The Joy of Line

2011-01-17T09:39:00.002+13:00

Photo: D Knight

2011-01-17T09:37:00.002+13:00

2011-01-17T09:23:00.000+13:00

Wilderness continued

2011-01-08T22:53:00.008+13:00

Last week I posted some quotes and images that are inspiring me lately. I've also been

carrying around a quote in my diary since last year:

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit. - Edward Abbey.

They need little explanation - evoking space, provoking thought and handing out a challenge
to choose a large sheet of paper and some chalky or waxy drawing tools to describe my
response. My son's travels in Patagonia were a delicious catalyst - those vast expanses of
uninhabited wilds are pretty awesome. So I picked up a battered copy of 'In Patagonia'
by Bruce Chatwin and a new Moleskine this week.

As I sketch, I'm thinking about the concept of wilderness as uncharted or unclaimed internal
stage too, not only as physical geographical landscape.

Here's another quote:

The wilderness is a place of rest - not in the sense of being motionless, for the lure, after all, is to move,

to round the next bend. The rest comes in the isolation from distractions, the slowing of the daily

centrifugal forces that keep us off balance. - David Douglas

I'm hoping to be able to play in the studio over the next month in between work, healing my damaged
knee and sheltering from the almost unbearable heat from the tin roof in this small space.

Photo: D Knight (Patagonia)

Wilderness thoughts and inspiration

2010-12-31T11:39:00.005+13:00

"I pictured a low timber house with a shingled roof, caulked against storms, with blazing log fires inside and the walls lined with all the best books, somewhere to live when the rest of the world blew up."
— Bruce Chatwin (In Patagonia)

"I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones."
— Bruce Chatwin (In Patagonia)

"And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
— T.S. Eliot

"The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.

It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down - sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray.

At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing.
But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward."
— Terence McKenna

"Every step you take is a step away from where you used to be."
— Brian Chargualaf

Images; the collage above contains a stunning selection of images by film maker and artist Clare Langan , whose mysterious and evocative stills are hugely inspirational for me. As well it contains as a still from 'The Wilderness Downtown' - an interactive short film by Chris Milk for Arcade Fire. Check it out - it's lovely.

Readers and Writers Week

2010-02-04T16:31:00.004+13:00

Summer

you uncomfortable joke!

Clouds, you fly dangerously close

and falling dreams make hopeless midnight feed

Come rain, sweep out my dark mood

Give me sunrise

Send in that rare sunny caress

The quintessential key.

Found art

2010-02-04T11:16:00.002+13:00

This summer I've been astounded by the wealth of found art around me. Twilight patterns rendered in sand on a windy beach, a beautiful scale dinosaur evolving on a wall onmy way to the studio, these picture poems by an artist at Toi Poneke (the Arts Centre up the road from me) and a small poignantly paced puppet show in the french style which has played everyday in the mall this past week. Honestly, the volume of creativity in my local community is both humbling and astounding!

Red Art Gallery showed my work in Nelson last week

2009-10-19T20:12:00.003+13:00

This time last week I was heading down to Nelson to open my exhibition at Red Art Gallery.
This week I'm back at work (have a look on Picture it so to see what I've been up to) and looking ahead to the next creative project or job on my books.
That odd and over-used phrase 'onwards and upwards' delivered with an Irish lilt and a heavy sigh, springs to mind. Although it makes me inwardly smirk, I do feel as if I've barely caught breath this year before lurching towards the next deadline.

Regardless of being a little time impoverished, I can't let this event pass without posting about it - it's too special and working towards it was sometimes so hard to fit in.

I want to write about how warmly I was welcomed and hosted at Red and how much I appreciated seeing my work hung and lit so beautifully there. It was a pleasure to see the tiny paper works on the wall, which Jay framed with such a light touch that they were allowed to speak for themselves and be delicate.
I'm sorry, I didn't take a camera - I'll have to ask her for a picture to post here.

I really enjoyed chatting to those friendly Nelsonians who came last Tuesday evening, who came to appreciate seeing a bit of new art in their city and greet a visiting artist warmly or who bought my work because they loved it. Thank you to you all for coming, you were lovely.

If you're heading to Nelson in the next 3 weeks do call in to the gallery at No.1 Bridge St - they do a great lunch and a superb tea or coffee in their café too.

So... although most artists like to sell our work, it's not all about sales is it?
It's as much about completing a creative project and having it received by others, in order to let it go and move on to the next creative endeavor we're bound to explore.
And what would that be ?

Always there's room to reflect about why I make the work I do, the difference between drawing and painting - and this time, the contrast between the scale of the works on show. I've come away with plenty to ruminate on.

My pillow book this year includes:

• textures that make your fingers twitch - not necessarily larger than life, but intimate, barely there or conversational textures.
• marks that have genuine depth and meaning
• images that sing to souls - some of mine do, some don't (why is that?)
• scale that is both accommodating for rooms and expansive enough to allow freedom of movement
• colour that's allowed to shout or be subtle. (Its about time for subtle I think).
• supports that suit the medium. The old paper versus canvas debate again!

OK that's about it for now - there's plenty there to keep this active brain busy and experiment with in the days to come. As Fifi says, it's time for some head down work now, so it might be a bit quiet in here for a while.

Wanganui Summer School

2009-10-07T16:09:00.005+13:00

Now that my paintings are boxed and sent off with the courier, it's time to assess the fallout here in the studio.
Brushes are standing stiff and irretrievable in solidified varnish; the boxes left over from the Storylines Festival and the Spinning Gold conference are tripping me up daily, and piles of papers are dotted about, their contents a jumble and a mystery. Somewhere in there is my ACC invoice- but where?

In the mess I have found the brochure for the Wanganui Summer School. You can download it here if you don't have it.
Summer School is a week of stimulating classes and artists talks for professional and emerging artists, with whiskey tasting (if you're me) and sunshine in the company of like-minded artists. It's stimulating and exciting enough to keep you going as a practicing artist, if you're thorough with your post-summer explorations, for another 8 months at home. If you're lucky you'll bring home the bones of your next show too. It's not to be missed really and Rob McLeod is tutoring again too (though I hear his class is probably full already).

This year I'm not attending, and although that's a bit disappointing, the holiday I know I need from the crazy full year I've had to date, will be more replenishing in the long run.
There's a time to push the hell out of yourself (and I know when I need a good kick!) and a time to rest and breathe slower. This year I just long to be still a while and not have to be anywhere or meet my own tough expectations.

I'm looking forward to next week though - to being in Nelson and seeing my work hung outside of my studio, to having it received and to wearing my new Spanish shoes!

Quotes to be remembered

2009-10-03T13:05:00.005+13:00

Here's a quote from Picasso that resonates with me today.

The artist goes through states of fullness and emptiness, and that is all there is to the mystery of art.

Pablo Picasso

I've been varnishing paintings this week - and learning a lot in the process about the fickle nature of varnish. After one piece clotted up and gelled alarmingly in the warmth of my studio and I washed it off hurriedly, I also learned a lot about the outer limits of acrylic to be soluble!

Glazes that I'd made with a dilute solution of paint just melted off the surface of my canvas and trickled own the sink - and those I'd worked with glazing medium stayed behind. It was a good lesson. Consequently here I am back in the studio today, to paint a new last last piece to complete my 10 canvases.

Mary Cassatt said:

I doubt if you know the effort it is to paint! ...The trying and trying again and again and oh, the failures, when you have to begin all over again!

How things grow...

2009-09-30T15:51:00.003+13:00

A seriously bad stitch up photo that shows these little paintings as they stand today - another week and the collection may look a little different depending on which eyes I'll be wearing!

Terrain in Nelson for the Arts Festival

2009-09-26T10:37:00.003+12:00

Well here it is - the invitation to Terrain. Nice to be moving towards having this body of work finished and lovely to be showing during the festival at Red Gallery. If you're in Nelson over that time call in. I'm also showing the last 2 large paper works and small framed postcards - so there will be a mixture of scales and media. I'm getting excited now !

Dali at the NVG

2009-09-16T10:01:00.003+12:00

A week or two ago, on Fathers Day (what were we thinking?) I visited the Salvadore Dali exhibition 'Liquid Desire' at the NVG in Melbourne. (13 June - 4 October)

I'm not a Dali fan, but it does hold a certain retro fascination for me. I was looking forward to seeing a broader range of his work than those familiar pieces we all associate with this somewhat 'outre' artist, especially his drawings, sculptures and photographic experiments with space.

