Work in Progress #5

Just finished stage #5 its 2.30am and I need some sleep! Its pretty much there, just need the varnish and a couple of touches and I've completed the painting.

The opening was fantastic...

Well, made it to Melbourne...As ever, I had a wonderful time. Got some paints from St Lukes, bumped into Jenna Blyth, the curator of Snap Freeze whilst looking at the Jan Senbergs show at Niagara Galleries. Its a big show with some good honest free painting, very refreshing to see. Went to the Stencil Festival where there were artworks from all over the world. I felt so inspired by it. Then met some artists from the JAC artists community that have studios on the grounds which formally housed a school where the festival was being held. They were all really nice and unlike community studios I've been part of before these artists seemed to work well together and were considerate of each others needs.

Sunday was the big day and the wonderful drive up to TarraWarra, I had no idea what to expect other than I knew how much I love the architecture and how everything is done so well in every way with the Gallery. I walked through the door and was just elated to see the first thing was my picture hanging on the wall, then I looked at the catalogue and found my painting reproduced twice...I was just so happy. Lots of friends turned up as they said they would and supported me in this important show.



I did get to meet Dr Janine Burke and was pretty excited about that...just had to get a picture taken with her :)

Snap Freeze opens this weekend

I'm hopping into a bright blue gas guzzling thumping great big Ford XR6 and heading off to Melbourne in the morning for the exhibition opening at TarraWarra. Really looking forward to seeing lots of people I haven't caught up with in ages and meeting Dr Janine Burke who is opening the show.

Dr Burke has wriiten many texts about Heide and the people involved. This has been a special subject area of study for me for many years and even was able to use my research and interview one of the characters from this story of Australian Moderism on one occassion with a journalist for two ABC progams. This colouful character was none other than the publisher, poet and victim of the Ern Malley Hoax, one, Max Harris. The main program we produced was "A Life-Max Harris" but the material collected is in Archive and gets used every-so-often which is great. Max was quite elderly and could only talk for short periods of time but he was passionate about his beliefs and sat beneath a painting done by his friend, Ivor Francis, wearing a beautiful brocade smoking gown. It was really a privledge to hear his version of events surrounding Sid Nolan's Glenrowan series of paintings and how they began, as well as many other facets of his life.

Anyway, I digress...cannot help once I start about this subject...The show is going to be great to see, still life is often overlooked and I hope this show will put the genre into perspective and thus its place in contemporary art as a subject matter.
Lots of dealers, artists and friends are going to be there, so will post some piccies of the opening when I return.

Work in Progress #4

Here is the next stage of the painting...haven't quite finished fiddling with the smaller fish yet because had to stop working on it today and get on with other things. The next stage after finishing the fish will be to unify the background with a glaze and then put additonal glazes on top of that to signify that the fish and rocks are under water. So probably one more post and its done....Has to be finished next week so its all going to plan.

Work in Progress #3

I've been having great fun throwing, splattering thick paint to build up the surface of the background of the painting to describe the sandy terrain. I have to let it dry and work over with some glazes, next step is to work the fish back as had to wipe them down from the paint splatter. This is because I didn't want them to be all bumpy from paint drips and not smooth and oily in appearance. Its always scary when you work through a painting, sometimes the stages look really ugly before you pull it together...but I know where I'm going and it all make sense in the end.

Stage #2 Work in Progress

Its been a very busy week, I got some new paint, Vasari in from the States and have just been itching to get back to this painting and try them out. I really recommend them, great texture, good pigment saturation, they may well be replacing a few more of my Old Holland Paints than I thought.




Here is stage two of my Koi fish painting and now its the weekend I will be able to work on getting to stage three!