colour reverie...

In the last month or two time for painting has been slim due to competing factors. Rather than not paint at all I took all pressure away from the valuable time I did find for paint ...  suspending need for outcomes  instead I was led purely by feeling my way through some nebulous interior space. 

Ever sensitive to the pull of the inner it was such a delicious breathing out after last year's haste and deadlines. This way of painting I am much more at home with... even though it's not a good match for the contemporary notion of "getting on with it". Too many exterior demands and motivations kill painting for me ... I really do prefer to give the ideas time to surface... and I need to work repetatively with impulses to make them part of my vocabulary or language... a way has to be found into the rhythm that works ... quite simply.

What I present here then is some of the contents from this most uncontructed time ... essential reveries in certain colour realms.

 close-up section

painting on a humble canvas board 25 x 25 cm

the next are a series on 20 x 20 cm canvas boards... 

These are also on canvas boards below - 20 x 20 cm. They were started however about a year ago when I sat and painted stripes on these boards as a kind of meditation... they were simply colour exercises on the one hand...in another way they were wordless colour poems. I often work with colour in this way... putting down colour stories that I need to inhabit ... like being in a certain kind of room for a while!

These striped boards I pulled out the other night very late and proceeded to add the layers of oval forms ...like capsules with the spaces in which to glimpse what exists beyond.

Here I've returned to another preoccupation ... painting with a syringe which of course, if you've tried it, is absolutely frantic... the paint tends to come out so quickly and haphazardly that it's an effort indeed to control the flow of paint... Its taking me rather a long time to even work out what I think of this technique... what I might do with it.

close-up of work with 2 layers of line work. Try clicking to see more closely the effect.

I became rather engaged in the colours of this work ... a different direction to what I generally work with.

untitled  60 x 60 cm  acrylic and ink on linen

Below are two works in a similar vein ... meditating on seeds ...

breaking the surface up with this horizontil line ... an impulse

that is purely intinctive.

Untitled  40x 40 cm acrylic and ink on paper on canvas

Untitled, 60 x 60 cm - pigmented ink and acrylic on linen

The last one a canvas 120 cm x 40 cm ... pure whimsy... unfinished ... unresolved ...awkward ... the colours speaking to my uncomprehending mind asking for attention. Really... it was enough just to put down what I had and walk away... leave it for later when maybe it will speak to me. Its definitely still in its gawky adolescent stage!

The camera works ... the downloading mechanism is quite mystifying though... Ive not figured it out properly at all. Not to worry ... Im just glad that I got this far ... loaded up some work. Yeah! Its late... gotta go! Before I do... talking about colour. I have workshops coming up soon which I have written about at the other blogs and put on the sidebar to link you to the details if you'd like to know more.

Visit the homage blog here to read about it!

Ciao,

Enjoy the weekend you all! Its a long weekend here. Driving up the mountain Sunday... with my camera!

a place to inspire a dreamy or musing state...

finding 

these orange thongs 

left sitting on the stairs 

into the pool at 

Bronte Beach 

on Monday

somehow seemed

to signify 

one was entering 

a sacred space... 

leaving ones shoes 

at the doorway

as a mark of respect

perhaps years ago

I became attached

to this place 
when visiting sydney

for many
a reason -

living in melbourne 

from '88 to '00

on return from

london was not

a difficult adjustment 

considering climate 

and geography -
but one thing 
missed living 
so far south after 
growing up 
in the sub-tropics
was this sensuality 
of summer swimming and 
abundant shades of aqua,
blues, greens,
 greys and blacks
that the water 
would shift in and out of
as the days became nights 
became days
 and the 
weather cast its vote.

hours of reverie 

and lazy times 

given to the 

company of friends, 

books and  

saturation for the senses.

...drawing the water, 

noticing the 

movement of light and 

seeing more,

over time,

more and more,

over years, 

learning to 'see'

the microcosmos 

and macrocosmos.

leaving the teaming 

city behind for the 

most private of 

dreaming 

spaces

and yet

not

held 

in 

awe...

a 

pool

so

quietening

and yet 

in a place

so part 

of the fabric

of a 

larger

world 

to be stilled 

by a place

so urban,

so visited,

so loved...

so shared.

a quiet mystery

that one could be 

so absorbed, 

so deeply enchanted.

That one's

private

world could be

richly fed

when 

so surrounded 

by a multiplicity of 

others

and their dreamings

and musings and laughter 

and sorrows.