It's the first time I've really come up against a large show where the experience of the art is so plainly influenced by the quality of the curating.
Aside from the size of the crowds - which were pretty unbearable and snail paced, I thought the design of the exhibition did no favours to the enormous number of works on show.

In the first 'room', ceiling to floor small works from Dali's early years were hung as close as postage stamps. Delicate and bizarre little drawings were displayed about a foot or two from the floor, or higher than eye level and crammed together so that appreciating their simplicity or individuality was difficult.
Large, closely spaced tracts of dense wall information were everywhere, to tell the unedited story of his career. Their indigestability served to prevent crowd flow or conversely deterred people from taking in the information at all, and the walls of further round rooms were carpeted in vertical 150 mm wide striped grey and charcoal plush fabric.
It was difficult to separate the experience of the show from the artwork - and intensely claustrophobic.

In all a disappointment. I didn't see any elephants on stilts - my favourite piece, and the jewelery though beautiful was mounted in view cases at breast height (which made for rather comic visions of visitor interaction). The sculptures dotted about were fascinating, though few.

I really wish I could be more positive about the show - it was a major one and there were some stunning pieces in it.
My partner loved it, so of the 4 of us one was content that he'd seen an amazing exhibition on Fathers Day - the rest of us were happy for that !

Hidden routes

2009-08-27T13:22:00.004+12:00

I've been playing with using varnish as a medium to make images or to add information to my paintings - it's fun to explore. Gloss over matt has the most obvious success, but semi-gloss is a more subtle sister and may be useful to layer too. I like that it's a light painting - or to be more accurate, a shine painting. These small works are coming along...

Terrains

2009-08-27T13:19:00.001+12:00

Gonner

2009-08-06T22:34:00.004+12:00

The painting on the extreme right in my last post didn't earn it's place, so on Saturday I replaced it. With a worse one! Oh well... it happens.

Recently I've been rereading from the pages of What we Ache For by Oriah Mountain Dreamer;

I know, it sounds a little mystical doesn't it, but trust me it isn't - there are gems in there and on second reading I still think so.

She talks about the fertile silence required as a vital component of the creative process. How ensuring there is enough empty time in your life to come to some stillness and just be is often what facilitates the flow - and with it the joy of the unexpected outcome.

'We cannot begin our creative work if we do not have an idea of where we are going, the intent to write or paint or compose, and a practice that takes us into the process.
But we cannot continue in a way that is faithful to the creative process unless, after beginning, we loosen our grip on the original idea and allow room for something else to happen, something that produces more than what we could produce from our knowledge and will alone. And we cannot let go, cannot surrender to the creative process itself, unless we can find some stillness to allow ourselves to stay there where the creativity of a fertile and abiding emptiness can find us.'

I think I've been so busy working lately and so focussed on it, that I haven't cultivated enough time to do nothing - and to stay with it for more than a moment. Preconceived notions, anticipated outcomes, necessary planning and deadlines all crowd in from my working week to occupy the creative space - and in order to claim it exclusively I need to make the time I have more 'sacred'.

The answer to the question 'what if empty time, time without plans, tasks, or scheduled events, is a necessary prerequisite for accessing your creative imagination, doing creative work?' is not within my power to action - at least not for the month of August.

A collection of postcards

2009-07-26T17:50:00.005+12:00

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

2009-07-25T17:16:00.005+12:00

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

2009-07-06T11:38:00.002+12:00

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

2009-07-05T13:39:00.006+12:00

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.

Stillpoint

2009-06-29T17:03:00.005+12:00

Stillpoint 750 x 500mm

Here's my painting from Sunday - I'm still deciding whether to reduce all the busyness from the background... at the moment I'm OK with it because I like the way the eye scans the painting for sense before it rests on the face of the dervish - which is so still.
I might go see Anna at the French Art Shop and talk to her about 'stickiness' mediums for my paint though, I'm not ready to relinquish the acrylics yet, but I wish I could push and blend the paint more before it dries so that some of my my marks are more blended. Sorry my photograph is so average - it is actually very rich like this though.

Painting in the flow

2009-06-28T16:55:00.004+12:00

"Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being." -Rumi

While on the subject of Sufi poets and rituals, this quote describes my day.

Painting stillness in the midst of movement is a lovely challenge.
A whole day at my easel is the best kind of nourishment you can have after a late Saturday and a broken night .
I spent the day painting in the flow today, (not just moments of it) and it raced by while I worked on oblivious. Now I feel as if I can face my week - my piled up jobs, patiently waiting clients and urgent tasks will go easier... I'll see if I can photograph my painting from today, but I'm not sure about the background just yet so it might be a work in progress still.

Spinning out of nothingness

2009-06-27T13:00:00.007+12:00

Photo still from video footage by Marcel Baaijens (and the rest by me!)

Eastern music, haunting ancient Persian prayers, the wind of the whirling skirts as they pass and the stillness of the cloaked turners 'in their graves' ... the experience I had last night was both enchanting and haunting. I'm moved and inspired to paint.

Turn Turn Turn

2009-06-26T14:21:00.004+12:00

On the day that Michael Jackson died I'm going to a Mukabeleh to watch whirling dervishes turn.
Sounds like a great first line of a novel doesn't it?

Through a nice turn of events (yes, I'll stop now) a small design job for a group of Wellington sufi's has enabled me to attend their ceremony with my sketch pad a camera and my friend Marcel with his video camera. I'm hoping I can come home with some imagery to draw from - dervish turning was on my mindmap a year or so ago, as a form of non verbal communication that I might investigate - in part because of the wonder at the movement.
I do like serendipity don't you? I'm looking forward to it and hopefully I'll have some images I can post here soon.

“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust” Rumi

Roughing out an idea

2009-06-24T12:54:00.003+12:00

Well that's done it !

Yesterday I had a call from Red Gallery in Nelson because NZ House and Garden magazine are doing an editorial on the Nelson Arts Festival for their September issue and I needed to describe my coming show at Red in October for the editorial... Yikes! It's creeping up fast and I need tying down.

Think quickly, be decisive Adele !

...So yes, focusing on working up the little postcards, and thinking about the 'cartography of the body' as Ondaatje so beautifully puts it... I came up with a title for my upcoming show, and a theme which allows me to explore either the huge seam of the body markings (with all it's possible textures and oubliettes for the brain art) or if time turns against me, the little terrains.

And that's what I'll call it - Terrain

Here's my description.

The subjects of her paintings are imaginary maps, places evoked by emotional
journeys or travels and suggestive of postcards or fragments of abstract
cartography. Adele is interested in the maps we leave as indelible marks on
those we meet and the lasting impressions we take on and add to ourselves.
These smaller paintings are the first foray into a larger body of work to come and
though their scale is intimate, her characteristic mix of line and mark making is
still present.

That should do the trick I hope.

Small works

2009-06-23T12:22:00.005+12:00

Crossings 305 x 405

Another little painting by me, this one is more a map of an emotional terrain. It's from the Postcards series.

Gallery crawl anyone?

2009-05-22T14:04:00.004+12:00

I picked up this little flyer recently for a show that's just opened at Solander and I can see I'm going to have to do a bit of a gallery crawl this weekend. These hand coloured prints by Manuel Lau look lovely and I want to see them for myself.

Loose and lush - permission to paint he said

2009-05-21T11:58:00.006+12:00

V Bank (conversation) by Steven Hemmens

VIII Seven sisters (The Women of Jerusalem) by Steven Hemmens

These paintings are by Steven Hemmens from his show Some Stations on the Way to the Cross and they're at Bowen Galleries for a few more days. This morning my mate Paul insisted I went to see them with him. He took my hand - 'close your eyes' he said - 'now open ! ' Permission to paint he said. And they are... I feel very moved. When a good friend says you need to get out of your head and paint from somewhere else - it gives you a jolt. Enough said - except see them if you can before they return to the UK with the artist because they are lovely.

What is it with these two schools of thought about making art and how can I find a middle ground from which to express freely?

Postcards

2009-05-18T18:44:00.004+12:00

Wilds 305 x 405mm

I forgot to mention, I've begun to paint the small postcards that I made late last year - and in particular the one in the Joy of Line header. I'm interested to see if they'll stand on their own, if they'll develop or if they remain pleasing abstract landscapes and small maps.
Think this one has kept the intent of the drawing without losing too much to the paint. I'm happy with it. Wonder if they'd scale up a bit bigger?

The body as a map

2009-05-14T14:15:00.012+12:00

Today I'm thinking about this quote by Michael Ondaatje from The English Patient:

'We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves...' 'I believe in such cartography ... to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste and experience...'

And the idea that we are tangibly transformed through learning and through our experiences.

