I’m red-faced even as I write this. I thought it would be a great idea to write my ‘to-do’ lists on index cards. It works fairly well, I can shuffle through and do the things I feel like doing without having this long list staring at me. The dumb part of the idea was thinking it would be fun to photograph myself with the card … Continue reading Why dumb ideas should die. Oh the shame!
Here’s the last of my series of Dark Side of the Road. This landscape is quite near my house, it’s a dam by the road on the way into town. I quite like the dark earth and bright sky. But the more I look at it, the more I feel something is missing – or is it? There’s a great quote from the 1993 film … Continue reading Is it nonsense to take art advice from a 1993 movie?
Francis Bacon Five Decades is in it’s last few weeks at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. It closes on 24 Feb and I absolutely jubilant for having been able to see it. I had always thought his works as cloyingly macabre, deliberately masticating figures for the joy of it. But seeing them in person, completely changed my view of his work. For a … Continue reading The colours of Bacon haunt me even now
Like most artists, I’d rather spend my time creating artworks rather than work-working but unfortunately my art is not self-sufficient. Thankfully, I’m in a position where I run my own business from home, The Wood Agency, which is little advertising agency which specialises in art-based marketing. We recently developed this visual identity for The Studio, an annex of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Essentially, … Continue reading Art-work versus work-work. Who wins?
When you’re working on a piece, sometimes it doesn’t go as planned. Sometimes it goes horribly wrong and the more you try to fix it, the worse it gets. In your head you’re thinking, Should I kill it? Is it dead already? Then the other half of you is going, If I give it a bit more love, maybe it can be saved, maybe I … Continue reading Kill it, love it or f#%k it, struggling with art
It’s been blazingly hot in Australia lately with temperatures pushing 40C (100F) and bushfires blazing across the countryside, decimating the landscape and taking stock and houses with it. It felt weird to be painting while fires were burning not far from me, a little bit like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, but I was on stand-by with the Rural Fire Service and have a very … Continue reading Fiddling while Rome burns
Time Magazine crowned Barack Obama 2012 person of the year and commissioned this portrait by artist Vik Muniz. It struck me how many graphic images have been created of Barack Obama. There’s thousands of images of Presidents, but I have never seen so many graphic representations of any other President like Obama. I particularly like this one by Vik Muniz as his face is … Continue reading Is Obama the most inspiring President for artists?
There’s an amazing exhibition at The Met in New York at the moment which is all about Warhol and his influences; Regarding Warhol, fifty artists, sixty years. Interspersed with Warhols are the works of people who have been influenced by him and developed around him. Cindy Sherman, Sigmar Polke, Basquiat and even Gilbert & George. Far too many people are attracted to Warhol’s colours and … Continue reading Warhol at The Met, plus a little Hopper
The first one is Rauschenburg, the second isn’t Jasper Johns. What I loved about my visit to MoMA today was seeing things I’d seen before with new eyes. Since I’ve become focused on collage, I’m always on the look-out for people doing things with paper. I don’t care what they’re doing, I just want to eat up what they do. Seeing Rauschenburg’s ‘Combines’ was a … Continue reading Rauschenburg and Jasper Johns at MoMA
Last Christmas, I painstakingly cut out little collage Xmas motifs and carefully stuck them down. Mini-collages like santa’s boots coming down the chimney, puddings with all the trimmings and dancing elves. This year I wanted to do something much simpler and naive, so I pulled out three potatoes, carved crude shapes, let them dry for a little while them dumped them in paint and stamped … Continue reading Christmas card potatoes
Ray Monde 