an affinity for green

Sharon Horvath is featured today on the excellent two coats of paint blog. I will not expand here on the artist or her work as the above blog does that so well. I will just say it was a great find and I was very pleased to read about this artist and view other works.

On a completely different note: personal studio reflections

Below I have posted a work I painted in my Newcastle studio some 4 - 5 years ago - at the time I was rather careless with the work - even though it is painted on a good hard surface in oil paints 2 corners are a little the worse for wear. The truth is I rather despised the painting till recently when it started to make sense to me. This is not the first time some work I have really been put off by and developed a bit of a loathing for becomes much later a work I see quite differently.

'Untitled'  35 x 45 cm, acrylic on canvas 

Below is a 40 x 40 cm acrylic on canvas work titled 'navigating the complex' which was painted in 2004 around the same time as the one above. Simultaneously I was working on very much freer organic shapes and the elliptical form which evolved over time into a more complex abstracted seedpod form. 

This work below has a curious tendency to appear larger than its 40 x 40 cm size. Paradoxically I worked on this canvas for an extensive period of time - despite its size - adjusting colour and composition till it just arrived at what suddenly felt right. 2 years work exploring similar compositions on a larger scale seemed to come together in this one much smaller canvas and this is where I effectively left off from pursuing this compositional approach in my painting.

'navigating the complex' - acrylic on canvas, 40 40 cm

Ovoid forms were curiously compelling and creeping into my work beyond my will it seemed. 

Below: This is a section of the top painting 'untitled' that demonstrates the merging of the organic ovoid forms with the geometry which had obsessed me since living in the inner-city of Melbourne previous to the year 2000 when i relocated north to Newcastle.

In conclusion, this fluid engagement with different qualities and types of forms seems less unexpected, uncommon or awkward that it once did.. However, going back to the year 2001 onwards it was disconcerting to be drawn to the two opposite ends of the spectrum as I painted. Polarities dominated - chaos and order, fluidity and stasis, organic naturalness and tightness. Perhaps now it appears to not be quite the polar opposites I thought it was.


What has been a constant in all my work, over 3 decades really, are the glimpses of something more going on behind the surface. No matter which way I come at the composition this has been something perrenial that has engaged me and characterised my work to a greater or lesser extent..

blueprint

I found this recently on designboom and it caught my attention immediately...the saturation of the blue with the fine white line detailing certain outlines and shapes and features of the location. The Taiwanese team from ou studio were part of DMY berlin design festival 09 and these images are of their installation called 'blueprint'. Read more here also. ou studio's website  contains some very fascinating projects - navigating it is tricky but rewarding. They concern themselves with spatial installation, furniture, interior, architecture, landscape and community development.
There's something so dynamic and forward thinking amongst increasing numbers of such studio enterprises globally that it enlivens the whole agenda of how things can be. This blurring of boundaries and collaborative push allows for optimum creativity and the realisation of projects in exciting new ways. There is something very potent in the idea of a blueprint - the fact something has been conceived to the stage of being put on paper and yet there is further to go and the thing is still in formation.

from letters of note

your girl frida - read about it here.

IHEARTU - read more here.

It's with regret, Mr Warhol...  read here.

Shaun Usher started the fascinating blog Letters of Note some months back and it is definitely worth a look if you are drawn to this kind of material. The correspondence covers a broad range of fields. I've chosen 3 from the Art category here - a close inspection of the bottom letter will amuse anyone who  has experienced the knock-backs that are part of the artist's vocation. Dont think Andy let this one hold him back too much!

when an artist's studio is in her house...

A wave of nostalgia last night after showing friends photos from my previous home I sold and left in April last year prompted me to post them here now. My studio was in the centre of my home just off the living room, with a view through to the outdoor living space which was much used as it had good rain-proof roofing over it. My whole home was my studio really - classes also took place in the living room, studio or outdoors depending on what was happening at the time. Dinners and gatherings were very fluid and common. There was barely a thing growing in te garden when I arrived...a lilly pilly tree and some palms. I planted front and back and in the 5 years I was there it grew to look quite prolific and lived in.

The house had been built as residence for the adjoining school room...Newcastle's first Girl's Finishing School my 93 yr old Neighbour told me. He recounted endless fascinating tales through the century that his family had owned the house opposite.

I adored painting all the rooms in the house over time in different palettes according to mood. The kitchen took ages for me to decide... And it was a good choice for a kitchen I came to feel...I used to love cooking there. The living room area had a palette of greys although I left the section under the dado rail white, then painted a livable warm grey in the mid section, then finished the top with a blend or stormy greys that changed as one's eyed moved around the room. I also wrote the first stanza of the most wondeful poem by Pablo Neruda 'poesia' just above the picture rail...why I did not photograph this i dont know... perjhaps clicking on the photo with the table might reveal this writing. 