I've been scanning a book online, called Curriculum: Toward New Identities by William Pinar.
Although this book is essentially a collection of essays about learning and the curriculum, it contains some wonderful ideas and a number of the passages simply jumped off the page at me today.
The authors Dennis J Sumara and Brent Davis of the chapters entitled Unskinning curriculum and Marked bodies talk about the sense of self-identity being (I quote)

'not contained within the boundaries of one's skin, but instead, occurs more ambiguously and tentatively amid the interstices of various interacting and overlapping phenomena. What is considered individual and what is considered communal cannot be caught within fixed immutable categories, but unfold through the continual fusing of perceptions, understandings and interpretations. Any conscious sense of self is always an interpretation of lived, remembered and projected experiences.'

... they go on to talk about unskinning or removing recognisable markers - stripping back the boundaries we use to identify ourselves and simultaneous remarking of those boundaries.

It's a concept I'm drawn to - and the associated imagery is lovely.
I'm thinking of marked bodies, of intersections and shared spaces, shared marks or markers (like the cinnamon peelers wife perhaps, who lives with the persistence of presence - ah me everything's a circle... back there again. Maybe this time I'll have more success at expressing the idea), shed skins maybe, (how the dye on the dyers bodies in that passage from In the Skin of a Lion just dropped off in one coloured sheet under the warmth of the water, to puddle like a skin newly stepped out of at the dyers feet) ...of the concept of shared identity and souls and of layers of communally shared iconography and stories - that are somehow 'unidirectional'. The imagery is lovely, and there is much to play with you have to agree.

'she wore a small depression on her shoulder' ...

Publicity and the Princess again

2009-05-07T14:18:00.006+12:00

Here's the pic from The Wellingtonian out today, by Lucy Mitchell.

It's me pretending to do sign language and smile...despite not knowing any sign (shame!) and feeling silly because I was faking it for the camera. What'd someone call me last year ? Hmmm.

The article mis-spells Sara's name and colours in outside the lines a tiny bit, but the publicity's great, so I let that go. Yes Adele - I let that go.

But Hey - what about last Night ?

The opening at deNada was a real blast last night!

It's such a cool store and a great location. The art looked amazing on red walls, and peacock walls...

Outside the store it was bucketing down with rain and unbelievably cold but inside it was red a nd cozy and stylie and packed with friendly people from all over the show ... and we had lots of fun.
There was great music provided by Nadas CD picks and flowing bubbles, speeches and heaps of gesticulating and grinning by both of us - get the picture? (not to mention the dress-ups)

I sold at least one piece of art (more news on that later, she says optimistically and half patiently) so it was successful on that level too. You know, I really think collaborating on a good idea is some of the best fun to be had, and when it works well it's way more than the sum of the parts. Today I've had texts from all sorts of friends who've dropped in to see it, or enjoyed last night and wanted to say a big thanks.

I have to thank Liz especially for her grand PR job - even popping out mid-show for an interview on Maori radio last night.
You can visit the picture of me again at deNada's blog if you like!

Today it's down to earth day again as I do my GST and hit the event planning job hard. You can read the online story here

International Newspaper Blackout Month just gone

2009-05-04T20:37:00.008+12:00

The date by Austin Kleon.

Last month was International Newspaper Blackout Month on Austin Kleon's blogsite.
He spent the month writing a poem a day with the help of a Sharpie and an insatiable imagination. I love the idea.
I know it's not April any longer and he's all finished with his 30 poems in 30 days - but go check them out. Such a simple idea - soooo cool.

Publicity and the princess

2009-04-30T20:09:00.002+12:00

Well you open the door - and in it comes!

'The Wellingtonian' newspaper interviewed me today about the sign language drawings for the show which opens at deNada on wednesday night next week. They came up to the studio to photograph me with the art and I felt like a performing princess!
It's necessary I know, but it's cringe material and if I dwell on it too long, it's easy to feel like Linus. I wonder if that means I spend too much time her by myself?

The publicity's been taken out of my hands for this show - it's all due to Liz from deNada, and since I've been snowed under with a huge job, I'm happy to have it that way.

Looking forward to wednesday night - I know it'll be a gem.

New blog

2009-04-30T20:00:00.005+12:00

Today I made a new blog - and it looks like this...
It's high time I had somewhere to post up my work and the thinking that goes on around it. I know I said it flows and feeds the art - but for some reason I still want to have some separation. I need some place I can send prospective clients to where they can see the breadth of my work.
I'm hopeless at the building the website, a year in and all I managed to do is put up a deleted odd looking template page! And you know what? I don't really care!
But... I do know how to blog, so I think I'll be able to link to that and send clients there to view my current work.
Anyway, it's overdue, so I've done it today.

It's called 'Picture it so' and you can find it at http://pictureitso.blogspot.com/

Incentive

2009-04-06T11:54:00.003+12:00

Nelson is a great place for thinking. I've just had a week of doing very little in the Autumn sun down there and it has been good for taking stock and motivating myself.
It must have something to do with gazing at all that slow moving tidal water and that yellow gold morning light...

I went to see Jay at Red Gallery and we looked at my work that she's holding in her stock room - quite a nice little collection by now - it was good to review it and reaquaint myself with last years efforts.
Best thing though, I talked her through the baby ideas I've been thinking a bit about and she liked them. We agreed that I'd develop them into a show for later in the year. Exhale!

I'm so excited to have the chance to work towards an end date (we're thinking tentatively about the week over the Nelson Arts Festival- how cool is that?)

So in between coordinating the Storylines Festival again, helping to organise Spinning Gold (the childrens writers and illustrators conference) to be held here in Welly in September, and reprising the sign language work in May ... I'll have something new to focus on. I'm glad - I bloody well need it!

I'm looking forward to making 3D work - to experimenting, and working a metaphor, and Suzanne from Konev Leather's keen to offer support wherever she can. I can see this might be a lot of fun.

Love your experiments by Wordle

2009-03-27T10:00:00.003+13:00

Ah watching paint dry.
Here's a Wordle mash up of one of Bruce Mau's quotes - Love your experiments. I'm thinking the alogarythm's done quite well with it ...

Reprising a show

2009-03-26T14:05:00.005+13:00

So when does reprising a show become a new show?

Do you call it by a new name - and if you do will all your friends expect to see something fabulous and new from you ?! (of course they will)

And will they feel duped when they realise it's a glorious opportunity to view the work they know and love all over again in a new swish location and setting?

I've booked the 6th of May to show the sign language and gesture pieces in Lambton Quarter - at deNada in Featherston St Wellington. Not a gallery but a lovely concept store run by a gutsy and savvy woman called Nada Piatek.
Between us we recognised an opportunity to work together, and I'm looking forward to the chance to have my art hanging in her store for six weeks. Six weeks!!

I've just GOT to paint some more...get those movies off my dratted laptop, pull finger, slap my hand into drawing mode, talk sternly and then dive into it. I want at least one new work in this show, and prefererably a big one. Just what I needed - a push in the right direction.

On another note - do you like the new banner ? I got sick of looking at the plain one !

Oh the 2D Life of Her...

2009-02-23T14:54:00.005+13:00

This show was spectacular!
I was hooked by it's black and white grainy, wiggly aesthetic from the word go. As the artist Fleur Noble built and explored a world at once 2 D and 3D, we sat transfixed. Images of her and her life size puppets stepped in and out of the paper stage set - merging with paintings on easels, imprinting scribble drawings of themselves by banging their heads onto paper - and at one point talking to each other by speech bubble. She whitewashed them out only to have the puppets tear the paper and almost step off the page.
When the whole set burst into cracking and then roaring virtual flames - and the paper littered floor appeared to ignite and glow with embers we were at once in it and swallowing our instinctive reactions. Bravo for this multi media performance that explored the boundaries of film, drawing, performance and puppetry.

You can check out the interview with Fleur Elise Noble and Melody Nixon of Lumiere Reader here http://lumiere.net.nz/reader/arts.php/item/2016

Homily homily hommmmm

2009-02-09T09:49:00.004+13:00

This morning I opened the fresh box of Hubbards cereal - and looked afresh at the little news sheet they tuck in beside the cereal... hey I thought - they're all homilies ! and it struck me, we get our little 'life prep' doses in cereal boxes these days, not just from our parents and elders (or church or where else...?). Hmmm... now there's a thought. Saving them too now. What a hoarder I'm becomming.

And one more .... This I've gotta see!

