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The exhibition opened on 2
April, everything sold and now it's back to nose to the canvas for
the next stint.
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Saturday 3 May 2008
Feeling a lot more energetic. The exhibition so flattened me I began
to wonder if I'd ever again feel enthusiastic about fiddling with my
website, doing the washing or even cooking tea but I have just added
all the prices that my work has sold for to the large image pages,
which was an interesting exercise. (Should the tax office decide to
try to add it all up, these are gallery prices, not mine, or else it
would be a Mercedes rather than a Suzuki outside.)
I haven't priced the unsold works which are currently of no more
value than the canvas and paint.
Also changed my Contact page from a form to an email address, having
found that 25 people went to it last month but none of them used it.
The Spam will now be horrendous. |
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Scrap Pile at Males old Slaughter Yard |
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Friday 2 May 2008
Had a very fruitful trip to the north of Adelaide, through the light
industrial area. Found some very good wrecked trucks but the very
best images of all appeared over the top of a beautifully finished
ten foot wall surrounding what looked like about 5 acres of a scrap
piles - it was CMA Southern Rocycling (spelt correctly) and, no, they wouldn't let me
into the scrap yard itself, I could peep through the gate, so I did
and took this shot, much too far away to use, dammit. (Does anyone
out there happen to know the managers?)
So, I continue with the truck and wrecked buildings, currently repainting
the sky for only the second time. The Tattersalls entry is all
planned and ready to go, possibly similar in feel to the Wrecked
Truck and 2 Stobie Poles (if you're on a winner, why stop!! But that
would get SO boring). Came across a much friendlier scrap yard in
Murray Bridge, which had just loosely crushed several cars and piled
them up. They will replace the wrecked truck, and no Stobie poles
this time either.
My new car is now parked outside the studio and is wonderful. |
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Scrap Pile at CMA Southern Rocycling |
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Tuesday 15 April 2008
Stretched three big canvases, went to Mount Gambier for a few days,
then back to work planning the next one, not
for Tattersall's yet, around a truck and some vandalised buildings.
I have to work very hard now as I have rewarded myself with a lovely
little Suzuki SX4 to replace the Commodore wagon that was the result
of the sale of the Hydraulic Excavator and two more, and for which I
was very grateful indeed.
But that was back in 2005 and I bumped it into a tree when I was
using it to carry fencing materials around the scrub so it's a bit
scruffy though it still goes very fast. It is also white. Petrol
costs make keeping a huge car just to move a couple of paintings a
few times a year a bit silly - all that is yet to be resolved.
With the (nearly) new car due to arrive this week I am almost
enthusiastic about beginning again. Paintings feel so simple and
straightforward when I begin - then the weeks stretch out as I
struggle with one element after another and dive deeper into
the black hole, but maybe not this time. |
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Suzuki SX4 |
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Friday 4 April 2008
That was a wonderful experience. Regardless of the gale force
winds, atrocious flight and an hours wait for a taxi to Pivotal
I met a great many lovely people and began to feel as if I really
could paint. Maybe. My thanks to all of you.
Also managed to get out to Brunswick to squeeze tubes of Old Holland
paint and smear them onto bits of paper, and they truly are heavier
in pigment, stiffer in mix, a great deal higher in price and way way
superior. This year's reward for a lot of hard work is to replace
every single tube of paint with Old Holland. There is an
accelerating trend towards an oilier (downright sloppy) oil paint
and any complaint is met with "but everyone else wants it like
that". Snarl.
Then a long chat with Tamsin of Pivotal, planning next year's
strategy (oops, work). There will be no solo show. No panic. no
stress, but some opportunities to exhibit one or two pieces to
keep the essential publicity going.
The next piece, a big one for Tattersalls, is already planned. So is
the one after that. |
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| The tree used in the Fairground |
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Friday 28 March 2008
The paintings made it to Busfreight in Adelaide on Wednesday and
arrived in the midst of a power failure yesterday. Intact!
The good bits comes next - a trip to Melbourne and everyone being
nice to me. It's the only time I ever really get any feedback, so I
need a great deal of it to keep me going for another year. Nothing
will happen for the next couple of weeks, though. I am utterly
exhausted.
After that I intend to do something for the Tattersalls landscape
prize and whatever comes next.
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The original Fairground Humpty Dumpty who appeared
anatomically incorrect and got changed. |
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Monday 10 March 2008
It has been over 41 degrees for the past 4 days and is forecast to
continue for another 5, so an early start, but there's still too
much low sunshine to work. Whoever built our house and shed faced
them squarely onto the road, vaguely south westerly so there is
always sunshine coming in somewhere. It is already very hot.,
although the airconditioner cools the shed by around 10 degrees.
