Moving On

After the euphoria of an exhibition, moving on to a new body of work is quite hard. While there can be the temptation to just do more on the old theme, it feels instinctively right to move on to a new challenge and build up a new fascination and absorption. It is not as if the shift is massive. The media and techniques are all familiar and only the subject matter will be different, so I have taken the plunge. The new theme is about the "high country." While I appreciate that Australia is not over-endowed with mountains, it is a part of the country that we have walked in extensively over the years.

Earlier in the year, before the winter set in and the snow fell, and in anticipation of my new theme, we had a day walk to Mt Erica, at the lower end of the Victorian Alps, so that I could take lots of photos to add to ones I already have on file.

With the exhibition over I was all ready to go. Drawing seems to me a good way to examine and get to know an object so I have been drawing all sorts of different details from the alpine environment, using my photo references. When I feel that I have enough understanding and enough material, then I will move on to thinking about making art from this “drawing.” 

On the Walls

The exhibition is up. It is in the gallery (where fire engines used to park - a small intimate space), the printing studio and the back room. 

It is always really satisfying to see all of the hard work for the previous 2 years, in one place. The art looks quite different from when works are seen singly in the studio. It is also really satisfying to be able to share the work with others and answer the inevitable question, “How did you do that?”

My fiddly gluing, cutting and HB pencil drawing techniques, once explained, do lead to much eye rolling and questioning of my sanity and yes, I do agree, I am a bit nuts, but making art is so relaxing and meditative that I don’t think about how long or how messy the process can be.

The Opening Celebration went well with a good crowd and many glowing comments plus an unexpected rash of red dots.

Anyone working alone, like I do, must suffer from self doubt from time to time, so having an exhibition when you get feedback from others can be very reassuring. I will enjoy the experience for the next 2 weeks.

Exhibition time

How time flies. I have been working away at another body of work. After nearly two years, it is all coming together and so it is time to share what I have learnt in an exhibition.

My overall theme and fascination continues to be “Detail in Nature” and this time the work is all about the intricacies of the leaf. Initially I spent a lot of time photographing, examining, and drawing leaves from many Australian native plants and then developed a series of prints, drawings and paintings based on my explorations.

There was a lot of cutting delicate shapes with tiny scissors and a lot of very sticky gluing of string and embroidery cotton onto canvases for the paintings as well as a lot of slow building up of lights and darks with a HB pencil for the drawings. Below are the last 2 of the very fiddly thread and oil on canvas paintings, finally finished.

I now know a lot more about the insides of leaves and am generally happy with the works I have created.

 

As the attached invitation indicates, the exhibition is once again at the Firestation in Armadale. It will run from Wednesday August 9^th to Saturday August 26^th with the Opening Celebration on Thursday August 10^th from 6 – 8 pm. Come along.

With string and paint

It has been a long time since my last entry. Many things have got in the way (family bereavement etc etc) and progress on the paintings as been a bit slow. Four of the six planned works are finished however.

Once again, I have dug out my “big ball of string” and combined string (as well as finer embroidery thread) and paint to try and create a more three dimensional affect, working up two pairs of paintings based on eucalypt leaves, one set from the perspective of microscopic structure and one set with the subject viewed under a magnifying glass.

Getting the string onto the canvas is a very sticky business, especially all of those small and fiddly bits.

It is time to start painting

I spent most of 2016 working on drawings and prints. The series of drawings is all roughed out and I am at the time consuming stage of building up the darks and lights on each with much layering, using an HB pencil. As this process is not taxing on the brain I usually do it in the evenings in the more social environment of the living room, while simultaneously listening to an audio book. Progress has been slowed recently as I have been manufacturing my supply of Christmas cards for 2017 in the evenings. This is a job I do in January. I know it is a bit pre-emptive, but then I can forget about it rather than be frazzled in October when life is busy and I still have my cards to make. I also know that I could buy the cards or just send emails, but I am stubborn and like the personal touch of the cards, so the January tradition continues.

I have found it impossible to incorporate the main theme of my artwork (ie: details in nature and specifically at the moment, the nature of the leaf) into the cards, so they have traditional Christmassy motifs but incorporate techniques I use in my art eg: collage and lots of mainly fiddly cutting (see below).

I did use a technique from long ago in one version of the cards this year ie: torn paper patterns. Back then I used to scrape paint down sheets of used paper (mostly reports from the office) to create harmonious patterns, and then collage on the torn strips, sometimes in interwoven patterns. Now I am just tearing and collaging Christmas paper strips, but the principle is the same.

On the printing front, progress has been more sustained. In addition to continuing with my 8 multi-stage plates I have printed out some single colour linocuts of the internal structure of leaves and experimented with adding collage and watercolour to them for a bit of variety. The results are quite abstract as the colours are not realistic but I don’t think that matters (see below).

However, that was 2016 and now, with an exhibition looming in 2017, it really is time to get on with some painting.