Waiting for love

It is SALA (South Australian Living Artists Week) time! The studio will be open for one weekend only when the public are welcomed in. As well as a salon hung stockroom and other work in the main gallery, I've put together a small group of paintings that are just personal little memories collected from varied places at different times. This first of these is called 'Waiting for love' and is 5"x6" in size, inspired by David Lynch's, 'Twin Peaks'. I drew this sketch some time ago and have been wanting to paint it for ages and seeing as how I'd purchased a group of panels, the same ones Duane Keiser uses, I thought it would be a great time to just do it!

So here is a clip to remind you of / or introduce you to the mastery of David Lynch...and a short snippet from one of my favourite scenes from 'Twin Peaks'..enjoy! (PS Cannot wait to see his new movie 'Island Empire'!)

Vasari Paints

I'm working on several paintings at once and don't really want to put them up until they are finished...hence me talking about 'other stuff' meanwhile. However, what I do want to say is how much I like using Vasari Paints the texture and consistency together with the great colour range has me very happy. Unfortunately they are not available in Australia but you can order them direct from the website. I have to thank David Kassan for alerting me to these fantastic paints. I was really impressed with the service and the way they are packaged as well. You can see the care with which the paints are created as opposed to those disgusting chalky Art Spectrum crappie excuses for oil paint. These are in fact exquisite hand made paints with good pigment concentration and coverage....my favourites so far are Brilliant Yellow Light, Bluff, Ship Rock, Jasper, Bice & Cedar....but really ALL of them are great colours! Save your pennies to get your mitts on them NOW!

Fast car driving, sleek and modern

I've been driving around thinking, walking and thinking...that is in between working....I've got so much I want to paint about at the moment, I've got a traffic jam going on in my head that is just not making it to the hand, to the paint to the brush to the canvas! I've prepared eight little boards for some studies to be displayed for SALA week...(South Australian Living Artists Week), I'll put them up on the blog before hand and you can have a look. I was going to partake in the painting a day caper but think I really don't have the time for it, so it'll be a joint two-day SALA and online show.

I somehow feel like I did at art school, I want to paint everything again, buildings, industry, streetscapes, people, just life as it happens around me. I've been too long constrained to one genre and to one way of painting. I'm terribly frustrated that I've not got the luxury of daylight hour studio time except on weekends.

Off topic now...

So, what did you all think about this???



Best bit of social commentary art I've seen in ages! It wasn't even trying but its just well, brilliant! What were they thinking! I know I'll be heading down there when next I'm in Sydney to get my picture taken with the white pointer!

Egyptian Exhibition /Waterhouse /Booth /Alpacas /Blue Wren / Mt Bold

Visited the Art Gallery of South Australia to see the Egyptian Exhibition "Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre - Journey to the Afterlife" and to have a look at some of my favourite works in the Gallery Collection. Every man and his dog was at the Afterlife show, but its good to see people coming to the gallery, even if they do march past the States collections! Of the Louvre exhibition, I enjoyed the very small objects of affection, particularly the bird like creature known as the 'Ba' sitting beside his master ready to take his soul into the afterlife.

Strolling through the major collections, I noticed the Asian Cultures Galleries have had a 'makeover' and saw quite a few new donations from the Heaven family. A row of wonderful silver objects that are all odd shapes, great stuff! So then I wandered off to look at the European Collection and stopped by William BOUGUEREAU's, "Virgin and Child" 1888, whilst the subject matter is not of interest to me, the way he painted flesh is worth the examination...I always look at it every time I go past...



Just across the way is another painting, I don't really care for the subject matter but the colours J.W. WATERHOUSE, used in "The favourites of the Emperor Honorius", painted in 1883 is something every painter should examine. It has wonderful realism yes, but it is the textures, the salmon pinks, the lemons and soft greens and pale blue's, I see contemporary abstraction of colour rather than the perfect form...I could and have stared at this painting for the longest time...



I wanted to see what the contemporary section had to offer...The large Gerhard Richter painting is cracked very badly and think it should be taken to ArtLab immediately for restoration work! I was disappointed that the Ah Xian's sculpture had been moved from the centre of the room where you could walk around it to a place where it isn't lit and also with its back against the wall! WHY??? Feeling a bit grrr about all of that I felt I needed to look at the work I'd left until last...The amazing, thought provoking work by Peter Booth titled, "Painting 1982" featuring cannibals and flying people, its rough, gutsy and just where my mind is right now. I'm feeling like I don't want to paint small delicate paintings, perhaps it is time for me to go back to large, emotionally driven works that somehow realise some of the stuff I keep hidden from the world. As my day job becomes more and more regimented, I feel that this is why I'm needing to break out and be free so to speak. I guess I'm doing a bit of soul searching and wanted to see what I responded to by looking at a microcosm of art history and it was Booth who spoke to me most....

Managed some painting time and worked on the portrait that has been on and off the easel for awhile. Thought about doing some quick studies but decided fresh air was more important, so got out and about where I came upon some Alpacas :)



and a very nosey little Blue Wren at Mt Bold Reservoir that just couldn't keep away!



Just as aside to the reservoir, our State Government, as of July 1st, has just instituted the next level of water restrictions and a no watering policy (buckets are ok) and yet as you can see, they are letting out plenty of the so called precious commodity...curious, don't you think????