When i think back to the studio productivity of this time i am amazed. I was working as a casual teacher...so there was a lot of variation in available time for the studio - mind you - I was burning the candle at both ends (cant do that any more - it took its toll!). Still, its pleasing to look back and remember the cohesiveness of the life I had in this home and studio...it was very much an inside/outside lifestyle and the garden was ever-present!

always there's the process...

This quote I found scrawled in a journal the other night... having rewritten the name Macleod due to the lesson learnt that sometime later you may actually want to drag out a quote and it helps to be able to decipher it! I found the Guston quote poignant, as obviously did Euan Macleod , a NZ born artist based in Australia who's work I'm very drawn to.

Figure Sitting on Boat in Desert - Euan Macleod

2007 oil on poly-canvas 150 x 180 cm

The words "I leave too and the painting starts" resonate strongly. I'm reminded of what it takes to realise the approach to creating that works for us. The process may involve long hours and endless musing even if sometimes a work suddenly flows quite easily and is resolved with out considerable perspiration. Becoming receptive to the distinctive thinking and working processes of numerous artists has only added to coming to terms my own particularities of working. How many hours can be consumed invalidating a process that is true for us I wonder.

Getting out of our own way long enough to allow something to come through is of primary importance...I think Guston says that very well!

These 2 images above I noticed on the blog Four Seasons in a Life  just after starting on this post tonight. The post titled 'When is a work in progress finished?' somehow fitted with thoughts the Guston quote had prompted. If you visit this thoughful blog of artist Egmont Van Dyck he writes eloquently on his process of working on the material photographed above.

I must thank Egmont for his generous comments and acknowledgment in featuring my blog as his weblink of the month. When I recently came across 4 seasons I found I was drawn into a difference sense of time and space.

All established blogs have their defining character and mood - this one took me a little by surprise - a certain density and care-full-ness that caused me to slow down and consider.  Carefulness does not always wear positive connotations. However, in the way that often happens, we notice things that stand in stark contrast to certain of our own tendencies and processes. Egmont gives the word care full ness new meaning...reflected in his art, his writing, even his blog layout. What did not err to my thinking was the soulfulness - to read this blog and and his other one - The Artist Within Us  is to be quietly nudged to notice things, to encounter life more fully. Perhaps this is not something that will speak to all who visit, but evidently for a blog that's quite new, there is a sound audience who are noticing.

when one things leads to another...

The other day my mother came across some early drawings I had done when I was about 12 and not yet in high school...wait till you see the one I'm talking about...you will definitely need sunglasses I'm warning you! I decided to scan them...and whilst at it found a few more bits and pieces that were reminders of time past....so I scanned them too. Then I wrote this hello -and scanned it - to post for  Rohan, one of those amazing people in my life that I've been lucky to know now for two decades..or longer... as he is the son of a very dear friend who resides about 800 miles south of here. I have to show these pics of the garden recently created at my lovely friends home out the back. Plants were chosen to attract butterflies, bees and birds. M has always had beautiful things around in her garden, coming from  the Adelaide hills where she grew up walking through daffodils and jonquils each spring on the land at the back of her family's stone cottage. The sad thing about moving is the friends you leave behind...this is the house where I have a lot of happy memories in Melbourne, and wish I was there more often for the cups of tea and dinners with all at the long table! (miss you all lots!)

a few journal pages from 1987 in Europe

this one below is from high school days...when I would sit in class and with my blue biro cover page after page of white paper as I listened to my history teacher go off on great tangents for an hour at a time! There is a very 70's quote with this one...plus I was about 16 at the time...and very idealistic! 

as I said about the sunglasses you would need...below is a wild texta extravaganza I did for Book week in my last year at Primary school. Obviously TV was bringing psychedelia to the small country town I lived in... this had to be 1970 and I do wonder what exactly I was looking closely at as the inspiration for the colour in this one... but there you have it...12 years old and its all happening...with the textas anyway!

Art arrived here with science by tagging along...

Images: top 2 taken by Norwegian sailor Oyvind Tangen on a research ship 66o miles north of the Antarctic... found at Inhabitat  this month. Inhabit.com is a weblog devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future -well worth a look!


The 3 Images below were taken by Steve Nicol - found on the Australian Antarctic Divison website . For the curious click on the website's Arts Fellowship  program to view websites of participating artists like Stephen Eastaugh where you can read his Intransit  archive of journeys to Antarctica and beyond.


I have borrowed words for the title of this post from the 2009 Intransit journal entry where Eastaugh  discusses his experience of being in this location in the role of artist. Science he suggests is the main reason people come to this continent...art tags along...mostly in the form of photography.
I was interested to read here there is a recently published Antarctic English dictionary formed from science, acronyms, slang, Inuit and other borrowed words...all required to describe this icy continent.