2009-02-03T20:11:00.004+13:00

The Therepeutic Hour - Art and Art History Explained by Kristelle Plimmer... an illustrated lecture in rhyming verse. 12 -14th Feb

She may not remember morning train rides into town in the front carriage in 1973, (yeah I was in third form alright!) but I'll never forget. It'll be nice to see Kristelle in high voice and action again.

Later ... (16 Feb)

We did go to this Fringe show and it was good.
Very funny in fact. Kristelle managed in an hour of unbroken rhyme to deliver an erudite discourse on the various conflicting and confusing theorem of art historians (Kant et al), and how their approach to art and artists has shaped art history as we know it today. All presented from on high (on stilts) - very appropriate.
Accompanying slides and slide notes just added to the sense that you were sitting in an art history lecture, and at times I had to remind myself that it didn't actually matter if I didn't remember it all - the rhythm of the words was such a pleasure.

2-D Life of Her

2009-02-03T19:38:00.004+13:00

I'm looking forward to three things this month ...

The Cuba St Carnival and being able to climb out my very own studio window and sit on my very own hot tin roof to watch the parade, and then to my birthday the next day.

To celebrate my day this year, I've booked some tickets to a Fringe show -
'2 - Dimensional Life of Her' by Fleur Elise Noble.
The show's brought to the Wellington Fringe Festival by the Govt of South Australia, and it sounds amazing. It's billed as 'A theatre production made of drawing, animation, puppetry, film, projection, performance and paper'...

I can't wait!

The pic I've included here is a still from her promotional movie for the show. You'll find the movie preview of the show on Fleur Elise Noble's website www.fleurelisenoble.com . She's done some pretty cool drawings and she plays with 2 -D projections onto 3- D objects in some very clever ways.

I LOVE the Fringe Festival.

Thinking about a comment By Hamish Keith

2009-02-03T17:14:00.005+13:00

I'm reading Hamish Keith's autobiography at the moment 'Native Wit' (This is the HTML version of the PDF put out by Random House NZ Ltd). It's a great read (especially now I'm up to where he's working as a junior assistant at the Auckland City Art Gallery with Colin McCahon. I'm thinking on this small piece of commentary at the moment...

" saying you are an artist and believing you are an artist, with however much conviction and passion, will not make you one. There is an equation to being an artist which is beyond the power of an individual to complete however fragile or tenuous it might be, the artist and the work have to make a connection with the culture in which they come from - disconnected is disconnected. The New Zealand official cultural pendulum seems to have swung from denying arts value to a point completely the opposite, giving too much benefit to too many doubts. I sometimes feel that the complete lack of connection between what is claimed to be a work of art and the culture in which it exists is, in some perverse way, seen as a virtue. It must be good because nobody gets it. There is always a case for subsidy and subvention, but it ought not to be a permanent state of affairs"
Hamish Keith 'Native Wit' Random House 2008

I'm not sure I agree with his first opening sentence. I think we are what we want to be and we become what we want to be (whatever our bent) through focusing our passion and having the conviction to follow through and put in the hard work.

But what he says about an artists need to connect with the culture in which they come from is surely wise. His views on art are based on his experience of living and working daily with art; with a group of peers who were artists that shaped and contributed to our cultural identity and have continued to influence New Zealand artists enormously to date.

I'm mulling on what I identify with, where my connection is and (humbly) what I can offer to the culture I belong to with the emergent art that I make.

Postcards

2009-01-26T11:19:00.004+13:00

So yeah, here are my little territory postcards. One or two I might play with as a full scale painting.

I found these

2009-01-23T14:45:00.002+13:00

I love these paintings by Australian Carl Plate. I wish I knew more about him. I can see a trip to the library coming on.
You know when you see something and you pine a little because someone has succeeded in doing work that you aspire to? The little journeys I've been scribbling for example (which I'll bring in and scan tomorrow)... My favourite's the olive green one called 'Spring'.

The nature of ideas

2009-01-23T13:38:00.004+13:00

Some ideas are gestated at length; the end results evolving through time spent on exploration, by following a deliberately convoluted path with the end point obscured to retain the mystery. The process is a delight and the results are often enriched by the series of trial and error discoveries and the depth of the research and thinking.

Other creative ideas arrive fully formed as lanky young concepts, lacking grace but full of enthusiasm - or like soft spoken ingenues peering out from behind a fringe. (OK enough of that syrupy prologue...)

And then some spark ignites an idea - and like a small flash, you can see the whole finished work in it's entirety. (Like a Paul Simon song).

Who's to say this is not how it should be done?

I've been spending a bit of time recently surrounded by handbags. No, not my new fetish - just the result of a serendipitous meeting, some interesting work and the opportunity to try my hand at a little creative marketing for a new friend's leather goods store.

She and I have talked at length about what a handbag expresses of a woman, what we carry in them and why... the need to equip ourselves with a beautiful receptacle into which we cram every earthly thing we may need to face the world at our best.

It's led me to think about the kinds of homilies that are shared as part of preparing for adulthood, parenting and dating - the kind of wise (or silly) advice that's passed down from generations to daughters and sons. Has it changed? What wisdom has crossed over? And what about the debunked outmoded or obscure advice? Is it still stuffed into the handbag of things that might come in handy along with the clean hanky?

The studio is beginning to be a place to stash the kinds of stuff I might use one day - you know the sort - paper, paints, wallpaper, handbag handles...

Today I'm seeing a collection of small bags (some of the handles I have acquired are art deco) and recticules made of elaborately pleated, folded or embellished paper - a support for drawing or painting that explores this notion of carrying useful wisdom as a defence against the ills of the world.

I'm not at all sure that attaching paper to these little brass fittings will work - but I'll give it a go.

So, I've begun a notebook of homilies. I want to collect them from a wide range of people and see what results.

Here's one from Sarah's mother : 'you can tell how organised a person is by the way they hang their washing'.
And one from Bob (though he credits it as emanating from certain Catholic boy's schools - and I know he didn't attend one of those) 'don't open your Xmas presents before Xmas'.

See what I mean?
Feel free to leave me a homily here that means something to you - either because you find it comforting or wise (still), or because it's ridiculous and you've exposed it as foolish.

Messing about in Wanaka

2008-11-13T11:59:00.004+13:00

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

2008-10-30T12:30:00.004+13:00

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

2008-10-27T15:00:00.006+13:00

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

2008-10-14T11:58:00.004+13:00

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

2008-07-11T16:24:00.012+12:00

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

2008-04-29T19:49:00.006+12:00

"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

2008-04-08T13:36:00.004+12:00

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

2008-03-24T17:46:00.002+13:00

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

2008-03-24T16:56:00.005+13:00

"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

2008-03-18T22:05:00.003+13:00

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...

2008-03-16T20:30:00.007+13:00

... 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...

2008-03-08T15:09:00.004+13:00

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

2008-02-29T21:38:00.003+13:00

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

2008-02-27T17:25:00.003+13:00

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

2008-02-16T20:03:00.005+13:00

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

2008-02-11T17:36:00.000+13:00

”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

2008-02-08T18:33:00.000+13:00

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

2008-01-28T21:02:00.000+13:00

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!

2008-01-12T18:33:00.000+13:00

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!)

2008-01-12T17:01:00.000+13:00

More red ones

2008-01-12T16:54:00.001+13:00

And still more

2008-01-12T16:49:00.001+13:00

Busy as

2008-01-12T16:42:00.002+13:00

Mark my words

2008-01-12T16:13:00.001+13:00

Bein' pretty brushy lately

2008-01-12T15:46:00.000+13:00

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!

And so this is Xmas

2007-12-24T14:38:00.001+13:00

Merry Christmas everyone.

May the seasonal holidays rest, inspire and rejuvenate your creative spirits... and wherever you're gathered, I hope it's with loved ones, good food and fine weather.

Me, I thought I had summer school sussed for my Christmas break - but the class was cancelled at the last minute.
A pity because I could do with the stretch and Carole Shepheard's course sounded like an interesting little leap at this point.

It makes me think though, as artists, how DO we stretch ourselves ....?
I know for me sometimes it takes an objective person (or 6) to help me see what's under my nose - or where I could extend the work I'm doing.

Do we get better at that as we go along do you think? (I wish, says this difficult woman)

At the moment amongst other books, I'm reading Wassily Kandinsky's book 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art'.

He has some interesting things to say about 'art for arts sake'... and the perennial questions of 'what' and 'how' that drive artists who try to express some kind of spiritual depth in their work (and produce something other than a dreaded Nikau palm - though Mr K doesn't mention THOSE).

He wrote the book in about 1911 (off the top of my head) and mostly what he says about the power of colour and painting for meaning (or spirituality as he puts it) is pretty cool - though he's prone to sweeping statements (I suppose that makes two of us).

