News from Spring

I thought I would swing by to update you on few things I have been up to lately. After a holiday visiting family in the country, Camping at Wombeyan caves followed by a relaxing few days at the beach, we returned refreshed and ready for the lead up to Christmas... maybe.

I recently joined Illustrators Australia, I'm very excited to be part of this great resource for Illustrators. You can see my little page over here.

I painted a piece of timber for the "9x5 show" for the Illustrators Australia CARNIVALE exhibition. I was inspired by a past trip to Venice and Padua. If you happen to be in Melbourne you can visit the 9X5 Exhibition at SPACE 39, Lvl 2, 39 Little Collins St, Melbourne. Opening night is this Friday the 9th November 6pm-9pm.

Last Saturday I made the long trek into the Blue Mountains to "Pinerolo" Margaret Hamilton's children's book cottage in Blackheath. She runs courses on children's book publishing among other things. It was so lovely to be swept up in her enthusiasm for the books she has created over the years and all the amazing writers and illustrators she has worked with. She was also joined by renowned illustrator Wayne Harris who showed us many of his award winning books and and the original illustrations he created for them.

I enjoyed Margaret's extensive Owl collection, original collections of artwork from many amazing artists including one of my former tutors Tony Oliver. I didn't get a chance to have a good peek at her book collection.

Paper for Art swap with Dawbis

Photo by Dawbis.

I have been following the artwork of Dawn for years now and have been pestering her to let me do a paper for art swap. Once she agreed I started saving some papers I thought she might like. One design I had bought in Florence, Italy. Another at a gift store in the Hunter Valley. Some are from my favourite art supply stores, others are origami papers from a Japanese gift store in the city.

Photo by Dawbis.

Artist - Maira Kalman

I recently discovered this excellent artist Maira Kalman and read her NY times blog in the pursuit of happiness and an interview with her. I instantly felt some affinity with her art. When I was in highschool I would sometimes paint picures quite similar to hers; bright colours, a bit naive, quickly painted, at the time my style was somewhat influenced by Chagall and Matisse. Also I have recently been toying with the idea of painting a lot of "brain dump" sort of pictures for my blog, rather than using so many photos and using hand written text like Penelope Dullaghan and Jenny Kostecki-Shaw.

International Art Exchange

A while back I was invited to participate in the International Art Exchange. I thought it would be fun, so I sent off my package to my dedicated person and some invites to some other people. I only got one person interested due to the busy time of year and some of the people I invited had done it before. So of the 36 possible works of art I could have received, I got one from the amazing Emma Kidd of Ben Conservato. Even the envelope is a work of art. Thanks Emma!! Now I need to find a frame for a friendly little monster! And I still want to send off something to the person who invited me to participate.

Artwork by Gloria Petyarre

I saw some of her artwork in a cafe while in Coffs Harbour earlier this year, and then again at the Art Gallery of NSW (as an entry in the Wynne Prize for landscape painting). I love her intricate patterns of leaves. The patterns in second painting remind me of a spiders web.

Artwork by Gloria Petyarre
Leaves Blowing in the Wind - Bush Medicine 2008
Acrylics on belgian linen 183 x 120 cm

Gloria Petyarre
Awelye (detail) 2006
synthetic polymer on linen 210 x 122 cm

Art Gallery of NSW

Today I went to the Art Gallery to check out the Archibald Prize, Art Express and other exhibitions on there at the moment. I was especially impressed with the Korean Dreams exhibit. It was all in the dark to protect the delicate artwork, so I could hardly see the detail. I also managed to pick up three of Flossy P's beautiful greeting cards, which I will most probably frame.

Picture by Flossy P

Street Art

I recently watched an Artscape program on the ABC which was featuring Melbourne artists Ghostpatrol and Miso. What really interested me about them is how they began as street artists. Miso was talking about her paste ups. These are some of her pictures that she designs to fit into a particular space in the urban environment. She then pastes them up somewhere on the streets of Melbourne and these images change as the elements and other people interact with it. I have loved this idea since studying grafitti in highschool and during university taking photos of poster art and grafitti in Newtown, Sydney.

So this program led me to revisit these photos below which I took in Perth when we were still living there. Now Perth isn't particularly known for it's grafitti, there isn't much of it around. So I was surprised to find these on my street and surrounding streets. It made me wonder, who did these? What do they mean? I was intrigued how they used the pipe to add to the images.





Now don't get me wrong, I do not condone tagging everything in sight or marking for the sake of it, and if I ran the restaurant with the purple and yellow walls I may not be too happy about having a three eyed teddy alien featured there. But these made MY day.