SWV

2009 will be a terrific year as the studio is more studioier.
The resolution will be not to whinge, brag, or defensively justify my existence.

The above pic is where I'd love to catch up some time.

May your art be artistic and your surf surfable.
& (To Chris & Ian, with no apologies for alliteration)
May your dishes be dilectable and your discussions dialectical.

A Little Trumpeting

The redgum carving had a solid week and the last surf was interrupted by the leggy-plug ripping out along with half the tail.

A comment left by Ian on the last blog mentions (besides the compliments & enjoyable anecdote of shared experience) the exploitation of art by the 'free market'.
As tempted as I am to rant on this subject, I'd prefer to refer anyone interested to a book by Peter Timms, 'What's Wrong With Contemporary Art?' (UNSW Press, 2004), who argues the case rather eloquently.
In defence of the gallery owners who tend to choose artists they can bank on, I suppose it really comes down to a case of 'supply and demand'.

I've been inadvertently recalcitrant by indulging in: prolonged and penetrating studies, relentless observation and surveying, intuitive lateral research and seeking/googling obscure readings, and generally experimenting with media and techniques.
Always done out of curiousity. The aim is to arrive at an informed position with work that demonstrates supreme skill (no less!).
The status I suppose I wish to achieve is that of a person who knows himself, his society, and his landscape with minimal compromise. A maverick geographer perhaps! The artwork that results should therefore have an inherent power and integrity.

Sometimes this is not the case, however, it most often is and usually gets forgotten under a pile or shelved, moving on to the next 'thing'. The drive comes from a pride in a vocation, despite lack of recognition, let alone remuneration.

The art is not trendy or cool. It does not superficially regurgitate. Perhaps it is boring to most, but it is a reflection of the me that you otherwise cannot see, and also, most awkwardly, of society.

The Mutton Bird

While I'm back in 2005 (a prodigious year) I'd like to share the background to this seemingly boring seascape drawing.

It's October and I'm living in Port Fairy. I was drawing daily, one in the morn and another in the arvo. Its getting late and I'm racing the light. I'm perched upon one of the 'Mounds of Joy', entertained by a coupla toe-in surfers tearing-up 'Green Island', when suddenly there arrived a handful of Mutton Birds or Shearwaters from nowhere all whorling about me. Steadily their numbers increased. It was the arrival of their annual migration. Now I'm surrounded by thousands with many zipping only inches away from my nose. I didn't know if they were happy/cheeky or aggressive/threatened, but i just kept drawing anyway in a rather rapturous state. My camera was broken at the time and the only way to capture the experience in a non-abstract manner was to piece together a single bird as night fell (I had this thing about only drawing realistically from life at the time).

At a later date I was showing my drawings to a gallery owner who ridiculed my art suggesting that there wasn't much to them. That bloody wanker devoed me saying, "what's this? who cares about a stupid bird". But I suppose I did really need to have gone into a studio and executed a large abstract oil to express the wow factor (had no room or money to do so anyway). Otherwise you really just had to be there.

Life Distillation

The above pic was executed in Feb 2005.
It was a breakthrough of sorts.
A coupla dozen had preceded it, and this one started to contain some magic, or serendipity, which came from an intuitive approach, or process.

It has elements of the coast, but more importantly, it is an emotional portrait of sorts, capturing in essence the circumstances of an important relationship at that moment.

It wasn't 'new-media', or 'innovative', or a 'social-commentary', or 'shocking'.
Of course it was ignored when exibited, leaving me to believe it was simply neurotic and self-absorbed.
It was honest, personal, cathartic and deeply reflective, and I think, great art.

Cattle Don't Surf

Havn't been surfin much and have lost rythym with writing.

Been sculpting again, redgum.
Developing an online gallery for artwork.
Fininishing projects.

Cattle don't write either.
I've been mowing lawns too.

Pullin In

At last, a surf to write about.
Bit small, but the odd set was worth the wait. Offshore, overcast, a weekday so it was uncrowded; Ideal conditions.

There was a decent size wave that I was racin along the wall of. Then I was in the posi of pullin in. I didn't, I dived. Mighta stopped gettin meself crunched, but also missed the possible opportunity of a juicy tube.

As I was paddling back out I was thinkin about art and the opportunities missed.
Fortune follows the brave. Instead, Ive dived when vulnerable, not entered prizes, not put my art on the line. I've avoided being judged, or placing my art on walls only to be ignored. I've preferred poverty and obscurity rather than 'pullin in'.

Spose I better get me a commercial site. Put it out there. I will bare myself and trust that a juicy tube will come.

Wooden Cliffs

The surfing and art for the day are presented in this still-life.

A righthander is peeling down the rugged shore.
I am a knob on a harp taking off at the end of the point.

The cliffs comprise some of the wood-carvings I've mentioned previously.
They still need to be scraped and sanded and coated.

Sculpting groove over. Time for some drawing and painting.
I'll be doing a lot of details/abstracts in Photoshop too.

The Pragmatic Town

I don't know what time Blogger is on but the time here is 1 pm Thursday October 30.

Last night I did the tutoring of art thing I do at a local community college. It is my favourite thing to do besides surfing. Coaching four mature women to do more and become more confident in their art making. Sometimes the class has had 13 members, but four is good, it presents the opportunity to apply a more customised service.

I'd like to be doing much more tutoring in art. However Warrnambool has an oversupply of Fine Art graduates and a general lack of interest in doing art as a populace. The mindset is largely rural and pragmatic, and the coast is inspirational to the artist.

The above picture was taken at Armstrong bay at one of the Merri River openings. What I like about it is the timeless beauty. No houses or people clothed in a manner that says 2008. There are many cliffs, coves, beaches, without even a footprint in the sand not far from Warrnambool. No signs, telephone wires, antennas, and certainly no houses perched and peering into what might have been a moment of timeless consciousness.

