A view

Oil on board
600 x 600

The Artist statement as art form in itself.

When entering art exhibitions, competitions or holding exhibitions, one is often asked to supply an artist's statement. It seems to be a standard thing and I abhor the practise.

Now, I get why some people have artist statements.  Perhaps their work is very conceptual or abstract and needs some explanation of some kind, but if you read the majority of modern artist's statements, they are just goddamn awful: Verbose, pandering, non-sensical and fluffed up like peacock on the pull.
You read it .
Then read it again because somewhere in between " The Artist..." and the final punctuation mark, your ears start to ring and you suffer a sudden loss of will to live. I swear I have read statements that have questioned whether english is my first language, as I understood not a word. NOTHING. I wander off , dazed and confused, looking for a dictionary and a lobotomy, not always in that order. No wonder there is wine at openings.

As an artist, if you are going to write something, please know that Jo Public  did not study art and therefore your allusions to artistic themes of the middle century, radical left politics of the 1930's and verbal wanking is totally lost on Them. Know that, if you want to keep them engaged, use small words. Paint a mental picture. Educate and enlighten them, but do not alienate or belittle them with your opening parle.

If you are a critic or an "art expert" , I understand you might want their references to understand the pieces, but why encourage  the tradition of mumbo-jumbo . I have seen artists win prizes for their rather ordinary, ill constructed works  with mind-numbingly bullshit statements. I swear the judges were stupefied by the methane wafting off the surface of the statement in waves of self indulgence and mistook it for cleverness.

If I was any good at writing, I would be a writer. But I am a painter, so I paint. My story is in paint.  However, I am not that illiterate that I cannot tell you a bit about why I paint like I do and what it means.
I paint landscapes because they mean something to me and represent connectivity and place. By that I mean landscape mean things to me such as : The place of my childhood, the people I love are here, this place fills me with wonder, I have memories of my life under these mountains, I am happy here, I am sad here, I used to live there and now I don't belong, I want to belong here, I wish this place stayed like this, I am lost, I am found..All of the above voices are attached to images and I need to paint them to express them. So I paint. I invite you into my landscape to see what those feelings look like to me. I don't tell you which ones are which, I just  invite you to fly over, walk around, dream and contemplate that world.

This is my statement. I hope it gives you a sense of who I am and what my paintings represent.

My landscapes come from a place where reality, imagination and memory all have equal tenancy.

Whilst I am particularly moved and influenced by the landscape, I seek a personal interpretation of it rather than a replication of it.

I am interested in the abstract within the landscape and focus on painting it through as many perspectives as I can, being inventive with my application of paint and experimenting with my materials.

The painting process has to be fresh and interesting for my own sanity. I let paint drip, build up layers, scape back, flick paint around and use my tools to create marks that remain in the finished product. The paintings are atmospheric, evocative and invite the viewer to use their own imagination to explore fly over, walk through or stand and observe those worlds.

My recent inspiration comes from flying in a small aircraft, piloted by a friend, across the manicured landscape of rural Waikato farmlands, mountain ranges, bush and forest.

As an immigrant, I have felt the loss of familiar landscape keenly. Painting has helped me connect with New Zealand through the landscape in a manner profound to me.

Now, entertain yourself by going to the following site and reading the hysterically funny and completely non-sensical artists statements , the very kind I rant and rave about, and look carefully at the next exhibition you happen to stumble upon...perhaps you find a gem!

www.artsybollocks.com

I need a drink, now.

The week that was

Here is some evidence of the things I have been up to:

I delivered this ( one of 5) to The Art Sale, to be held 5-6 September in Hamilton

Bought myself these and they make me happy

Took him to A&E because he has sprained a finger and knee. We thought they might be broken. Shew!Hobbit feet!

Started this.....

...and it turned into this.

I liked the start so much, I started this....

..and left it here.

This was a demo of a quick start for Eve.

Bad photo, but this is where it is at now.

I am listening to the new Broods album, Evergreen, and Angus and Julia Stone's latest album. Clearly it's a brother-and-sister band week.  Funny how stuff like that happens, sometimes.

Holiday in my head

I have always had a very vivid imagination. My brain likes to hold images and my hand likes to manipulate them into paintings that show me how I feel.The words come after.

 I saw a quote by Edward Hopper that said " If I could say it in words there would be no need to paint it". Sometimes the painting helps me articulate the issue.

This blurry painting is , on the surface, of  a poor rural settlement alongside a railway line. Quite depressing and without any discernible features. A miss mash of shacks, makeshift homes, power lines and not much else.  We saw hundreds of similar locations on our road trip from Cape Town to Johannesburg and back. From the comfort of the front seat of a luxury car, these vistas seemed surreal. I photographed them , adding yet another layer of distance between myself and the grim reality . Layer upon  layer of glass. I found it difficult to look without that filter .