For me, I'm thinking too often it's easy to get hooked up on the 'how' and lose sight of the 'what' that drives us. In rather quaint language Mr K says...

" If the emotional power of the artist can overwhelm the "how?" and can give free scope to his finer feelings, then art is on the crest of the road by which she will not fail later on to find the "what" she has lost, the "what" which will show the way to the spiritual food of the newly awakened spiritual life.
This "what?" will no longer be the material, objective "what" of the former period, but the internal truth of art, the soul without which the body (i.e. the "how") can never be healthy, whether in an individual or in a whole people..."

I was just talking to Bob - my studio mate, about 'what' and 'how' the other day too.

On that note, I'm returning to my last years Summer School work, trying to recapture the essence of it - the energy and the spontaneity as well as working from the source imagery to create some new works for a show in February.

I remember this orange artwork as a struggle - so NOT what I thought I'd be doing that week, so unexpected and unfamiliar (Hah! isn't that just the point of Summer School?).

Sometimes what we make isn't LIKE us - (what arrogance leads us to think it will be I wonder?) - or isn't immediately recognisable or seem to be where we're at. (Hmmm - this orange work was vivid,bold,decisive and full of warning symbolism as well as dark corners).

I remember looking at the stranger we made when she was born too, and being transfixed by the knowledge of her 'otherness' and lack of familiarity even though she was contained in me...

The learnings from the orange art have been good though, the loose brushwork has informed the under painting on the gesture and figurative Sara drawings, it fed into illustrations this year and taught me what happens when you push something over the edge, or when you push through the desire to screw it up and start over.

So I'm thinking sometimes 'how' IS enough - there doesn't always need to be a 'what' in everything we make, and the learning we need doesn't always come without pain - or obviously.

I'm painting a couple of times a week at the moment - a much needed antithesis to my job these days. It's so much harder to be spontaneous now.

Meantime mark 24th March in your diaries for 'Beyond words' - it should be good, and please.... have a wonderful Christmas OK?

arohanui Adele

Hands up

2007-11-24T18:12:00.000+13:00

Aye! it's been a while since I've been in here.

Doesn't mean I haven't been working though heh heh. Just that life's intervened again.

This body of work is gently coming to a close now. I've made 3 large sign drawings in all... since posting the 'birds' one. Each one is different and has a different feel.
The poems still move me and I hope I've done them justice - I chose a phrase from the poem titled 'The manual alphabet'; it talks about 'trees signing in the storm' ... such a stunning concept I think. Sarah's face is very expressive and so this one is less about hands and more about faces - it looks like she's calling up a storm.

Then there's a line from 'The hand as nest' - it goes ' you choose a fruit the size and shape of a heart'. So that's the last big drawing. I'm not so sure about this one - it seems a little 'bitty' in terms of the composition. (I'll borrow Ricky' camera and post up some terrible pics soon).

But then... I decided to move the idea of nesting hands along a bit and I'm experimenting with papier maché using silk paper and twisted ropes of tissue paper to make little 'finger bowls' (yeah cute huh?!) which I'm going to line with hands drawings - like fragile nests - or gifts that you give (which after all is another form of expressing a feeling or speaking to someone without words). I want them to be fragile - and quite deconstructed.

Here's the poems in case you're interested.

The Manual Alphabet

Sculpts. Just look at these neighbours. Who sees with the fingers
sees these things together. I once built a neighbour of light.
We used to read by his skin, the whole town, reciting "Repeat after

until we could decipher branches signing in the storm and
long past the fields now speaking, walking on his hands out of town.

Cole Swensen

The Hand as Nest

What caress?
and who
of slate who made
this flute, you

hollow out a bone with a smaller bone.

You choose a fruit the size and shape of a heart.

Cole Swensen

Words like birds

2007-08-27T14:33:00.002+12:00

This is a 2 meter long drawing.
It's the first of the 'Sara' drawings I've made. She is signing 'words emerge like birds'. I've put up a close up too so you can get a better look.

And a continuation of eyes...

2007-08-27T14:23:00.001+12:00

The last drawing I posted was about the language of eyes - what we allow to be seen, what we see and what we say. This next drawing is the opposite - still thinking about eyes as windows, and all that they say about us... if we allow it. This one has something of those butterflies that have big camouflage eyes on them - so they appear like owls, you know?

Thoughts on storytelling

2007-08-03T17:07:00.000+12:00

I know I haven't spent much time in here lately - just post 'n' run - so here's some real thoughts.

I've enrolled in an art history paper at Victoria this semester, just for fun and to keep things interesting - y'know?
We're being guided through a potted history of art from the 1800's to the present, and this week I've been thinking a bit about how my own art might be influenced by what I'm learning and how critically I'm seeing now.

So far I have to say, it's the story telling that amazes me in the works I admire - the ones that make me shake my head in wonder.
It's probably the single most important thing I could learn right now, that will empower my work and make it better. It's as much what you don't say, as what you do - and the references to myth, allegorical tales, history, the sublime and the narrative tale...Basically any complex means of developing that message you want to say.

The way that stories have been explored by artists through the last couple of centuries is fascinating. I'm drawn to the dark ones at the moment - the dimly lit depths of romantic paintings dealing with madness- or with emotions -overblown and overplayed, or just on view and asking the viewer to experience it.

I have so much to learn it's humbling really.

The Language of eyes

2007-07-28T16:00:00.000+12:00

Ok so here's a new one. This drawing's pretty self explainatory and it follows on from the hands - so much is spoken wordlessly, I couldn't ignore it now could I?

More on a theme

2007-07-16T10:49:00.001+12:00

Here are the latest drawings on this theme of gesture. I'm playing with the way we view images (in this case of simple gestures) and imbue them with meaning.

Sara Signing

2007-06-28T22:20:00.000+12:00

Oops I can't believe I haven't written about this - what an oversight!

Recently I met up with two really cool people named Sara and Darrel. They're both deaf, they both sign beautifully and Sara's been signing some of the hands poems for me.

Watching her talk with her hands is close to watching a flock of birds take off with a flurry of wings - very lovely!

So I've been making small movies while she signs. I plan to work from them later, to make large scale drawings that scroll at each end.
I hope to capture the movements of her hands as well as the sign shapes and I want to associate the shapes and phrases from the poems with loose imagry and underpainting. I've got a huge roll of Fabriano paper and a blank wall to pin it on ... I'm looking forward to beginning the first drawing as soon as I've worked on these gesture pieces a bit more.

It's funny, but I find working on large paper ( like metres of paper) ... both exciting and daunting. I've spent all month procrastinating beginning this part of my project - why, now that I have the time, have I chosen to make gesture drawings?Ironic.

Hold

2007-06-28T22:13:00.001+12:00

This is a pic of the latest drawing in this series. It's getting there- looser, more contrasty... a bit more mystery maybe.
The fruit's a fejoa ! Think I'll try and work on the looseness and play a bit more with this idea of gestures and the meanings we apply to them.

It's so nice to be back playing with these ideas again - I was pretty busy there for a while and some of the thinking got strained through the work soup.

There's a hand that lives inside

2007-04-30T13:12:00.001+12:00

These are still working drawings inspired directly from the poems, but I'm beginning to play with adding other imagery and thinking about increasing the sense of depth without making them too weighty. Here's the poem.

The Hand Thinks

There’s a hand that thinks, that lies inside, that lines the hand that moves

and it thinks: “While tying a knot, you can utterly forget, you can think
(can be thinking of something else at the time)
that muscles have a memory all their own
that lives again a braided time
alive
I tie.

Watch
what without you lives. The life of fingers
harbours
mutiny that doesn’t even bother. The hand, ever prior
avatar of architecture: archlessly, each one
is a frame.
There’s an empty frame on the wall and the hand is the sky
that opens the wall.

Cole Swensen

So what next?

2007-04-19T20:46:00.000+12:00

As of this month I have new studio, (and it feels like another beginning) and some new ideas bubbling up.
It's exciting, and I'm enjoying getting my teeth into a whole new concept.

Firstly, I'm living in a garret now (well, working - but I'm here A LOT) - really, it is ! My room is at the top of the stairs, in the attic space on top of an old Cuba St building which I share with two art galleries, another painter, and two designers. But my garret is all mine!! I look east onto roofs and west onto more roofs and a peek of the street. It's sunny and warm...and I love it !

After the show people said I'd feel flat, maybe even a bit down. I guess I did, but moving here helped sort that pretty quickly.

So what's next ?
I'm picking up on some of the ideas from folks who responded to the work in our show.
The drawings, the movement, the relationships between people...