No car noise, just the birds and the rythmic rumble of waves.

Lost in a Groove

No surf. Played backyard cricket.

Sculpted all day and night. Chiselling, rasping, scraping, sanding.
Hands are blistered and sore. The whirlwind of a groove.
I know I couldn't be bothered sculpting last week. I'm scraping in my head as I write this.

The other day it was oil pastel, 2 or 3 days of intense concentration. Abstract, ochre pallette, figures and landscapes.
Then comes a shift of sorts, a distraction or a diversion. A shifting of brain, a changing of persona, to accommodate the new intrusion. Maybe it is from those I love and very welcome, or from work or a job to do. Either way the intrusion is neccessary. However, momentum may also be lost

I would love to get more lost more often in such grooves, and for much longer too.
Sustained bursts can generate a more intense and rigorous result. Then its back to life.

The above picture was done about 10 years ago. The higly detailed allegorical piece, also containing narritives of green activism, was, of course, done in a burst. I havn't done anything like it since.

Redgum boogie

Not worth surfing today. Maybe Thursday. Surfline says so anyway.

Just did lots of sanding today on the redgum sculptures and they'll be ready for a photo soon.

Heres a scan of a still-life i did in watercolour-pencil. Number nine of fourteen. August 2005.
The aim at the time was to do a drawing a day and be disciplined and at my very cleverest.
Ive been trying since that series to develope a personal style of abstraction or line & shape.
Gettin there.

Flatness, Murals, and Not Ranting

Its offshore but flat today, which is good cos i had a balmy bbq, music & lotsa beer eve yesterday.

The art component is a review of doing a coupla murals for my sons kinder.
Ive just finished them, 99.9% anyway, though I still have to put them up. Used exterior house paint on cement sheeting.
Mez helped with the dinosaur theme piece. Sometimes I was just embellishing the shapes he created. It wouldn't have occurred to me to have a giant wave hitting his T-Rex on the nose.
We were painting and I left him in the studio for five mins while on the blower, only to come back to 'lava' sprayed/spewed/dripping all over the land.
The piece was turning abstract expressionist which looked great, however I made the decision to restrict the lava to a trickle with some fast rubbing/wiping off of the rampant red.
The dinosaurs and landscape are derived from a child's view, so its devoid of scientific credibility, and this only made the pleasure of painting increase.
The scene is looking east of Warrnambool and the river is the Hopkins.
I also did a second similar size mural in a Faery theme.

Wow, the rant component of my last post, it appears, has generated a response. Cheers, Pat. Um, I suppose I now respond with a comment to the comment on the subjects raised, in a comment box, so its there.

I've just deleted another long rant and decided not to, except that from now on my blog is about surfing and art and any political, sexual or religious views are in the context of art and surfing.

Rips, Redgum, and a Rant

Japs was a bit over-ripped this mornin'. Its nice to have a gutter to zip out the back on, but it was also messin' with the face.
Still, got a few 'rippers'. The above pic is a view east from Japs, which is a reasonably reliable beachy with a bit of punch.

Have been finishin' about 6 or 7 redgum sculptures, varying in size from a stubby to a lifesize figure. I'd like to share a tip from an indigenous mate who got it from his mob in the action of making artifacts, boomerangs and spears, etc: When the object is shaped but still rough, get some broken glass, brown is best, and scrape the object smooth. Its a bit haphazard finding the right kind of edge, but it works. I use the glass offcuts from pic-framing and cut them into a manageable size, deliberately making curves as well.

Well, there's a little surf & art update.

Hmm, lookin' at the last post, I mentioned in a round about way the act of not flying with the higher common denominator, which I suppose is a classic 'Lefty' point of view. Indeed, I am annoyed by the whole rat-race mentality, the cunning of those who wish to accrue more material wealth at the expense of others, nations who exploit the less well positioned just cos they can.
I'm waiting for the rule of 'what-goes-around....' to cause nations like the USA to implode, Australia etc too. Its only fair.
Someone said 'the meek shall inherit the earth'. Empires come and go, typically by blind greed, eating themself.

Wow, didn't know ranting could be so fun!

ABI, Draw Club, & Surfing

I suppose a blog is a diary of sorts so im gonna use that as an entry point to get going.
As well as art i'd like to include surfing as well.

Well, this morning i sat down with an ABI (acquired brain injury) group to work through the steps to produce the graphic art for a DVD they'd made with a local film-maker.
One of the women asked me to slow down. I ended up slowing everything down, timeline the lot. The lesson was to work to the slowest in the group rather than get carried along with a couple of the faster blokes.
Gee, while we are on lessons, after watching the DVD and a couple of others on the same subject, a glaring statistic struck me. Most of those with an ABI were involved in car accidents. Slow down and take care everyone, please.

Last night I attended another round of 'Draw Club'. It consists of sitting down in a mate's studio with a handful of other drawing devotees. A couple of beers helps the banter and daring to draw each others portraits. Often there's a still life in the middle too.
It is the next best thing to surfing.

Yesterday I had a wonderful surf with the break to myself. As I type, I notice out the window that the wind has died down and its time to go you know what.

Gee, What Now?

Now that I have a blog I suppose I'd better use it.

I don't really have much to say of consequence, but then that hasn't stopped millions of people who blog regularly. I once found a blogsite that had the greatest erotic art collection I've ever seen, and maybe I could get that theme going...maybe not, perhaps I'll stick to what I know, plain old art, with smatterings of opinionated ranting on politics etc.

hmm, decision made. Its about art. That way I can do a bit of shameless self-promotion and I can pretend I'm working while bangin away here.

The above pic was sketched onsite at Hopkins Little Cove about a month ago. A seal was frolicking and it inspired the fun line use.