Messing about in Wanaka

Last weekend I packed a bag and headed to Wanaka for a brief breakaway with a friend. At the last minute I threw in a pack of coloured pencils with a 'landscape' palette and a block of blank postcards.
I'm no landscape painter -preferring to gaze in awe at the Remarkables through my own eyes rather than the eye of a camera or through the lens of my own artistic attempts ... but after a day of breathing mountain air and cruising about on the back roads I did manage to tutu a little (and yes, I even took some photographs which capture some of the amazing depth of colours down there). I might work up the image on the far right into a large painting some time soon, there are some nice textural things happening in it here and there.

Deceptive entropy

An interesting thing is happening to our building at the moment.
The natural entropy that comes part and parcel with an old inner city building (circa 1903) which has seen many generations of gallery space and artistic endeavors is being amplified.

At Enjoy - the gallery down stairs from me, a show has been taking shape for the past few weeks. It's called 'Landing' (Oct 30 -Nov 15) and for one of the artists at least, it's taken place outside of the gallery walls. Through subtle brushwork and paint mimicry, the artist has created an insitu simulacra which highlights the buildings aging face and tarnished surface, and without changing the bone structure; the stairs and stairwell have become a canvas.

In the morning I come to work and wonder whether that dirt, this brown wax (is it squashed gum - or worse?), that chipped lino or this rust stain was here the night before.
I marvel at the progressive but subtle decrepitude as it advances and how it only serves to highlight the existing characteristics that we as tenants know so intimately. The artist Raewyn Martyn has a day job, and so these small transformations occur at night or in the early hours. It's one of the more curious shows we've experienced this year ...and I think I like it.

Painting with brooms

Yesterday Sarah and Howard and I took over a studio in town rented by a collection of Wellington artists. Armed with large rolls of paper, some mis-mixed colours (mmmm,that raspberry really was inspired!) brooms,water balloons a 60 ml syringe( dangerously unpredictable but fantastic results) and a handfull of crapped out house brushes we tuned out from our preferred painting styles (or zoned in as the case may be)and worked collaboratively on at least half a dozen large pieces at once to the accompaniment of some damned fine music.

Sarah's attempts at paint bombs were scarily messy and we decided we might need to be gurilla (oh spellign where art thou ?) painters outside (or in some ready to be demolished or pre-renovated space) to get it right. She still hasn't got it out of her system - and neither have I. The broom almost worked but I needed more hip movement and more paint on the brush - a dustpan brush and Indian ink works better for the kind of marks I wanted. I think the upshot is that we'll do it again soon.

We looked at the results yesterday, as we put the borrowed studio to rights, and decided some were worth keeping, and some were great learning pieces which worked incredibly well when they were divided. Less is more and knowing when to stop when you're working at a large scale is still knowing when to stop !

I love the way Howard's camera/phone in all it's low tech glory has captured the movement - the stretching and the energy of the day.

A mark a day

Oh dear! July. Really? - July was my last posting... that's terrible!

On my board today I have a couple of newly prepared large canvases. They're recycled, so they have a legacy of surface textures. In this case I wish they didn't but I guess they'll offer something to the interplay, so it's all good.

Stuck on the board I also have a fragment of a poem that goes like this...

"its not the intangible that torments us, but what's right here, the familiar, current, abundant, beyond our grasp..." I've lost the source of the lines, but I suspect it's Kathleen Graber.

I feel a bit like that about my art at the moment. So Sarah and I have agreed to play at making a mark a day. With no agenda, no pressure and no back story. I've imposed a palette - because I can't quite pick up any tube with my eyes closed yet. Todays mark is predictable. (Tomorrow's mark I'm going to try not to judge!!!)

We've also planned to play soon on huge paper,(roll on Labour Weekend) on the floor of a 'wet' studio belonging to a mate, with brooms and house brushes and reject house paint and crayons. Big tools,(Brooms! I can't wait - my idea of total experimentation!) and loud loud music - any offers of good funk or Mowtown sounds - I'm definitely a taker.