And I'm planning a body of work that may be drawings, based on the idea of communication. Specifically, about modes of communication that're not dependent on spoken language. So the language of hands, of touch, gesture, texture, (maybe braille), body language (the language of space and intimacy) and of dance (especially polynesian dance where the hands are an important part of telling the story).

I want to make some large drawings that describe the dance of communication and movement through the qualities of line and tone.

So far I have a huge mind map, a collection of amazing poems, some great quotes...

Here's a few of them, and a couple of drawings from the series I've made this week. One focusses on the idea of caressing, and the other is titled 'snap!' ... I'm loving this new beginning !!!!

"We don't just think with our brains. We think with our bodies." ..." our bodies are a result of our ongoing experience and involvement with the world, which is always specific"...

"Communication is an embodied act. Researchers believe it has been so from the beginning. In fact gesture is believed to be the original form of human communication. Before writing and even speaking, our ancestors gestured" - Jürgen Streek

And a beautiful poem of Cole Swensen's titled:

The Hand That Caresses
after Alphonso Lingis

Glean sheet
that's soft and flees
gliding just above the surface
constructs a second skin of close attention.
The hand cannot tire in the face
of another, a hand hovers or floats
detached from the wrist, my hand fits your face precisely What recognises the suffering of the other is a movement in one's hand. He points to the plane, which is landing, which is the same.

(Her line phrasing is spacious and pretty, but it doesn't work on Blogger,sorry)

If you click on the photos they'll enlarge.

The Show

2007-04-19T19:10:00.001+12:00

Look at the date of the last post !

Before I can begin to describe what I'm up to next, here's some pics from the show and a bit of an update.

As you can see we had our exhibition last month. It was very cool and we had a good time. What more can you ask for really .... ? (don't we look pleased with ourselves - that's before we got flashed up for the opening or sold any of our work too!)

Our work looked beautiful together - it gelled and the pieces spoke to each other as we'd hoped. AND it was so cool to see it all together for the first time.

We had...
a gallery packed with a big buzz of enthusiastic guests and friends for the opening
some good sales
and a fine week in a friendly little light filled gallery space.

The week 'personing' the gallery flew by and we met all sorts of weird and wonderful folks who happened by, came in to shelter or bend an ear, to talk about the work, our practice, our ideas behind it all - or just to gaze. I think for me the biggest thing was having people 'get' the ideas and appreciate the journey as it was described by us. Especially the civic planner who yarned to me about the 'talking campi' in Venice and the way that people use social spaces globally.

I had no idea that the drawings would illicit such a positive response - I needn't have worried about my work looking cohesive - in fact, I needn't have worried full stop!

Here's a few pics of the inside of Thistle Hall, they give you some idea of how the work looked together.

Meaning something

2007-03-06T08:26:00.000+13:00

Remember when I posted the summer school photo I said I was still working out what it all meant to me ?

Well here it is. It's about painting for meaning. It seems to me that for myself, there are a couple of modes I paint in - and primary reasons for them. (I've talked about this before too, back in the archives).
One is the sheer pleasure of the paint - right down to the drag of the brush on the surface. And for this - I don't need to plan or stage an image, or have a preconcieved idea of the finished result... it's about the paint and me losing my critical stressed out self. Process, play and experimentation. (and this weekend I did that - and needed it like good sex after a drought)

The other's about expressing an idea that's important to me. Much harder, involves the critical and analytical self, and accesses a different kind of creative brain. It also opens me up to the wealth of messages I carry, so it's a double edged sword.
But you know - in the end, I think that these paintings are the ones I value most - where the thoughts and the process marry seemlessly to create some wonderful synthesis (and I'm not beginning to say the work's wonderful by a long shot - so don't get me wrong).

My summer school work was fun. It's sufficiently complex to be pleasurable to make - and hopefully to appreciate, but it has no meaning to me, so I'm struggling to integrate the lessons other than the gestural markings back into my work.

Expletives and knots

2007-03-05T12:33:00.000+13:00

Why is it that as this show gets closer I feel so tied in knots?
I should be working, but here I am describing how it feels to put yourself out there so thoroughly you might just as well have walked out of the house and accidentally forgotten your clothes.

The project manager in me is damned organised, and thankfully keeping the insane one roped in - but just sometimes, you know... she gains the upper hand. Fear is so paralysing, it needs to be kept in check - it'd be so easy to leave all this work in the plan drawers here in the studio.
Actually, the framer has the lot, and the rest of the canvasses are waiting to have fixings attached. Our joint sculpture is finished - (thanks Les for your help!) and looking great, so there's no going back - and I know we're both ready and looking forward to it.

I came into the studio on the weekend and slapped red and orange paint onto a big canvas, just to feel the joy again. I'd post the painting, but it's not finished... and I'm going to start another one for next week so I have at least a couple on the go.

I've been warned there might be a flat spell afterwards - so I'm working on some ideas I could develop next. Thinking it might be time to start a series of self portraits, ( there's a group online that challenge eachother to complete a self portrait a month for a year - think how much that would describe).I'm also thinking of ways to develop this 'space' theme further, and casting about for some clarity and some inspiration.
A few knots less and it'll show it's self. ¡pintar es vivir! (to paint is to live!)

Wharf walk

2007-02-09T13:56:00.000+13:00

Here are the most recent paintings I've done, worked up from the large series of five pencil drawings of the waterfront walk.

They're whiter than this in reality - though still dirty and fairly loose. The nuances of Photoshop to fine tune photos gives me such grief, so I give up... you'll have to make that leap yourselves! I'm enjoying the flatness of Flashe paint (vinyl based and with a gouache feel, as opposed to acrylic paint which is polymer based) and contrasting it with acrylics to play with matte versus sheen in parts of the work.

It's so hot the paint's drying almost before I can get it on the canvas (I love it!).

Our show

2007-02-06T22:07:00.000+13:00

Great news.
We've secured a spot at Thistle Hall to have our show - and the dates are the 20th to the 26th of March. (Opening's monday night at 6.00).
It's going to be GREAT, and I hope that everyone following this blog can make it along (if not in reality then in spirit!).

It's good for us to be organising this at last, to have the discipline of a deadline to work to - finishing things, framing and planning how we'll display the works and tell the story... making publicity materials and press releases (awful writing format - truly awful!).

It's a short show but the space is a nice one - so I'm pretty excited (and a bit nervous I guess).

Here's an image from the publicity we're putting out. It's a combination of our joint piece and some of the sections of the long waterfront drawing I made a while back.

Last week I began two paintings from the drawing too - so far not finished. If they turn out as I hope I'll add them to the collection and post them here too.

Summer School Wanganui January 2007

2007-01-15T10:46:00.000+13:00

Back from Wanganui and trying hard to work today... so far unsuccessfully. So I'm blogging instead.Here's a picture of my workspace by the end of a weeks hard work at Summer School.

As I'd hoped, we used the photocopier as a tool and the resulting images as drawings. Each excersize began with original drawings or paintings which where copied, changed with paint or conte and developed further. These pieces informed the paintings which were the focus of the weeks work.
Robs aim was to keep us moving - and hopefully developing our skills.
It was hot as hell in the huge green shed, huge doors rolled open and a breeze from the river if we were lucky. Throughout the week vibrant coloured work bloomed on the walls - the output from our class was prolific.

As for me, I struggled and fought both the process, the marks and images I made, as well as the physical conditions I worked under. By thursday I was settled and working well thank goodness. Wish I could work out why this happens to me - the keys and the blocks need a bit of unpicking and scrutiny... but I'm not up for it just now, maybe in a few weeks.
Meantime, I'm enjoying the paint again - the fix that you get from the sheer physicality, and the excitement of colour. A cool week!

Resolutions

2006-12-31T21:03:00.000+13:00

It's the last day of the year today - and a good time to review the artwork I've done over the year that I've posted in here.
(...much internal machination going on as I do this, so read on without me)

In a week I'm going to summer school again, and this year's goals for myself are shaping up already. I've chosen to take a class titled 'Fun with Fotocopiers' (yes spelt like that) and it's given me a few nightmares already. If it turns out to be decoupage with nail scissors and photocopies I'll be pretty gutted!
I suspect, since the tutor's the same inspirational character I had last year, that the photocopy aspect will be a means of starting and abstracting and inspiring work which hopefully will primarily be painting. Fingers crossed.

I really need to fan the creative flame, which was a little dimmed by too much thinking and work lately, so I'm looking forward to the stimulation, the sweat and the pace of a weeks intensive painting. (Not to mention the sunshine please... there's been none in Welly to speak of more than a day at a time and I feel like I'm beginning to suffer from SAD).

