Tree

 

A.Finnie. "Birdie Park" (detail) 2011, acrylic on canvas 40x50cm

Well, guess what I've been doing? 

Yes, I haven't been visiting blogs, I haven't been surfing. Instead I've been ringing up news papers, designing posters, thinking up wonderful things to say about myself that slightly resembled the truth, I've been trying to buy bottles of wine for less than three dollars that don't have the distinct aroma of Eau de Chat Derrier, I've been addressing envelopes, googling addresses, licking stamps (some of them taste like strawberries) and , above all, trying to find a pair of trousers to fit me on opening night that doesn't make me look like an upside down version of one of those people who blow up a washing glove and stick it on their head so they look like a chook on steroids (chook is Australian for chicken eg Hey Bruce! Get aload of that old chook over there sitting near the bill a bong)

This for Illustration Friday's "Tree". (So wasn't the Tree of Life half tempting, aye?)

I hope you forgive me for not visiting :( Life is due to return to normal any year now....

Hugs from Oz!

PS we even scored a segment in the Trevisan International Art newsletter :)

A.Finnie. "Yellow Chrsyanthemum"  2012, acrylic on canvas 40x50cm

Jennifer.Finnie. "Lazy Summer" 2012, acrylic on linen 30X25cm

 

 

 

 

Robert.Birch "Baraka 1" acrylic on canvas 40.5x40.5cm

Practicing one wall of the "hang" in the studio.

The Absence of Pain

The first time I thought how pleasant it might be to extremum vitae spiritum edere was in 1994.

I was sitting at a set of traffic lights at the corner of Turton and Maitland Roads in the city of Newcastle. The lights were red, it was 10 past nine in the morning, I was heading off for work and I had on a starched white shirt, black pants, and a yellow ochre tie that my wife had made me.

The time of year was late winter, the morning sun was in the northern sky and beamed through the windscreen. The sun made me a little drowsy as I watched the traffic buzzing past.

The suggestion of the pleasantness of death, of non-being, crept up on me like a soft shadow. It started with a smell - the smell of fresh loamy dirt infused with the comforting aromas of rotting leaves.  

Hand Made Shadows

"What shadows doth hide in the souls of human kind?"

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Well a last year I bought a Dell Laser Colour printer. When it arrived it was so  heavy it came on a wooden pallette. It took two of us to loft it out of my ute and it sits in the middle of our home office, a black monolith the size of an old fashioned poof. And we all know how big an old fashioned poof is, don't we?

Well, I kept the pallett cause it was kind of interesting, and I knew that in the next one hundred and fifty years it would come in handy for something or other. And so, the other day, when I had finally finished the last kilometre of my folding book I was making for the show that opens next Saturday, I realised it need a box.

And not just any box. It had to be old and patinated and gothic and bashed around (a lot like me bar the gothic). And so I realised that it would be a great irony if I made a box from the pallette that had supported the printer that I had printed the pages for my book from. And so the idea for this box was born.

The box is kind of handy actually. The book sits in it and the pages fold out of it. Kinda weird, but it adds presence to the procedings of the reading. And it was fun making the covers cause I didn't have a clue what I was doing. And I ended up making packers to sit around the pages to stop the book innards sliding around and breaking when the book is in the box.

Accordion books are great fun because the folding structure can go anyway you like. It can go sideways, or up or down, and y ou can stick pages in the middle of the accordion structure as if they are pages of an ordinary book. And you can have big spreads  of three or four pages that all go to make one big image. That's  if you are inclined.

That image above on the left, well that's the witch in the story, the one that get's burnt in the oven. Well you pull the red thing and she pops out of the burning oven. Heh.

There's also a few pages of writing in the front of the book as an introduction. That's there to make you think I am smart :) I am not sure if that ruse woked though... (see pic below)

And did I tell you I made a Blurb book as well?. So I have made an Artist's Limited Edition of 100 and they will be on exhibition at the gallery. I had some critique on this one that was extremely valuable - so thank you to those artists for their advice - you know who you are!

And lastly I made this book cover for a book which will be feautured at the show called Cape Grimm by Carmel Bird. You'll probably recognise it from a few posts ago.