Does it sound like I need to loosen up? Too right. Totally. I've been one uptight and out of sight woman for too long lately.

Mentoring's been interesting recently too.
It's not easy being told what to do (when you're me, lol) but some of the ideas have been useful, and the mirror to the crap I stash has been illuminating!

It was on the tip of my tongue to say I didn't think that mentoring was working for me. The exersizes felt aimed at exploring more of my inner world than my creative world - and for now, I choose not to paint about myself (I know all art is essentially about the self)
But in the end I think you have to find your own way in, or back, or forward to the creative place. Take the first step - the one you're afraid to take... and the best messages or tasks are ones you set yourself. A mentor can only suggest, after all.

One thing my mentor said though, which I've been dwelling on...
There is an interesting thing going on in my work about the way I confine my marks and images to spaces and within boundaries. It's worth exploring and I'm going to try and work away from that tendency by working through it more deliberately.
There's also some lovely marks on the boot polish and ink drawings I made at the life sessions (take crap materials, see the model as a person, draw what they feel. Damage the work when it gets too retentive). They're worth amplifying and playing with - as start points.

This phrase 'like a map with no edges' seems to come back and visit me from all directions lately (work, learning and art)
I've identified it through some 'work' workshopping I've been attending, as the way that I learn - like navigating a cosmos, going deep when I need to - or not, spreading broadly over a subject when I choose to, with no set directions to constrain the curiosity - and always in response to my own questions - seldom initiated so juicily or vigorously by required learning or by just one learning style.
In my art it's the same - the need to traverse a territory and learn it's terrain, building the language to speak the terrain out loud and describe it's joys as you go...
And so I'm making a mark a day in order to step back onto the map. Today's was the colour of blood.


I decided not to enter the drawing awards this year and I know Bruce Mau would be proud of me. I don't need the pressure, or the proof, or even the feeling of participation. (Well ... maybe that. I do need that, but there's more ways to feel a part of something bigger than competitions).

I realise I probably need to journal my creative practice too - writing this makes me realise how much I've missed trapping the thinking in a written format.

Soul food

Pinned up in my studio this week is an angry little drawing which vents a bit of angst - the marks are dark vigorous but they don't quite obliterate the paper underneath.
Peeking through the charcoal is a diagram, neat,orderly 'workcentric'and generated in Word.
It's a flow chart I suppose - or something similarly hierarchical. It documents a discussion I had with myself earlier this week about 'what happens if it's not perfect?'.
The fact that I felt compelled to sanatize my brainstorm into some readable form is not lost on me either! (what does happen when it's not perfect is an interesting and ridiculous extrapolation - ending with a closed door. It's good to see it as the crazy thinking it is, and let it go)

I've taken on a mentor as part of my winter of self improvement and she's given me 4 pages of tasks to help unblock some thinking and reroute my creativity. So far so good ...and so far out.

I've been feeling a bit hollow this winter, in the last post I wrote about making a process to think like a map maker - I had the intention of creating a journey without a known end... and then hey presto! I did what I always do and skipped to the end point. How could I do that ? By visualising what might happen, I preempted what could - typical.

So for now I'm going to work with the tasks I've been set and put the map making process to one side. They feel a bit 'therepy' to me to be honest - but I'm trying to be open minded and work with them. I know I need to loosen up - extend my mark making - leap off some known art cliffs and divorce the art from the rational self... and I know I need to feed my soul right now too. So I've begun to work on a list of things that feed the soul.

Yesterday I took the morning off to visit the Rita Angus exhibition at Te Papa

Rita Angus' hard edged,flattened style has never been one I've admired specifically, but the body of work collected here is extensive, and the diversity of her work is impressive. Looking at it yesterday it seems to me this show documents her internal struggle with herself and her art well. Not so much in a curatorial sense (which is quite restrained and minimally present) - more through the sense of sadness that emanates out of some of the works through periods of her life.

