Saving Myself

Hey hey, after that last post with the semi naked man I thought I'd better redeam myself.

I forgot that I was a painter for a while there :) so thought I'd better stick some of my real life paintings up.

That said, the top picture is of a photograph of a rose I saw in Canberra a few months ago when I went down for the post impressionists' show.  When I looked it through the viewfinder this is what I saw.

It wasn't till I got home that I realised that my breath had been fogging up the image in the viewfinder. So for the final image I cheated and photoshopped it.

The rest of the images bar one are paintings.

The toy boat one is my reaction to those sparkles that I put in my illustrations. One of the people who collect my work was kind enough to buy it.

The second one is a landscape down the road from where my old painting professor lives. This one now lives in the collection of another optometrist who has great style and taste :)

The next three are recent paintings (last two weeks) and haven't been exhibited. Though I used the same dark linen glazed background I tried to bring a bit more colour into them. It makes people think that I am happy!

But seriously, the dark ground helps you to tie the colours in. Theory is that with a limited tonal range you can use as many colours as you like - and the whole will be harmonious. It works most of the time. All these paintings are about 55 by 42 cm?

The one of the beach with houses in the foreground is a segment of a painting I did a few years ago. I like to simplify work by taking photographs of paintings I have done, isolating part of the painting that might make a good composition, then printing that out quite small, so that I have only the basic shapes with which to work up another painting.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it's too abstracted.

The last two images a are of a larger painting 1.2 metres by .9 metres, which is bigger than I like to work. It's a fun painting related to my digital collages I did of Humpty Dumpty a few months ago, and it's called Humpty Dumpty Double Amputee. It's an experiment in built up glazes - so it was quite hard to capture on film due to the reflection etc,

This painting caused me a great deal of stress recently, as I put it in a local prize hanging and the culling committee refused to hang it. When I picked it back up I was informed that there were 'just too many things wrong with it."

As budding novelist I was lucky enough to experience first hand what is called a rainbow of emotions. Disbelief, disgust, revenge, anger, dismay, nausea, destruction of ego, self doubt etc - culminating in  resignation and distrust of the local art community.

Nothing that a glass of good wine wouldn't fix!

The last picture is the painting in my part of the studio that I share with six other painters.

What's next? Well yesterday the huge Dell Laser Colour Printer I ordered arrived. It's so big I can't lift it without help. But the two prints I have done on it are just magic. It's only 1200 DPI by 1200 DPI but on A4 it still looks great. When I get a chance I'll be experimenting with digital transfer technique - so I will be finally able to get some of my illustrations out into the 'real' world.

If you are thinking of buying another inkjet, before you do, check out one of these. It won't do photo quality like a lab will - but I think it will keep me happy.

thanks again for looking at my work.