Tony Abbott a Post Turtle?

Post Turtle

Our beloved Prime Minister a Post Turtle? Well that is what he has been called in response to the news this weekend that he had wanted to invade Irak a second time.

"While stitching a cut on the hand of a 75 year old farmer, whose hand was caught in the drafting gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to politicians and their role as our leaders. The old rancher said, "Well, as I see it, most politicians are Post Turtles”. Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was. The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle." The old farmer saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, he's elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ar*e put him up there to begin with." 
(This explanation is from the Facebook page of Michael Trant  , a longer version of that found in the Urban Dictionary.)

Paintings - when are they finished?

Jugs, some hibiscus and a fairy

Before I can decide if a painting is finished or not, especially a larger work, I need to have it up on the wall for a few weeks. Over time things that are not right start to irritate me and then I take the time to find a solution.

At the moment I am surrounded by the set of small work which was painted over Christmas.

Squirrel, nectarines (white and yellow fleshed) and blue duck.

A larger canvas with a few lines sketched on it is now sitting on my easel. It has been there for three weeks and beckons to me each time I pass by. I know what I want to paint - it is just starting that is the problem.

ACO, Four Seasons, Joseph Tawadros

The Australian Chamber Orchestra has released a new CD - The Four Seasons. Why would you want another four seasons CD you ask yourself? Well, listen to this one and you may decide you do.

Joseph Tawadros plays Oud

I heard the ACO Four Seasons concert yesterday and it is a beaut; a collaboration with Joseph Tawadros who composes for and plays the Oud (Egyptian string instrument) and his percussionist brother James Tawadros who played the Riq', which is like a small tambourine.

Put a group of virtuosic players in a room together and this concert is what you get. It is energetic and obviously fun for all participants. That makes it even more fun for the audience who leave the hall smiling and humming.

The concert is touring Australian east coast cities through February ... catch them if you can.

Valentine's Day

Ophelia : ...

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-1601)

Chuck Close

Tapestry portrait of Chuck Close

Art, like music, is best consumed live. That was my thought yesterday at the Chuck Close exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

The close-up portraits produced by Close and his collaborators are in all the books about 20th Century art, but only when you see them live do you realise why.  Close has worked with 'old-fashioned' techniques or pushed new techniques beyond their boundaries, producing large and usually labour intensive work that is strikingly different from your average portrait.

Detail: tapestry portrait

His work is dominated by grids and seems obsessive: work based on hand drawn computer-type graphics designating exactly which colour should be dotted in exactly which tiny square over exactly which other colour; large works printed using multiple wood-blocks prepared by a Japanese collaborator who is expert in wood block carving; tapestries woven from computer generated images which are startlingly super-realistic.

I left the exhibition with a new understanding of this work and this lifetime of grid exercises

ADDENDUM: I just discovered an interview with Chuck Close that is really worth reading. I had no idea he was incapacitated for much of his life.

Shedding the past

Shedding bark

Shed bark

Some Australian gum species shed their bark in summer.  They become works of art as the bark peels off and lies multi-coloured around them.

Once the process is complete, they stand naked in the woods, pink among their clothed-in-grey neighbours, until the weather blends them into their environment again. They become larger and stronger. The material they shed material provides mulch and fertilises their continued growth.

As I watch the cycle, I wonder if there are lessons for us there?

Naked wood

Better than an iPad

Nature is extraordinary and can keep children occupied for hours and hours.

Dug up from the beach and brought home carefully in salt water,  these two little clams were the subject of hours of scrutiny by my two recent young guests.

The clams were touched, poked, argued about and watched.  There always seemed to be a small figure crouched over the plate where they were kept, observing nature's marvel.

Now the small people have returned home, back to their screens and interminable arguments with their parents about how much screen time is appropriate.  The clams have been returned to the ocean to survive ... or not.

Yes, you too can paint

Painting the pot plants

When I paint in public people come and look over my shoulder. I am always surprised how many of them tell me, "I can't paint, my teacher told me that years ago when I was in school." Sometimes they add wistfully that they have a yearning to paint despite their teacher's advice.

Whatever can the teachers have been thinking, telling children they can't paint? Perhaps it is primary school teachers who were themselves told that they were inept?

My advice to teachers is to lay aside any expectations of how things should look. Painting helps us see things properly and sometimes this takes years.

In this regard I take inspiration from the talented plen-air watercolour artist David Taylor. I took a course with David many years ago. His classes were conducted outside and everyone painted the view except one gentleman who

Painting a figure from a computer game.

produced a series of paintings of colourful circles.

At the critiques each evening, David always found interesting to say about the colour combinations of these circles and every evening I felt enriched by what he had found.

Warwick Fyfe, an Alberich to remember

Warwick Fyfe as Falstaff

Warwick Fyfe is an Australian baritone who stepped in at the last moment and sang the part of Alberich at the 2012 Melbourne Ring Cycle operas.

He stole the show with his wonderful acting while singing this demanding part.

Last November a funding campaign was started called 'Send Alberich to Niebelheim' to raise funds so Warwick could go to auditions in Europe. One of the 'prizes' was an Alberich T shirt. I just got mine so now I am guarding the treasure in suitable attire.

In the meantime the campaign has been oversubscribed (he really 'wowed' the Melbourne audience) and he has done his first audition trip to the UK (has some nibbles we hear) and is off to Europe in April.

Go Warwick!

White fleshed nectarines

I painted some more nectarines, this time white fleshed fruit. They were in a wooden bowl that my father made. 

The fruit had really dark skins and were more difficult to capture than the yellow fleshed nectarines..

I painted them much larger than life sized on a  canvas that was double the size of the one used for the yellow fleshed nectarines. It was also much better quality, thicker and very robust. It was a real pleasure to paint on. I must get some more canvases like it.