What this painting represents is my reluctance to focus closely on the grimness and reality of that existence. I don't want to see that by sheer luck of circumstance, I was born into the privilege of being privileged. I am educated, solvent, healthy, employed, capable of getting myself out of any hole I have dug, I have skills and I don't have to live there. Poverty is bleak.

So I paint it...all blurred shape , colour and line....the only way I can make sense of it. I am not sure what will become of this painting, but I will paint more and maybe they will one day help. I have a whole holiday of images in my head  to make sense of.A lifetimes work.

oil on canvas
70cm w x 50cm h

Things a fish told me

Ever watched the film" Finding Nemo"?  You should. Dory ( the stupidly smart blue fish ) suggests "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming" as a solution to one of Nemo's existential problems ( you know, the ones that go " Who and I? where am I going? How am I going to get there? How am I going to find my way? "). And I agree. Sometimes, just keep swimming, or in my case, just keep painting ,is the only way to make any kind of progress or find any kind of answer to whatever question I am supposed to be asking. In the doing, the solution is found.

Just keep doing. Whatever it is that you do, do it. And if you don't know what it is you are supposed to be doing, just do anything. Start somewhere. Try writing, or crafting or gardening or swimming or teaching or singing...whatever, just keep doing. And if you write, craft etc and are stuck, just do it some more or a little differently.

Now where was I?

Ah, yes. This week I have been getting back into painting. I am not sure how to distill all my ideas onto canvas, but sometimes I just have to make a start and see where I go. Mistakes are made but I love fixing them and I also loves the discoveries made whilst mistaking. Also, sometimes mistakes are just that. Cock-ups made, acknowledged and then set aside as I tackle the next thing.Just keep swimming.

Which one is the cock-up, I hear you ask. Ha! Never telling!

A selection of the starts, the In-progress, the complete and the details, in no particular order.

BTW, the other great fish movie was " A Fish called Wanda" . Also highly recommended.

Dio ArtX

I am exhibiting at the Dio ArtX this weekend, friday and saturday, 10 am till 4 pm.

There is a lot of work by local artists and of a very high standard( I know, I've seen it!) and I attended the opening tonight. Red dots were flying up and I am pleased to have sold 2 pieces already, including the one above. The venue is the Diosecan school, Hamilton,  and it is a gold coin donation entrance to see some fine work of a great variety.

Neither here no there.

Physically, I am home.
Mentally, I am still in the grips of travel. I like to think of travel as a state of mind. That place where you are permanently unsettled, uncomfortable and unroutined. Things change constantly and you find yourself playing catch-up on situations long after they have passed( What did that signpost say? Did I really just see that in the back of a passing car? What on earth was he selling?....you get the drift).
Like getting off a boat and still feeling the water moving under your feet hours later, travel leaves you with senses zinging, confused and exhilarated, exhausted.

But home I am.
First thing I did was walk into my studio and close the door behind me. I deliberately left it clean and tidy with my latest work on display. I knew I would be fragile on my return so I created a warm welcome. I arranged the paintings to all face me as I entered, like an audience to a stage. It was fabulous. I drew deep breaths, longing for some stinky turpentine whiff, but smelling only oily paint. The studio air -temperature was bone-chillingly frigid, but the glow of all those paintings left me in no doubt that I was home and ready to stay for a while.

Now I am waiting for the fog of jet-lag to leave me and am preparing for a serious few months in the studio. I have a so many projects I am working on, so much to do and say.

I was totally inspired by my travels and physically, I sometimes itched to paint.I resisted any half-arses attempts whilst away because painting requires great thought and planning and I have used the last month to do exactly that. Sitting still, observing and writing it all down have kept me focussed and allowed me to develop some ideas.

I visited galleries whenever I could. I wanted to view some Pierneef's and was rewarded by visiting the Rupert Museum in Stellenbosch and seeing 32! Jackpot! I bought a beautiful book on the work of Frederike Stokhuyzen, an artists that I was hitherto oblivious to and am who now has me as an ardent fan. I went to The South African National gallery and various contemporary galleries in Cape Town. I marvelled at everything because it was all marvellous.

I am predominantly a landscape painter and South Africa did her best to provide me with some outstanding vistas. I look forward to offering up my interpretations in the following months but will leave you with a couple of photos.

I feel so blessed and grateful to have had the opportunity to travel, see family, old friends and see the glorious landscape as we travelled 5000km across the country from Cape Town to the Kruger National Park and back. Safely and with great company.

Now if I could only just stop yawning.......