Her colours truly sing - especially the Central Otago paintings - the rounded hills bulging like heavy cotton velvet with that style she had of bleeding darker hues from the edges of objects.(I remember playing with that style with crayons when I coloured - in at school)

I was particularly attracted to her watercolour of Douglas Lilburn and also to the interior of Suzy's coffee shop (which I remember from school holiday trips to town with my mother)which was from her Wellington period. The honesty of her last self portrait is wonderful.

I'll go back after the holidays and look at the later rooms again - it's a big show and 3 hours didn't do it justice really.

A lot of thinking about maps

"The roads by which men arrive at their insights into celestial matters seem to me almost as worthy of wonder as those matters in themselves" Johannes Kepler

I've been giving the idea of thinking like a mapmaker some time lately - the middle of the night seems to suit this one. Not that I want to paint or make maps per se(nothing wrong with maps - they'reincredibly cool). Its a process I want to create - a process that acts as an overlay to the end results; and which interests me, like Kepler, almost as much as creating the art itself.

What do I mean by 'thinking like a cartographer'?

Well here goes.
For a start I want to impose a map making process that will influence my making and my thinking through the length of an artistic exploration - maybe a year. One that I haven't formalised before. I'm not sure yet just how different it will be to that which I already operate within or am bound by. But I want to see what richness or learning it may offer and how the work will be influenced by imposing some constraints over and above a subject or theme. Lets make it a bit more challenging, she says.

I said in my one of my last posts that there were things I took away from the 'Beyond Words' show in March. One of these things relates to the unspoken. The unknowable, or unacknowledged. Or just the unknown. Perhaps the areas we choose to leave deliberately empty. What we don't say.
Remember?

So I though it might be possible to describe spaces like these by implication. By stealth, or by mapping the territory that surrounds them; thereby defining them. I like the idea that these spaces will be different for different people - and the idea of creating variable experiences is growing on me. Interactivity. Allowing others to build meaning in the work, literally.

I did a bit of hunting and I found an interesting essay here by Nat Case titled 'Art is a Tool, Maps as Pictures'. Nat talks about the intersections between art and modern cartography - 'art' maps and 'mappy' art.

Then I talked to a friend about what making maps meant to him; about his Fine Arts Masters project which was based on map making and which included mapping emotional journeys,instances and interpretations of mapping. We also talked about his latest project in which he's exploring cartographic iconography and typologies within a graphics context as they define national identity, both for New Zealanders'as
individuals and of New Zealand as a global entity.

Here's some understanding I've come to -just some of the early thoughts I've had (that I want to expand on over time) about mapping. My thinking's certainly not comprehensive and it's definitely not based on deep knowledge! But here's the things that I've taken from the little exploration I've done so far.

I think they might make some interesting points that could support a process. I won't say steps - it doesn't seem at all linear to me so I'll bullet them.

• maps define boundaries(in a physical sense, so do supports like canvas or paper,and gallery spaces or viewing points) Metaphysically maps lay out where the edges of things are.(I like that. I need to know where boundaries are.)
• they describe relationships
• maps argue for things
• maps are political
• a map has or has not got a sense of authorship or voice, and it CAN lie
• maps can be functional (some thinking says a map must be functional to be good)
• maps are subjective interpretations which are in turn interpreted subjectively but which attempt to describe information objectively (sometimes)
• an instance can be a map (and so can a sensory experience - mapping to a memory for example)
• maps do not necessarily reside physically in space or time (woa!)
• maps can be wordless,directionless,wayfinding devices,internalised,remembered,
indelibly etched and imagined.
• maps sometimes have keys

What does that mean for a process?
It probably means I'll define elaborate or discard each of the characteristics I've described as being 'map-like' and look for ways to build them into a set of perameters to work within.

I'm thinking initially, there are some obviously simple responses like - use the whole space. Involve the space in the art and the art in the space. Allow the pieces to be built up like fragments in a non linear sense with some element of dimensionality to them - even if the work is still canvas or paper. perhaps it might mean they could be moved about and composed by individuals to narrate their own interpretations of provinces. Allowing multiple perspectives,simultaneous open ended stories.Perhaps with set boundaries like a limited colour palette.

Some thoughts...What could a key be? what about scale?

This looks like fun. Tell me what you think.

