Art and Abart

This art and music blog is once again overtaken by politics. Current NSW twitter feed is astonishing and irresistible. Geoffrey Watson at...

Smiling through the clamour Oil on canvas 45 x 60 cm It is not easy being a mother, especially when your two  boisterous younger childr...

Philip and Cat with Lotus Flowers Oil on Canvas 50 x 75 cm Lotus flowers symbolise many things, among them beauty, purity, clarity of...

Passenger ship dwarfs ferry on Sydney harbour On Easter Sunday the weather was perfect and I was at Circular Quay wharf before most of S...

Salut Salon This is a MUST WATCH! Salut Salon, a quartet from Hamburg give a memorable performance of Vivaldi's Summer .  They c...

Bust of Ludwig van Beethoven by Hagen Time for a little light relief. ... A muppet plays Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor...

View from Point Clare I joined my local art group for a paint-out today but it had been so long since I had used my portable painting k...

Anyone who lived through the Stasi era in Germany would be getting goose bumps right now in Australia.  Newspapers today are reporting that...

This art/music blog seems to have been captured by politics, but how can I resist when politics here has become high art (or high farce)? Th...

Quentin Bryce in the SMH Oh dear, perhaps conferring Imperial Honours on the outgoing and incoming Governor Generals in Australia was no...

Bronwyn Bishop (is not amused) The Australian Parliament dissolved into giggles last week when Australian parliamentary opposition membe...

La Renaissance courtyard The French Cafe Patisserie La Renaissance has good coffee, French pastries and a charming back courtyard. It ...

Living in Australia is becoming more and more surreal. One day the Attorney General says he is changing the racial vilification laws because...

The In-laws The in-laws were going to be in the family portrait , but they didn't fit on the gap left on the sofa so I made a small ...

The conversation about artists and politics has been re-ignited by the boycott of Sydney Art Biennale by artists who felt compromised by...

Now there is a choral version of former Prime Minister Gillard's famous misogyny speech. Gotta love it! Julia Gillard

Antipodean family portrait Constructed paintings take time and make you appreciate the talent of the masters. I have been working on thi...

The piano virtuoso Alexander Gavrylyuk gave a concert in Sydney last Saturday as part of the Sydney Symphony piano series which is held in ...

ALL. Try we life-long, we can never Straighten out life's tangled skein, Why should we, in vain endeav...

Singing loudly all the time is neither good for your voice, nor for the listener. So says vocal critic Fred Plotkin in his article The pleas...