A collection of postcards

This little collection is currently hanging in my studio and growing slowly. When you look at them together, it's interesting to note similarities and developments in these little works (all 305 x 405mm). I'm quite liking the scale these canvases - it's do-able with everything else I have on in my life right now.
I'm not sure if the one on the extreme right is finished yet - I'll leave it on the wall a while and think on it - I'm sure it'll come to me why it jars a bit. I think they'll look great all hung together like a patchwork, especially once they're varnished.
I bought 3 varieties of varnish (gloss, semi, and matte) and I want to experiment with lifting keynotes out of the works, or even making work where the information is on the surface texture. That might be fun.

Embodied in paint

Last year in the film festival I saw a movie about Edith Collier, a Wanganui artist of the 1920's who was a friend and fellow painter of Francis Hodgkins and Dorothy Kate Richmond.

What hit me hardest, and the saddest thing; was that once she returned from Europe and London where she explored and mastered her modernst style; she was faced with her community's parochial ideas and her appalled fathers' displeasure at her bold nudes. After an episode where he burnt her paintings, she stopped painting entirely.
It's not just that she stopped that saddened me, but that after she died, the family found a whole trunk of art suppiles she'd gone on collecting throughout her life.

Hopes and dreams embodied in canvas and tubes of paint.

I thought of that today, as I came back to the studio weighed down with the promise of brown paper bags filled with new paint and an arms full of canvasses, and I promised myself to put them to good use, whether or not the results turn out as I hope.

I've been playing with new colours all afternoon. Happy as a sandboy.

Flights of Fancy

An exhibition of new works by Rosalind Atkinson and Leilani Isara

Thistle Hall August 4th -11th

If you get a chance, pop in to Thistle hall and have a look at this show. Rosalind is a recent Massey graduate and her artwork and illustration is very delicate and assured.

The mystery of what's underneath

Under painting reminds me of all things 'under' - mysteriously necessary to give shape and structure, a tantalising glimpse of what's to come (or sometimes a big disappointment if viewed before the beguiling and descriptive top layers are added). Wearing only under painting a painting is colder, flatter and sadly lacking definition.
In order to be complete, you have to have it and so you plough on adding layers over the scrappy flimsy underpinnings that define your idea(l).

Today I got stuck at the under painting stage - incredibly frustrating and a little disappointing since tomorrow's Monday again.
If it was formed of clay, I'd return my work to the mass, throw it into a dark bucket and begin again. Instead, it'll stay on the easel, I'll come in tomorrow and squint with fresh eyes at what it is I'm struggling to express.

There's the soft red of the background for a start; traditionally a dominant colour, I've been forcing it to recede all day and wanting it to be a foil for the many whites... it isn't happy ! Then there's the skin tones, the motion blur that isn't and various stickiness experiments. Sigh.

I think today might be one of those days - full of creative learning and some momentum but no visible progress.
It's been nice to be in the studio nevertheless, and now that the light's finally slipped away I will too.