Thinking like a cartographer

I've been off line from my blog for a little bit - computer troubles mostly and Life intervening again- I left my job last week (happy/sad both and a brief experience that was full of rich learning) ... my horoscope at the beginning of the year described my career as a cross between I Claudius and The Sopranos thus far - what's with that? This blog's not intended for analysing so we'll leave it there. Suffice to say I feel at home in myself again today and I painted a new painting on the weekend that I think is OK)

It's my first day back in the studio - pulling together the threads of my illustration work again and knowing now how much that knits in with my art, both informing and feeding it.
In the interim I've had some time to think and dream about where to next - so the technological black hole has been productive too.

Sometimes you have to sidle up to ideas; they show themselves out of the corner of your eye - hide in the recesses of your dreams, and then disappear when you look at them full on. Tricky things... you have to be so careful not to expose them too soon or they melt away.

So...
What if you treat ideas like a map maker and come at them obliquely from all angles?

By describing all the things something ISN'T, (like that great Michaelangelo quote/story 'I simply chipped away everything that wasn't David') or by defining the parameters of what it might be, could you not create a space for something to exist? - like using reference points or coordinates to point to the centre and define/describe it.

I'm thinking that this would be an interesting exersize in order to reach an unknown endpoint. I'm not sure if I'm making sense - I've read poems that do it - each stanza coming from a different viewpoint or idea, seemingly unrelated, collectively making the whole a story but never quite saying it overtly.For example Kathleen Graber in her book 'Correspondence' and Michael Ondaatje is a master of it.
I'd like to experiment with the idea, but first I'll need to define my tools. Hmmm... playtime !

Lu and I at Red Gallery in Nelson

Here's a pic of the lovely Lucy and me at Red Gallery, at the opening of 'Flick of the Wrist' in February.

More things I'm thinking about

"We don't just think with our brains. We think with our bodies." Jürgen Steek

"It's not that the creative act and the critical act are simultaneous. It's more like you blurt something out and then analyze it." Robert Motherwell

"It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception." Robert Motherwell

Five minutes

To write some thoughts.

Things I want to remember and build on:

• Camouflage - how else do we hide? (disambiguation - what a cool word!)
• passages of light
• metaphors for movement and change
• independent of thought - what is that? - automatic?
• What else contains memory but chooses to obey?

Sunday Batucada drum day...

... End of the fun day.

We broke down the show today to the sounds of the Batucada drummers upstairs and now I'm chilling wearily to Eddie Vedder with the last of my single malt whiskey and a low key sense of completion.

What a cool week.
Yesterday was wonderfully wild - I did a floor talk for the folks from the Deaf Association, and their spirited interest was a total delight. Their CEO Rachel Noble has bought 'Words Emerge Like Birds' (the large key piece from the exhibition) for the national office in Auckland so everyone in the deaf community can enjoy it (and to me it's where it belongs - I'm SO pleased). It feels like the whole project was worth it for their total engagement, I couldn't have wished for a better response to my work.

You know last time I felt it; and this week's been the same... this sense of privilege about being there and being part of the Thistle fabric for a short while.
You sit with your work in the quiet times, contemplating the completion and incompletion of it, (planning where to next and thinking about what the hell it is that viewers respond to) and you talk about it ad infinitum on request... And then you meet all these GREAT people.

In my Moleskine there's a page of addresses, websites and insights. Incredibly precious. Richard, if you're reading this, talking to you was great, I'd like to stay in touch - and Gill too, I'll be there tomorrow at your opening.

On Friday Peter McLeavey came in to see me. I hoped he would, but you know... mumble mumble (somebody slap me why don't you).
He sat and talked about painting from your heart (and listening to the murmur it -I didn't realise he operated so much on that level, and I'm glad; a consummate salesman who appeals to and operates from the heart - no wonder he's been so successful), of finding someone to represent you (or waiting for them to find you) who loves your work with the same passion you do, and of consolidating and doing the work over the next two years before showing again. I'm not sure I can manage that - but I know where he's coming from.

