Mostly I come back to tell you that I’ve been gone

My dears.  What Mountain Goats nonsense that is.

Hi.  I’ve been away.  Out of my tiny mind with stress and worry.  And nobody died (which was likely for a bit there) and now I’m back to masquerade as an actual artist that tries not to be an insult to anyone who actually does art properly in a fashion that doesn’t involve a lot of flailing around.  For Reasons.  Ahem.

What to say… I did end up finishing the Rothko rip off bs down below.  It looks like this:

Which I did in three days between seeing my clients in the clinic and now I can’t look at it without being stressed.  Spent the second half of last year wondering what on earth I was going to do with the damn thing only to find that my family had been fighting over who gets it.  For now it’s at my grandmother’s and is officially owned by my parents because I don’t go over often enough to have to look at it all the time.

What else…

I went and looked at a hell of a lot of art.  I read a hell of a lot about art

Which kind of furthered my idea that a lot of straight white male artists that we’re taught to revere could really have done with a damn good kick in the pants.  I read a lot of other drier, factual, technical things too, I promise.

I made my sister and future brother-in-law a blob for Christmas

They were understandably thrilled.

I decided to snap myself out of my artless, heartless funk by signing myself up to do exhibitions again.

So I’m participating in Arttime Ipswich’s Purple Exhibition, coming up next month.  Kate gives you a canvas and a tube of purple paint and away you go.  Pretty rad.  I thought I’d have a go at Titian, even to go so far as to make my own paint.  Because just painting when you don’t paint isn’t hard enough or something.  So I made tempera out of egg yolk and used soft pastels as my pigment.  Then I found out that I learnt several filthy habits as a soft pastel artist, the main one being that I mix my colours on the canvas while my palette sits pristine next to me.

She’s alright, for turning out ridiculously modernist.  But hey, they had years to work on these things and I had weeks.  Whatever.

I signed myself up to do the Ipswich Art Awards again too, also due within the same time frame.  Mostly I’m still faffing around again.  I have my ideas and my concept pieces are quite highly evolved this time.  I am not feeling it today so I’ve occupied myself with busywork in the background, sloshing around liquid latex again and printing reference material.  Oh, and writing here.  This is totally a valuable use of my time, right?

My problem with one of them is that I thought I’d just get the sky done and then something amazing fell out and now the rest of my plans have to do a significant amount of evolving in order to keep up.

I mean.

Who does that to themselves.  Anything after that is going to be a bit of a come down, isn’t it.  Am working on the other thing until I get over giving myself the willies.

I’ve also signed myself up to do the Celebration of the Female Form exhibition, which is in November this year.  An exhibition I adore.  The reason why I’m writing this now.  “Have you got a website or link?” she asked.  Good gravy.  Well.  There’s this thing.  Good luck.

Removes the dust sheets, evicts the possum from the chimney

Hello!

It has been a while, hasn’t it.  (I say that a fair bit, don’t I.)  I tend not to think of self-promotion for my art until I’m grabbed by the back of the head and thrust into it nose-first.  Then I have to sit over there and think about what I’ve done.  (Which is, usually, flap around about deadlines and producing good work and then forget about the rest of it.)

Well.  What I have done, when not being consumed by the rest of my muggle life in the past year is:

Receive second place in the drawing category for the Ipswich Art Awards for my piece “Sunken Forest, Arnhem Land” as judged by Ben Quilty (!!!!)

I was honoured to be selected by the Ipswich Art Gallery to display my work in their People, Place exhibition back in January.  In that I covered ground that I have before, in drawing burlesque girls, an idea that I thought I was done with, but you do what you’ve got to do when you’ve got a short deadline.  It was still rewarding, in that I produced one of my favourite pieces (more about her another day).  I also discovered that I have progressed enough that I can bring things to life one early Sunday morning when the piece I was working on started looking back at me

She gave me such a fright I had to take myself out for breakfast.  Far too much Dorian Grey for so early in the day.

This has since opened up a whole new train of thought for my next solo, which so far involves a lot of research into Renaissance art and will hopefully develop into my being able to portray coherent ideas about how women have been erased from history, art history in particular.  We’ll see how that one goes.  So far it has just meant that my trip to the Lifeline Bookfair was very heavy and full of incident and I’m reading a few pages of Vasari before sleeping.

Anyway, next we get to the good bit, the reason why I presume you have found me.  In February, Glen Smith, our local tireless, passionate arts advocate finally (after probably a year of trying on his part) got word that he can bring a group of artists from Ipswich to display their work at the Regional Arts House in Teneriffe, Brisbane.  Here are the details if you’re curious – https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/a-handful-of-ipswich-artists-tickets-21647223428

I was fortunate enough to be one of those invited.  I’ve created two new pieces specifically for this show, and experimented with entirely different (to me) techniques and mediums, which I’ll be posting about shortly.  A Handfull of Artists From Ipswich runs until the 23rd of April and if you are around I do suggest having a look.  There are a lot of talented people taking part and I’m sure you’ll find it worth your while.

In honour of this exhibition, I’ll be posting here daily while it runs.  You lucky ducks.