The nectarines were very firm when I bought them, but by the time the painting was finished they were perfect for eating and disappeared quickly.

Multi-coloured Marilyn

"This is the real painting," said the nine year old with some amazement, looking at the pop art on the walls of the Art Gallery of NSW. 

His reaction shows perhaps just how much impact the pop artists had - every nine year old is familiar with 'art' images in a way that my generation was not.

The Art Gallery of NSW has included an art corner for children in the exhibition, with games and colouring equipment and it was very well used on the day we visited.

Spiders, webs and a model to help us deal with climate change

This large visitor to my garden built its web high over the back path last week but the web was not high enough as today I found the spider hanging from an inside door jam. Perhaps I brought him in on my hair.

Yesterday I heard a talk about another web,  the inter-web, by lawyer Eben Moglen. It was an extraordinary talk about an extraordinary community, the one that has developed open source (free) software. The community has had to fight to retain its development model, a model which is open and transparent and the most efficient model for solving problems. They have had many enemies, people and companies who have felt threatened by this democratic model, but they have been successful in defending it.

It struck me as I listened that this is the model we will need to solve other intractable problems, like climate change. How fortunate we are to have a model that serves so well, and lucid people like Eben Moglen to talk about it.

More: and here is an interesting discussion about the type of global structures we need to solve global problems.

Jug and Glass paintings

I have always liked painting glassware and the Squirrel painting inspired me to continue with the glass theme. These two 'jug and glass' paintings were painted over the Christmas break. The words on the jug are Siegmund's, from Richard Wagner's opera Die Walkurie.

I guess what I was writing about last post was 'inspiration'.  It is such an amorphous concept, but we all know it when we feel it. Why certain subjects inspire one to produce art is a mystery to me, yet why else do we do creative work?

Glass and Jug II
Acrylic on Canvas
30.5 x 40.5 cm (12 x 16")

Glass and Jug I
Acrylic on Canvas
30.5 x 40.5 cm (12 x 16")

Painting from the heart

My Hibiscus painting  was not painted from the heart, or at least, not from the beginning. Its various iterations have been recorded on this blog but as I look at them all together I am reminded of the words of an art tutor who said that photographing paintings as they progress can be very rewarding.

In this case my photos document why the heart is an essential component to pictures.

I love flowers, but painting a Hibiscus in a vase on a cloth just didn't do it for me. I knew right from the beginning that I was not inspired by my subject and I should have known better than to start the work in the first place. Perhaps I had been looking at too many 'fruit and flower paintings by old masters.

It is odd how some paintings are quick to paint and 'work' immediately while others, like my Hibiscus, are never happy and glower at you from the corner demanding to be changed.

I have made changes to Hibiscus between other work which takes its inspiration from the Squirrel, work which may develop into a series. The first of the series painted itself fast and needed no retouching (photo soon). It was painted from the heart.

Thank you Michael Taylor, artist

I was reminded of Michael Taylor when I put lettering on the Hibiscus painting (last post), because it was he who taught me the technique. Michael is a gifted teacher and I learned so much from him in 2005 when I took his 5 day life drawing class in Grafton, NSW.

Michael's own work focuses on relationships. It is thoughtful but whimsical, just as he is.

I produced a lot of work at that course that I have since painted over (my first experiments on canvas after years of watercolour on paper), but there is one piece I value to this day. It was painted at the very end of the course on a full size piece of watercolour paper. Those who work in watercolour will know that working on full size (56 x 76 cm) paper is a challenge - not least because most watercolour easels get wobbly holding that sized paper, if they can hold it at all.

The class had been very committed, starting well before the scheduled 9am start time on each of the five days and landing exhausted in the pub about four o'clock. We had two models, male and female and they were exceptional, able to hold poses for long after others would have had to move. They said they did a lot of yoga to prepare for the course.

1127 Couple
56 x 76cm
Watercolour on paper

My final piece was done in a state of exhaustion just as the course was closing. Watercolour is one of those mediums that requires a great deal of practice and care, but sometimes you have to just 'let go' and go with the flow. My state of mind at the end of this course was such that I was no longer able to think or be in control  - I just painted, putting what was before me onto the paper without so much as a minor correction.

The result was a lovely work that I hauled out from all the other paper work a few months ago and hung on my wall. I smile as I pass it each day. Thank you Michael Taylor for your gift.

Hibiscus

before

 The Hibiscus painting has started to change (again). The vase was so lonely there on it's green shelf so I added an oil-stick word, a using  method I learned from the wonderful and inspiring Michael Taylor.

after

Squirrel

Glass squirrel
26x 51 cm (10" x 20")
Acrylic on Canvas

Many years ago I gave my mother a smokey glass squirrel. It sat on her kitchen cupboard for a long time and now sits on mine, eternally eating its acorn.

I painted the squirrel over the top of another painting which had words written on it. In the finished painting you can  see through the squirrel to the words beneath. Just!

I particularly like the effect. It will be an inspiration for the next painting. Funny how these things happen. Happy accidents.

I write this on the cusp of the new year - so happy new year for 2015. I wish heath and all the acorns you desire.

Monday morning beach

View over to the Palm Beach headland, the most northern tip of Sydney.

Sppplosh!

The turquoise water that turns pale green as it forms an incoming wave, the splash of water as it reaches the shore, the footprints in soft wet sand. That is the NSW Central Coast on this lovely Monday morning.

Post Christmas peaches

Peaches and glass bowl
Acrylic on Canvas
26 x 51 cm (10" x 20")

Have a merry Christmas (whereever you are perched)

It is the season to ...

contemplate

be laid back

be laid
be

 Have a Happy Christmas

and may we all be on our perches

this time next year.