I think I'll always fight the need to paint versus the ability to draw, and the frustration of being less eloquent in one medium than I'd like, but I reckon it just means plenty of room to grow and lots to learn. A wealth of possibilities. Gad the potential of it's so exciting!

Only one regret - I didn't get anyone definite to photograph the opening night. Alan's translation was apparently something to behold as I read my speech. Six foot, built like a lock and standing behind me as I talked... I wish I could have seen.

OK, so now I'm off to bed and not much looking forward to a gear change tomorrow. Has anyone got any bright ideas for the reentry phase? - I'm totally crap at it !!

Two more sleeps...

The title says it all. 'Beyond Words' opens on Monday night and I think I'm ready, a little flighty but ready. Despite losing the studio keys and creating a minor tornado in the looking... I really think I'm sorted now.

I feel like a media slut (thanks Sarah so true!) this week - the PR arm is working overtime and the show publicity is being seen in the best possible places. I've done some online Q&A's - fun 'cause they make you think (what would YOU make with a stick, a piece of fabric and a piece of string?) and make you dream (if you had a million dollars to spend on your art what would YOU do?)

After the framing, eyeleting, DVD making and projecting, catering and bar service have each been sorted, there remains the ever sodding burden of pricing.

I've not met any artists who don't put themselves and their doubts to the test on this one. It's not easy. I've asked a number of people what they think and I've been reading up on it this afternoon.

One site here says ..."Any insights, enlightenments, sufferings, or inner pain you experience while creating art are your own business. Don't bill collectors for it. People in all professions have intense emotional experiences just like you, but you rarely see the prices of milk, plumbing, clothes, or other goods or services fluctuate wildly as a result."
Nice.

Or this lovely image from another site: " In George Washington's days, there were no cameras. One's image was either sculpted or painted. Some paintings of George Washington showed him standing behind a desk with one arm behind his back, while others showed both legs and both arms. Prices charged by painters were not based on how many people were to be painted, but by how many limbs were to be painted. Arms and legs are "limbs" therefore painting them would cost the buyer more. Hence the expression "Okay, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg."

Great -that'd make my drawings priceless - they're all limbs and hands!

Here's another option - not much better, but funny. San Francisco painter/printmaker Abigail Linfert joked, "Sometimes I think I should do what professors reportedly do with term papers-throw them down some stairs. The ones at the top would be most expensive and the ones at the bottom would be cheapest."
Actually the rest of the advice on this site's not bad.

I tend to go with size, comparable work by comparably experienced artists (which relies on you knowing a few) and a theory of value to me.
What I call 'Jesse's offer'. It goes 'if I gave you $100 would you give me that painting or will you keep it? - Ok If I give you $150 etc ...' It works in combo with the size method (especially when you add framing costs into the mix too).

Bob's advice was to price affordably and build slowly and steadily throughout your career. He's done that, and now I can't afford one of his lovely paintings!

In the end after all that - I go with a hunch, I mean in your gut you DO know. You certainly know when you're being untrue.

Well, off to the wholesaler to buy scrummy food for the opening now.

Quick peek

Finally, here's 3 or 4 images of sections of the last of the big drawings for 'Words emerge like birds'. Too big for a single shot, I had to lay them on the floor to take the photos. Enjoy.

Flick of the Wrist

Back today from a whirlwind visit to Nelson yesterday - and straight into work this morning so I'm feeling a little skitzoid zoid zoid.

Last night was a bit of fun, I was glammed up and shining like a rhinestone from another place (always good for a girls confidence).

Seriously, the work looked great in the gallery... the environment suited it so well.

Framed up in cream deep concave frames, glassless and mountless; there was nothing between the painting and the viewer and people really responded positively to that.
As a body of work, it viewed as an integrated whole, (my fears that it wouldn't were just dumb) with the new works mixing in seamlessly and quieter work supporting the smokey more complex ones. I received copious amounts of feedback for the boldness of the colours, the textures and the bravery of the mark making.

I met some lovely people - and made some new friends (connections connections, life is rich and wonderful) and I forsee a few welcome studio visits from them in the near future.

