Time to GEE UP and get to it!

Robert Genn says in his recent email "Thinking ahead is good! Starting is better!"

With that in mind, I am about to put the hectic pace of 2011 behind me and enter the quiet space of the studio and START to paint! I'm not sure about you but everyone I know is telling me how busy and fast this year has been, that time is speeding up and there's so much to do, that making decisions is becoming more and more difficult. I know for myself that this Year of the Rabbit has chopped and changed about quickly and is proving to be a difficult one in which to 'focus' in the way I need to focus!

So here we go, to make a START!

Even my newsletter and blog have gotten well behind and there are many, many friends and colleagues that I just haven't had time to connect with....and on that idea of connection, isn't it now a strange concept...to connect (?) or do we?

I was thinking this morning about how many friends and connections I have around the world (and I love all of you - you are all such fantastic artists, philosophers and people!) and how much I would like to be able to 'connect' with you all more! My mother on the other hand had only 2 friends who lived overseas and to 'connect' with them, she used to write long letters by hand, send them off by post (6 weeks to deliver) and then wait patiently for replies! They were long letters though and full of stories about the family, her feelings and desires and well-wishes for her 2 pen pals (old nicknmae for people we used to write to).

How my mother would have loved this new mode of connection - but back to my question - do we really 'connect' nowadays? I rather doubt that we are connecting! I feel we are having quite a shallow experience these days compared to my mother's.

Our lives are now filled with rather tenuous promises of "I'll remember you!" "I'll definitely be in touch!" "You'll see me again" but each day brings us 'new' connections, new people and new promises and our past words fall like leaves in the Autumn on cold and hard ground.

So now back to my studio to re 'connect' with my 'art'. And hopefully now that I've made a START back on the internet after some 8 months doing other stuff, I'll be able to keep a connection with you all as well!

Last year saw the end of "The Eye of the Eagle" Series and I am now preparing myself for the long way forward into the next series of work.......the idea has come from the past series but is more focused....more later as I progress forward.

My works are now available at Wentworth Galleries in Sydney CBD as well as Aarwun in Canberra and Jayes in Molong. I will be discussing exhibition dates over the next few weeks and will let you all know when and where but in the meantime, take a look in the galleries if you're near them!

Reminiscing at Year's end!

Well, I've just looked at the date of my last blog and see it's back in the middle of 2010.....which just goes to show how quick this year has passed by. I set out to have a good year and it's definitely been that!

The Survey of my artworks over the last 30 years or so has been hung at the Orange Regional Gallery and opened to a large crowd of the best people I know. It was fantastic to see the different crowd that came to the opening that night. There's a 2 mb video on my website if you want to wait for it load....shows about 1/3 of the show.

With 6 exhibitions behind me this year, I am looking towards hopefully a quieter 2011. This year has been quite strenuous and one has to wonder what sort of perverted amusement one gets from all the pressure. Along with my own shows, I have hung and curated another 10 or so at Jayes in Molong so in many ways I am exhibited out!

There was also the larger than life itself, putting together of CONTEMPORANEA with Jim van Geet which traveled from Melbourne CBD to Canberra over the month of October to November. Jim and I were amazed at the exceptional response we got to our proposal for the Florence Biennale Artists of Australia group which we head up, to exhibit together. We expected about 20 artists to respond but no; 33 artists put their hands up and we ended up with over 100 paintings, all of which were large or really, really large to hang. Argh! But Jim is an amazing man and whilst the whole exercise put me into hospital with a 'stress' attack,. Jim carried on and hung the Melbourne show then packed it and took it to Canberra. Thanks also to all those wonderful artists who pitched in and helped!

You can see my friend and artist, Sibylle Werner here with Good Boy by Gillie and Marc! Good Boy was a great drawcard and brought a variety of responses!

Here we are at the National Gallery testing out the pears!

 

 All round it's been a great year! Hard, but great! So till next time, break a leg!

Strange New Ideas!

I was wandering in the mind this morning....hmmm...as I often do. The topic I was wandering around was the idea of digital images and the lack of understanding of this new art form here in Oz.

The reason for me wandering off into a maze of thoughts and ideas around this topic was brought about by a conversation with the curator at the gallery in Canberra where I currently have a show. One of the offerings on hand is of course, a digital print otherwise known as a Giclee Reproduction. Now this seems perfectly obvious to me as an extension of my artworks but to the average punter, it is a frightening thing to think that someone can make a copy of a work and then print it in "how many" copies?

The curator was asked whether it was a lithograph? Does the print method make a difference? Lithographs can be reproduced ad-infinitum also and the artist rarely has a hand in making them either.....that is if they are as complicated as the painting I am rendering in a different format. The buyer still needs to trust that the edition is limited as the artist says.

But why are we so afraid of new printing methods here? I felt that perhaps there is a feeling that artists should be keepers of past technologies, masters of secrets long forgotten, the shamans who will bring forth those ideas when a society collapses......hmmm? Is that why here in Oz we are so afraid of the 'new media' or is it a completely philistine lack of knowledge.

When I went to Florence, the biennale had 2500 works there to ponder and amongst them were a great number of artists working in the new media. So prevalent was digital technology that there were works, not only on canvas, but reproduced on paper, aluminum sheets, glass, plastics and polyurethane surfaces and on and on. These were fascinating to look at! They challenged you to look further into the new.......

So for the life of me I can't understand why here we still think that working digitally is something of a fraud; not 'real art' is it?

I hope for the sake of all the artists out here in Oz pushing the boundaries and seeking out the new (which is what I thought artists did?) that the art voyeurs start to look in wonder at some of the wonderful pieces that new technologies are allowing us artists to pursue! They are artworks just the same as the old and true!

Anyway I feel better now, do you?