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Thank you for looking. I'll be visiting tomorrow :) Watch out! Heh.

The Joy of Procrastination (and the pitfalls of vanity).

Well I shouldn't be posting this, so don't tell anyone :)

Oops sa daisy -is what we Australians say when we drop babies in the bath (on their heads). Or pour Brand A champagne into somebodys' glass which already contains Brand 'B' champagne. 'Brand B' typically being expensive French champagne.

So oops sa daisy.

Oops sa daisy - I spent some money and rented a domain name - silly me. Google was busy translating my blog for the last three days and just took me off line basically - I am very sorry. Plus I almost lost my treasured list of crazy good artists - :). Bloody bum damn as we say here when we need to swear. Aaaaaaaaargh!

So this is the second time I have posted this post. Thank you Denise and Martine for commenting on my first attempt. And thank you to everyone who wrote and asked me what happened to the blog.... I appreciate your concern very much.

After a few days off line I now have a shiny new domain name which I can't use.

Handy eh?

Well it was cheap (ten dollars) and Google said it translated my blog over automatically.

And it was all true.

My blog got automatically sent to a page that said "This blog does not exist."

Now that's automatic. :)

So today after reading the help section of Google Apps and dissecting the  haunting cries of similar users like myself asking for help (they end their questions with 'is anybody there'? - and usually get no answer) I automatically manually reset my blog address back to boring old 'andrewfinnie.blogspot'.

But at least my new domain name won't get worn out. :( And I have the option of automatic renewell. Easy peasy. 

Okay, I have a silly joke for you.

Q: Why are pirates, pirates?

A: Just because they "aaaaaaaaarrrr."

Oh I am still on holidays.... last week I  even did "Racing' for illustration Friday but cured my blog addiction and did not post it.  How good am I? (not very).

That's been my life really. A series of addictions. First cigarettes, then doritos (see footnote), then wild women (I never talked to them - only smiled mysteriously while batting my eyelashes), then alcohol (I never swallowed), then collecting art books (I always paid for them and never dog eared them) - and  now blog addiction (I never spelled a word incorrectly)!

So now I have landed on my metaphysical feet - on blogaholidays. But where?

Am I in the south of France? (I wish) Am I writing the last miraculously Hemmingwayish chapter in a massive bestselling tome? (I wish) Am I fearlessly ripping apart a barrel at Chowpoo in Tahiti on my backhand while wearing aqualungs in case I wipeout? (I wish).

Or am I sitting at my work desk, contemplating my navel and watching my six pack become a 'one' pack?(I unwish)

Yes, you guessed correctly.

But last week, while in the violent throes of procrastination, I made a video (see top of this post) of  my last year's work. It's kind of like the portfolio you have when you are not having one. It's like having a cheese sandwich sans fromage; or having a car without having any petrol, or having a t- bone steak and having no teeth ...

Well toothless or not, I'd be honoured if you watch the video. It's ridiculously fast (unlike me) and, like a Victorian era woman's ankle,  just gives you a glimpse.

So at just over eleven minutes at  1.08 seconds per image that's about  err - a lot of images. And I left out some (I forgot about them). Which is probably lucky. (there was a man in tight underpants who is very upset, and some medieval Japanese villages which would be upset if they had feelings) .

If you watch the video in  HD it's probably easier on the eyes.

Direct link is here.

Thank-you so much to everyone who commented on that last post. You are very very kind to me.

Oh Oh las banderitas en mi imagen. Se supone que traducir. Espero que ellos están trabajando. Nos vemos cuando llegue a la Tierra de Oz! Saludos.  (Oh the flags under my pic. They are supposed to translate. I hope they are working. See you when I get back from the land of Oz)

regardez

Andrew :)

PS when I posted this google must have picked up 'addiction' and 'marijuana' in the text. So I now have an advertisement in my posting box for a Dr Harry's Drug Treatment Clinic.

 Thankyou Google......

PpS these were my illustrations for "racing'. The genesis is from a childhood book of my grandmother's, then my mother's, book of Nursery Rhymes. The original imageshows a pumpkin carriage being drawn by a train of mice.

Footnote: just kidding about the addictions. The only thing I am addicted to is Hercule Poirot's shoes.