And happily, I sold some. Well... 5!!

There weren't that many Nelsonians there - but one in 5 bought a painting, so those that were went home happy and enthusuiastic. The local Grenough Chardonnay was delicious... and I left this morning happy as a sand boy.

I'll process the feedback and think on where to next (if anywhere) for this work.

Meantime Peter McLeavey downstairs from me is previewing Bill Hammonds new works tonight - so I'm about to poke my nose in and soak him up - 4 metres of unstretched glorious canvas.

Wow ! I just had to edit this post - Bill Hammond has added caves ! Eagles in caves, flying with brains (or are they hearts?) in their beaks back to their eeyrie. The new images are a nice new turn. I like it. Such a privilege having him downstairs.

Pebble in my Shoe

I've been thinking some more about that last post - specifically the emphasis on 'imperfections' in that quote ... and it pisses me off ! What was I thinking ?!

Reflecting on it today, Misters Bayles and Orland have rather a negative and myopic way of looking at potential growth, don't you think? (I'll leave the post up though, it may work like a pebble in a shoe for me - she says with chagrin)

I think maybe the key is 'unresolved'.
Taped beside me on the wall next to my drawing is a positive list of things I want to explore further. Much better.

Inspiration and dreams

”The seed of your next art work lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece. Such imperfections (or mistakes, if you’re feeling particularly depressed about them today) are your guides - valuable, reliable, objective, non-judgemental guides to matters you need to reconsider or develop further.” - David Bayles and Ted Orland.

This quote is so true. Today I'm thinking of the work I've made to date, what went well, what I've struggled to express, and where I want to take my work next this year.
Not just what I want to say... there are heaps of ideas around that, bubbling up all the time - but how BEST to express them and what path I want to take next.

I'm mentally reviewing the drawings and asking myself whether I've described the ideas well enough; if having two threads to this show 'Beyond Words' is fragmenting or distracting from the ideas I had originally, and if I should make ONE MORE large work and see if I can travel further with it.

I feel vulnerable about this work too - it's close to my heart and so it lays me bare a bit.

I've been thinking a bit about dreams recently - both kinds. Waking dreams, and sleeping dreams. I reread 'Longing' recently and I'm walking about with the mantle of it still over me. Such beautiful language - such brutal truth.
We each have a personal Patagonia - a place we imagine is our 'fresh start' we want to get to - as an artist it's the beginning of each new project.

I went to the Sleep Wake performance on the weekend. It was full of weird and wonderful imagery - dreamscapes made real in a minimalist setting with soft reduced colours for costumes and set, reminiscent of waking in the middle of the night and padding through a quiet house. I loved the images of water projected onto 3 surfaces... the swimmer sinking the depths and the huge heartbeat/white noise 'music' score that went with the frenetic nightmare dance piece.

It was inspiring. Why does dance excite me so much ? Something about muscles and taught sinews in motion, balance and counterbalance, the grace and daring of the dancer. Humans are just so beautiful in motion.

When I identify my next project - I'm sure you'll be the first to know.

minusland plus plus

Friday! Love it.

Not much to add this week, just that I've added two new blogs to the sidebar today - minusland and Mighty Mouse pronounced. Nice. Go check them out. It's nice to have you back Sam, and the other one's Vin's artwork, which is lovely to see all together.

I met some great creative folk today at Capital E, had a good conversation about what fires kids creativity and felt really energised by it. I'm looking forward to being in the studio this weekend.

Chilling in the studio

It's so nice to be here tonight ! Watching as the sky turns midnight blue, I can see the lights coming on up at the University... Pigeons on my roof clattering about and clouds scudding past. It's hot so my window's popped and propped against the wall.
Just being here around my brushes and paper, my inspiration board and art books is replenishing.

Last week I went to life drawing with Bob and it was the best class I've ever been to - light, roomy and unpretentious. I took a whole bag of tools, intending to be loose - the scribblier the better. My favourite tools ended up being a rainbow coloured pencil and a fat sharpie pen (mmmm the smell!) I've promised myself to do it more this year (no, not sniff pens - life drawing!) That and go to more art shows and creative events.