OK time for some resolutions for myself for 2007:

• Believe in yourself and trust what you do. This is probably the hardest one for me to maintain as a constant. But I bet I'm not the only one with this goal either, so it might as well be right up here first
• allow the work to change and develop, don't fret so much about variation. Who makes those rules??
• draw more - take an advanced life class, draw for longer and explore the edges. Get weird
• Bruce Mau's no. 5 - Go deep (more often) - look the hard stuff in the eye and try to describe it
• repeat things more often - sometimes they'll work and sometimes repeating will take the work somewhere else entirely which is OK
• contrary to Bruce Mau's no.26 Do enter competitions - they provide great small goals
• work outside more (but not in the rain!). Be mobile
• push through the torpid times and paint anyway
• submit work, look for guerilla gallery space or show to friends, but look for a way to get the work Out There

And lastly:
• finish that collaborative sculpture - it's cool and it needs to be completed

(I haven't added the usual 'have fun' because since I began this blog to record my art explorations I can honestly say I haven't stopped having fun - every single time I'm in the studio)

Ten resolutions. I think that's plenty !
Happy New Year everyone, I'm certainly looking forward to it.

Dream image

2006-10-31T16:12:00.000+13:00

Last time I posted in here I was thinking about portable kingdoms and how to express the idea that we carry our space/place/culture with us where ever we go.
This idea is more about looking at personal space of an internal kind. I played about with the idea in some unsuccessful sketches (see below) but everything looked so hard edged and what I have in mind is hazy and soft. I've started a painting of a group of figures that I hope links back in to the idea of crowds (funny how things get circular) and incorporates the concept of space as a kind of mist.

You know how sometimes really strong images come in a dream and you wake up really excited and carrying that 'eureka' feeling around ? This one was like that, and so far it's working out to be as I imagined, with the figures pretty indistinct and nothing linear happening, which is great.
I struggled when I realised that culture is part of what we carry around, allowing myself to get bogged in how I was going to express that huge concept. I've decided not to get too hooked up in it, and to keep the mystery alive for the viewer to come to their own conclusions about the blue aura.

I'll post a pic of the painting and progress on the sculpture.

I've had a quiet month or two in a creative sense, though I drew and entered my drawing into the National Drawing Award a couple of weeks ago. The works are all A4 and will be hung in Artspace in Auckland and The Physics Room in Christchurch.
I won't post it here - the internet is a funny place and it was a nude (and an axolotyl), so I don't really want the spam traffic. That's my excuse anyway. ( It was black on white embossed wallpaper and white on black painted paper) I haven't heard that it wasn't accepted for exhibition, so that's a good thing - I guess it might be 'in'.

I'm enjoying the return of the creative buzz - I think I've been thinking too much!

Portable kingdoms

2006-09-05T20:23:00.000+12:00

There's lots of painting going on at the moment that doesn't involve paint.
I'm thinking about how to describe the concept of transferrable transient personal space, as in the space we carry with us.

Here's some thinking I've been playing with...

None of the sketches here quite express what I want to say. And I hastily add, none are images I want to paint yet - at this stage they're just explorations of a concept. They all play with the idea of space as a tangible place, a transferrable experience ( like space mist) some kind of personal experiential environs (a personal bubble or caul) but as yet I haven't envisaged imagry for the culture or the history that we carry with us inside that 'bubble'. There's something interesting about the idea of a membrane that separates as well as allows transfer.

Getting Wordy

2006-08-27T15:10:00.000+12:00

I messed about for ages trying to get all the whites in this drawing to be white without losing the pencil linework- it's so long I had to photograph it individually, and I'm afraid I gave up in exasperation. To view this, screw up your face and imagine the paper is all a snowy uniform white !

This drawing that spans five pieces of Incisioni paper using just a couple of colours and a range of black graphite/charcoal blend pencils.
I've been thinking quite a lot about forgrounding and backgrounding information - Renée it's your article that started me down this little track, thank you.

I wanted to describe the snatches of imagry and sensory information that wash over and absorb me as I walk the wharf space each (sunny) day with all the other pedestrians. There's the patterns of light cast and reflected, the architectural and sculptural forms that abound down there - (from the light balls to the cranes and the pole forrest), the sense of urban spaciousness... and pervading all, the knowedge of 'the edge' - and the water which is everywhere you are.
I realise I'm fascinated by patterns. Take for example a steel panel from the 'feathers' bridge; sometimes I'm looking at the form, sometimes I see the array of holes punched in it, sometimes I'm looking through the holes to a vista or a cyclist beyond - and sometimes it's the cast shadows that I focus on, on the ground. My brain is simultaneously taking ALL these things in and absorbing them, Geeze it's smart.
In this piece, I guess I'm wanting to guide the viewer to look this way too. If I'm successful, I'll have retained the sense of space in the work (loooots of white paper) and the forgrounding /backgrounding will be obvious to the vewer.

The sense and the presence of the water has been an interesting conundrum - we haven't introduced it in any of the work to date other than as a view window (in our collaborative sculpture -which I'm still working on). To me it defines the purpose of the space - and so I can't ignore it. I want to say that it is inescapable, but without superimposing it as a motif or respresentation over the top of all the other imagery. Interesting.

It's nice to be drawing again. Six months ago I lamented that drawing was what comprised my work, and painting without mark making was nigh impossible to me. I'm over that - how cool!

The Dog and the Tinderbox

2006-07-30T15:23:00.000+12:00

I've been thinking a lot about the practice of drawing lately... realising how narrow my own concept of drawing is, and questioning it roundly.
As part of that I've been reading heaps and absorbing images and information,like the fish that I am.

I draw for several reasons,(probably more, but two main reasons spring to mind) the first is to map out an idea (so this is one of the definitions of drawing for me) - loosely, quickly and with an immediacy that hopes to trap the idea and fix it to the paper before it's lost. I seldom complete these drawings and often their value to me is fleeting. (Why does this drive mothers mad? Mine used to retrieve all my scraps and press them smooth!)
I also draw to render an image as finished art and my practice as an illustrator has defined my understanding of 'finished' as being ready for publication or release, amongst other things. (This is a fish hook for me - and I guess I'm trying to get to the bottom of it, to toss out some old precepts and develop a new broader understanding). This is the area of drawing that interests me at the moment, though not in reference to illustration. I'm focussing on both the artwork itsself and the process by which it's made; which I'm exploring with eyes the size of dinner plates, like the biggest dog on the treasure chest.

What do I mean by that odd word finished? (And for that matter, by what set of definitions do other artists define their drawing practice?) For example 'erasers are verboten' is one that belongs to my studio mate Steve.
Why do I constrain what I do this way?
What constitutes a drawing and how can marks on a jotter pad in an art shop be a collaborative drawing (of course they are but ...?)

Browsing around some artists blog sites tonight I came across this link to an exhibition of 'trees drawing' (yes that's right - trees).

As part of exploring drawing I've been reading about the figurative drawing of Ralph Hotere (an emminent and prolific New Zealand artist) and poring over the beauty of his expressive irregular line, the simplicity and the elloquence of it. I found this lovely description in the chapter titled 'Woman (1962 -1964) The early works', which I shared today with a friend, so I'll add it here as part of my thinking around this.

" ... Since he has lived in Carey's Bay, Dunedin Hotere has had a favourite tree at the end of his garden. He will often take a small section of shed twigs, in lengths of approximately 300 -400 millimeters, carefully testing each one for it's flexibility and rejecting those that do not quite suit his purpose. He will then cut the tip and break the wood up by mashing it so that the end becomes fibrous, working it until it's exactly as he wants. His method of applying the paint from this point, for both the figurative images and the abstract works is quite meditative. With the figure drawings he will start with a blank piece of paper laid flat on a table, pick up the drawing instrument and after some minutes of looking at the model, draw in the air above the surface of the paper and then, returning to look at the model, trace her outline in the air. He will repeat this process at least twice before committing a mark to the paper. The pauses and periods of time spent carefully assessing the figure can take anywhere from five to ten minutes. He will then finally look down at the paper, draw in the air above it one last time and very rapidly and intuitively draw the figure in the space of a few breaths. It is a process almost like a dance, with the image pouring onto the paper.
This is the same method he uses for the abstract works. Before applying paint, ink, or graphite to a surface there are always these long meditative pauses followed by a series of rapid movements. Each long drip of white paint, every skeinlike fleck and every contour of the figure is carefully balanced in his mind before it is resolved on the ground of the image."

