cover of darkness with hidden identities, street art has surged ahead. So much so that works by Banksy (for example) are now auctioned at Christies and owned by the Angelina Jollies of the world.

It shows me that you can’t kill art, art making is an essential part of humanity, but it makes me wonder what would happen if it was supported.


Meanwhile last weekend 1000 of Australia's "best and brightest brains" were invited to gather for the 2020 Summit. Basically a huge democratic workshop for the new government to listen to the ideas of “the people” for their ideal society in the year 2020. The people invited represented different streams of society.

Most of it was telecast, and I watched with bated breath as Cate Blanchett addressed the arts group during the introduction. Here are some of my favourite parts of her speech:

… not as an adjunct to, but as a fundamental aspect of society. Now we’re not wrong in claiming this fundamentality, what the human race does is create, and what makes our species unique is its ingenuity…

...They cause trouble without doing damage. They fix broken things where glue just won’t do. They spring from the very thing that binds us, and they goad us on to being so much more than we ever thought.

Now there’s this ridiculous notion out there, and has been there for a long time, that you’re either a science person or an arts person, and I hope that this summit refuses to countenance such inane and counterproductive social divisions… Science and art are siblings. Science and art are different outcomes of the same primal urge in us all to engage with, to detail, and to affect narratives and patterns.

Now a few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting President Clinton… he liked talking to artists… he said because they existed just a fraction ahead of culture… he said he always read the latest airport novels, spy thrillers, unpublished manuscripts, unpublished screenplays because writers were often right on the money where the technology and ideology, a lethal combination, were heading. He listened assiduously to music coming up from the streets, because he knew that those people knew their audience’s needs and wants.

…We’re here today to think beyond our current practices, and beyond our current needs. We’re here to imagine the best possible society in 2020, and then reverse engineer our way back from there to some broad sustainable policy recommendations that can help those visions be realized. Now I believe much can simply be done by imagining the arts where they rightly belong, at the very heart of our society... we will all believe something today, we will all want something out of today, but it’s important to remember the bigger picture, the future…

Her full speech is well worth watching (it’s only 6 mins). It’s a feel-good one.

latest discovery

This is: "my latest discovery"

Each week I discover new artists that make me weep, both with the beauty of their art, and also with envy and feelings of my own inadequacy that comes with it. Every now and then I'll discover one that blows me away! My latest of these discoveries is Bailey Saliwanchik from NY.

I ADORE all of her work. All of it! I wish I was her.

rosa

It may seem, from the lack of illustrations on this blog for the past few weeks, that I haven't been doing any. In fact that's pretty much all I've been doing. I have been working on a new commission (will show you that after it has arrived to it's new owner). This week marked the end of some courses I've been taking; a portrait class, and also going on with my life drawing classes... Getting back to the fundamentals. It's good practice, and no matter how much of it I do, it's always challenging.

I find when I focus on classic drawing skills, my work naturally sways that way for a while.

Some of you may recall when I started this painting. Every now and then I get a big urge to paint a canvas. I started this, and then before it was completed I signed up to enter it into a local art show. The show opens tonight, and I only just finished the painting in time. (Those hands had me beat!). I entered it into the show in a hope that someone would buy it (because I don't have enough space to start keeping canvases like this).

It's called Rosa. I named it that because the inspiration for the painting was Picasso's rose period works. (PLEASE don't even try to compare them). I love the way he uses black outline on his figures (something you're often told NOT to do), and the bold background colours. Sadly, no matter how often I try I always overwork my paintings and lose that beautiful rough, simplified quality he has in his figures and paint application. I need to practice deconstructing the figure a bit more... and setting a time limit of the work so that I speed up the process and keep a roughness to it.

So while it's clear that I'm certainly no Picasso, it's been a good exercise. I look forward to the day when one of my paintings comes out the way I'd intended it to in the beginning... though I've got a fair way to go yet.

most beautiful

Last year I talked about my favourite piece in the Archibald Prize (national portrait prize); a painting by Del Kathryn Barton. I spoke about how thrilled I was to see her work in the exhibition, and how I'd always considered her work to be more along the lines of illustration. This lead me to talk about my thoughts on the definitions between illustration and high "art", and to look further into this phenomenon we seem to be witnessing at the moment (especially in America it seems) where illustration is forming a whole art movement of it's own.

I keep trying to talk to people about this, telling them about this exciting surge that's occurring, but I'm not sure the people I talk to really understand. People seem to define illustration as strictly what you find in children's books... Come to think of it, maybe I need to try and define exactly what I think illustration is, because it obviously differs from many people's idea. What do you think?

Anyway, I was thrilled today when the winner of this years Archibald Prize was announced. She won! Del Kathryn Barton won the Archibald Prize. Here's a link to her winning work (make sure you click to see it a bit bigger).

This time next week I'll be in Sydney, and I'll definitely be going to get a closer look. I'll try and get some photo's, if I'm able, because the line detail in her works are gorgeous. Plus the work is BIG, and I want to see it in all it's glory! I can't wait.