I'm going to miss a cool Sleep/Wake seminar tomorrow night ( I'll be in Auckland for work - and stopping to catch the galleries and a couple of new friends - a good trade off ) - I booked it a while back at the Art Centre - it's part of a Fringe show that'll be on from the 30th Jan - 10th FEB check it out here

"Sleep/Wake blends dance, science and performance design to explore the world of the unconscious, revealing those things that lie dormant within us: hidden performances of the self - obsessions, ambitions, and dreams."

It sounds just the kind of thing I might love, that would inspire drawings or paintings (says the woman casting for her next focus). Never mind - I'll get to the Fringe performance instead. Anyone in Welly interested ? I booked 2 free places to the floor talk/seminar and it includes free food ! Call me - you can have my spaces.

Hey but there's good news - The show in March 'Beyond Words' has been moved ahead a couple of weeks to start on the 10th March. That means it's on during the international festival of the arts - which is a really cool coup ! I feel so lucky.
Ok here's a drawing from thursdays class sorry about the scan wiggle I got impatient ...

Resolutions schmesolutions!

Since it's a new year - I've been reviewing my resolutions from last year with a wry smile or two - yeah I made them, and yes I tried.
I didn't paint or draw as much outside as I'd have liked ... pity that (but the wind's a bit of a problem anyway).
Being hard on yourself comes with the territory I think - but I know I believe in myself more than a year ago, which is pretty positive, so I'm happy with what I aimed for mostly, and the rest's an ongoing project.

This year I want to apply for a residency somewhere other than Wellington - and preferrably overseas (though to be honest holing up to paint in the Far North wouldn't be all bad!) I'd like to experience the sense of 'otherness' that only comes from displacing yourself for a time, and I think I'd benefit from the challenge and the extension it would bring.

On that note, I went to a cool exhibition on my way home from the farm this summer, called 'The museum of inherent vice'.
(Inherent vice is an art historical/curatorial term to describe art objects with the potential to degrade or change over time).
Matt Couper had a residency at Tylee Cottage in Wanganui last year, as part of the Sarjeant Gallery's residency programme and his work is currently on show at the Sarjeant until the 10th of Feb.

I was impressed with both the scale of his paintings, and the diversity and complexity of his work. His symbolism is powerfully strange - and the image of Prometheus depicted as an artist, chained to the rock and painting with his hands and feet cut off and brushes strapped to his wrists has stayed with me a long time.

Mostly I connected with the wall of small tin ex-votos he made over the year, which describe his year as a resident, the struggle to stay focussed and be creative and to trust that what he was doing was valuable and 'good'. He made himself vulnerable - and I respect that. If you get a chance, go and see his work (or look at his website here).

Red red red show (Nah actually it's orange!)

More red ones

And still more

Busy as

Mark my words

Bein' pretty brushy lately

Happy New Year!

Most of these paintings came from a week of intensive work between Xmas and new Years Eve and Red Gallery in Nelson is showing this work on the 26th of February this year (yay!).
It's been interesting and fun revisiting the ideas; working from the original source material but trying to refine it - and even more interesting attempting to recapture the energy (I was such an angry and frustrated tart that week at Summer School!) that the original work has. I've uploaded the new works interspersed with the ones from Summer School so I can see how they work as a group - can you tell them apart?

I have to write a piece for the gallery to describe the show,here's what I've come up with - I hope it's not too wanky!

"These mixed media works are about breaking through barriers. They are an attempt to distance myself from my need for figuration in my artwork, or to offset it through the introduction of elements of chance.
I began to explore these ideas at Summer School in Wanganui in 2007 and I’ve continued to refine them and allow the insights to filter into my practice since then.

I want to generate energy in these works through contrasting the chance expression of a loaded brush or the simple eloquence of a swift moving calligraphic line with drawing and with deconstructed universal symbols for barriers, obstructions or impediments."

Its so hard describing your own stuff and trying to be honest - hey but naming the pieces...now that's a whole other kettle of fish!