From 'The Desire of the Line' Ralph Hotere Figurative Works by Kriselle Baker published by Auckland University Press

And the amazing thing to me is the freshess and sensuality that he captures in his drawings - they fairly drip with it !

Through Space

2006-07-28T17:18:00.000+12:00

One day in another life I'll take up photography - not. You can tell I've had a couple of wines by now when you look at this.
This is a picture of our sculpture as it is today. I've been adding layers to it all week - first gesso and then acrylic paint. It's going to be gooood !

All of a sudden our rendering of the concept of figures moving through space, and of spacial planes moving through figures - is working well.
Once I add the receding diamond pattern to the base, the sense of space will be amplified too. To come still is the height element - a wire frame of the view our figure group is passing (the sea). I'm thinking this should be patinaed copper and also the series of spheres bisected by another plane (these represent the sculptural light balls on the wharf area).

I was worried I'd not do the sculpture justice with my paint application - but it's looking fine.

A stack of books and inspiration

2006-07-16T18:40:00.000+12:00

Curled up by the fire with a stack of art books from the library and Little Feat on the stereo - bliss.
I found these quotes from a book called "Drawing from the Modern" (Maurice Merleau Ponty) which I think are cool for their eloquence and their fluency - the post renaissance view still rings true in many ways.

On the subject of line :
'Akin to handwriting, line is a graphic declaration of the presence of a particular persona," (it is) "...the residue of the activities of a particular hand"
- which I think is a nice way of expressing the personal quality that we each bring to our drawing, the past experience and the hand-memory.
Another phrase, even more poetic, describes line as 'a seismograph of the soul' (yeah ?)- lovely but uncredited I'm afraid so I can't assign the quote here.

And this from a woman artist called May Stephens from the book called "Lines of Vision" whose author I omitted to note,I'm sorry.
She says ..."Between a line and a smudge lies a bridgeable gap, a shift of the eye. A line is a trajectory; too close or too far, too slow or too fast, it's a smudge and a blur. A smudge is a trace of what was or is to come. But a line is here."
- I like that - a line is here.

And now it's my turn

2006-07-15T17:49:00.000+12:00

Ricky has cast our sculpture and it's looking great (see Catsup and you'll know what I mean). It's sitting in the studio now and between coats of paint I've been staring at it and getting to know it from all angles. Last time I saw it, it was a photo and before that, just a sketch. It's so much better in 3D and with the refinements Ricky's made to the figures.
It's my turn to build the next part of it (with a little help) and to add the painted surface that will bring it to life and complete it. It's so cool to see the product of our joint imaginings and the day we spent conceptualising the piece. Over the next month I'm going to work on it between painting. I haven't worked in 3D since 5th form so this is going to be fun !

Traveling through space

2006-07-15T17:13:00.000+12:00

Here's my completed painting of the 'ripples' concept (well, after I took this picture I signed the painting so technically...)
It's nice to be happy with a piece that's for sure !
This version has mystery and still retains the surreal quality of it's predecessor, but the figures have momentum and I like their loose description. It was worth the wait and the angst to get this out.

The painting's about social space - and again I'm thinking more of transitonal spaces. The way we create ripples as we move through - and the groupings we fall into natually as we pass through or stop to connect with others in a space.
Why the backpack ? Well that's the baggage we all carry on any journey.
OK, so why the nakedness and lack of hair on the figures? I'm interested in stripping away the things that identify us and I wanted this to be about us as humans, our sameness and our essence as vulnerable people (some of us hide behind hair don't we ?). Right now describing fabric and clothing doesn't interest me, but rawness, texture, line and emptiness does.

Life's just a big pool isn't it ?

...Hey that might be a nice title for this piece!

Now I feel like dancing. I've gessoed another canvas for next time. I want to make another expression of this idea - it's a goodie and I'm not finished with it, but for now I'm content. (Yes i know, it's a contradiction in terms!)

Begining and Beginning and Beginning

2006-07-11T14:57:00.000+12:00

Making art and for that matter any creative endevour is a series of beginnings again and again. Empowering yourself to do just that is the interesting (and sometimes hard) bit. It's also the joy and the rush and the compelling part of it.

I sorted all the issues with my Ripples image the weekend before last - but it's not there yet. It needs the mystery added back into the image, so it's a work in progress at the moment and I'm waiting for the time to begin to work on it again. I'm thinking I need to hide bits of it - to reveal and conceal and to add more surface texture. At the moment the focus is the line (no bad thing) but by itself the line is obscuring the message to the viewer because it's all there is, and it's strong. In short - the painting's not finished !

I heard an incredible sound performance by Jeff Henderson at the Govett Brewster Gallery (Sound/Bodies winter lecture series) in New Plymouth last weekend.
To me it was an aural version of the concept of stripping out the interstitial spaces and collapsing what's left into a whole new image/pattern. It was as if the audience experienced the artist as he was calling to someone from two hills away and bits of his sentences were lost in the atmosphere across the distance. Vocally the sounds we heard were no longer whole pieces of language - just the upper and lower registers of vocal expression rendering partial words from afar (but without the dopler effect).
It was so exciting to HEAR a rendering of the sound concept of the idea I've been playing around with. Made me realise I could have done it so much better with the pleated canvas ... and that I need to revisit the idea and add back the sense of space I've lost through so much use of colour. I was so inspired I wan tto begin again!!

And Bruce Mau says...

2006-06-26T10:33:00.000+12:00

3. Process is more important than outcome.

"When outcome drives the process we will only ever go where we have already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we're going, but we'll know we want to be there."

More words of wisdom from the Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. (Which I see Eric Holowacz included in his No.8 wire Ezine a couple of weeks ago - good on him)

The wading painting I posted last week is no more. I spent a couple of sessions in the studio on the weekend looking at all the things that needed work and making changes to the painting. I reworked the motionless bespectacled figure so he moved purposefully and with lovely forward flow towards the group of three - changed their focus so they looked in his direction - the rigid horizon looked great as a loose line 'corner'.... all good. I even reduced the black line weightiness that everything had... and the ripples around the main figure became a lovely wake. I stood back feeling pleased that I'd solved a lot of problems that had bugged me - and realised that the composition was screwed completely now !
My figure was falling off the canvas to the right and the small group was the wrong scale all of a sudden in relation to him.

So it all had to go - I'm back to a thin layer of gesso and I'll rework the painting with the knowledge I've gained about the things it needs to keep the dynamism and spaciousness I'm after. A good many realisations were made yesterday.

• everything is fixable somehow and it's always worth a try (really it is)
• nothing fixes a bad composition (or there's a point where it's inevitable. When you get there you absolutely know you've hit the end of the tar seal)
• a great idea is worth all the labour pains
• painting when you can't feel your feet is not fun
• paint won't dry if the studio's like the inside of a freezer
• ask people to text before they come up to the studio - otherwise they cop it if the paintings at a critical point
• don't even try to come in to the studio for less than 2 hours - just don't

So... it's still the process I love, and this is part of it (she says philosophically and with chagrin). I know I definately want to 'be there' with this idea so I'm beginning again.

¡pintar es vivir! (to paint is to live!)

Wading

2006-06-19T09:44:00.000+12:00

My weekends work is a version of the sketches from last week. As a piece it's kind of surreal, and Steve my studio mate points out that the static pose of the central figure means the painting hasn't got the sense of movement that the sketches capture, and so some of the mystery is lost. He's right, and maybe that's adding to the sense of disquiet that the painting causes me.

Hah ! I see a pattern here - I'm beginnning to wonder if this is how I react to my work on completion - the joy's in the doing for me, and once done I want to improve on the result straight away. Interesting, though this time I really do think I could improve on it ( It's not necessarily finished). The figures aren't particularly modeled - I wanted to reveal the base texture and keep the composition incredibly simple... does it work or does it just look unfinished I wonder?

At the same time as working on this painting I was working on a commission for a book cover - all loose hot magenta and oranges - it was bizarre to switch back and forth - but a great contrast. I'd forgotten how much fun it is multi tasking on paintiings simultaneously.

Paper as space

2006-06-11T20:25:00.000+12:00

Back in March I said this on my blog "...Trying to capture the spaciousness and air in my images ... this morning I asked myself 'what if the paper was the space?' I've been treating the paper as a canvas to describe a space and occupants. If I let that go, can the paper act as the space and allow me to describe the ripples we make better ? What can I do to the paper to allow the viewer to experience what I want them to ?"

I'm looking at these sketches and I think that I've managed to allow the paper to be the space. It's nice to see that progression in the work. March huh - it's taken a while !!