The fairground painting is going well, and is on course to be
finished in time, along with the other 4. The frames are ordered,
Ken has volunteered to make the crates, and the flight and hotel are
booked. This year, a friend has written a press handout for local
papers here in South Australia and that went off last Friday. It
would be nice to be recognised locally.
Back to the coalface. |
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There was a photo of a truck here, but Pivotal Gallery has told me
that there is an expectation it will be my next painting. It won't!
So, here's a crow instead. |
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Thursday 28 February 2008
The pile of cars, after weeks working without a break, got itself finished and the
wrestlers has only a day or so to go. The car pile was horrendously
complicated and got blacker and blacker - very difficult to
photograph. Then my email server decided to have another dummy-spit
and wouldn't send the image to Pivotal for a long time when all I
wanted to do was get away from the studio and all its mess. But it
did go eventually, and Tamsin kindly sent many congratulations,
spurring me on to the wrestlers and the last one, the tent.
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| Image for the
Pile of Cars |
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Saturday 2 February 2008
Having
struggled to work through a particularly nasty bout of flu that Ken
brought back from the UK I finally, at long last, resolved every
single square millimeter of the truck (well, as near as possible
anyway) and finished it, just in time for Pivotal to start publicity
for the show. Now it's on with the wrestlers which should, in
theory, be easier. |
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| Image for
the Pile of Cars |
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Wednesday 23 January 2008
Day after day,
everything progressed a little bit more, which is the way it goes
when things are going well. Things go bad when, every day, I have to
obliterate what I did the day before and do it again. Smashing my
head against a brick wall and all the time knowing that if I just
left the painting alone in a corner it would (sometimes) just
magically resolve itself in my head, I'd know exactly what to do,
and finish it. This doesn't work if there's a deadline coming, but
is proving to be effective with four paintings unfinished at the
same time. There's always some little corner I can work on
somewhere.
The mess in the studio is unbelievable. |
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Bare Vines - an unused image |
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Friday 4 January 2008
Well, the plan to write
this every week didn't last for long. Christmas intervened and a
phone call to tell us my UK mother-in-law had died came just as Ken
was carving the turkey, after which things got a bit complicated.
While he's still in the UK it's difficult to settle to a good long
day's work. That's the worst of exhibition deadlines. I did,
however, get more done to the truck, then obliterated a section of
it and repainted the sky (again). Now it's drying for a while.
Worked out the fifth painting, no fences - a fairground again - and
got the drawing transferred to the canvas ready to colour it in,
then find that it doesn't quite work and
go over and over it again and again. Maybe this time it will,
just for once, sail through easily. Everyone will see
the tent and go, Jeffrey Smart, Jeffrey Smart and that makes me so
cross! |
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Sunday 23 December 2007
Not a good week. Endless interruptions
but the truck moved
much closer to a conclusion and is now being 'finished' bit by
tiny bit. The tree didn't get used (yet) and the sky got changed for
the umpteenth time, maybe permanently. The pile of cars also got a
kick-start with a big change to the foreground. The wrestlers
gathered dust. Photographed the old wharf at Morgan coincidentally
with picking up a book of abstract expressionists.
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Morgan Wharf |
Franz Kline
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Saturday 15 December 2007
The weather is currently very hot so the
paint gets thick and sticky very quickly, particularly with the
air conditioner on as well, but I press on. At least it dries
overnight. In the winter I have to use a hot box that my husband
Ken made for me - a big enclosed box with a row of globes and a
small computer fan at the bottom, with the paintings sitting on a
rack above them. Never could get into painting 'we-on-wet' (I
always ended up with a slimy mess) so if they're not dry enough
to work on straight away more weeks and weeks go by. The
finished one is of the vampire child I used in 2002 with a
wall behind him based on the Melbourne lanes which I
photographed during my last exhibition in March. Although I once
found a reasonable wall in Adelaide, which I used for the Hula Busker, Adelaide simply does not have the same grunge factor as
Melbourne. The image alongside is part of it.
A second painting is finally, at last, after a couple of months
work, getting finished. It's another truck (though Tamsin,
director of Pivotal, very kindly didn't insist I did one) and it
was supposed to be easy - a truck, a bit of landscape and the
sky. It ended up being one of those endless, difficult ones
where one section gets painted over and over and over again,
very much like the Tar Truck, Sign and Drystone Wall, but today
I could see the end of it. Maybe another tree. Maybe the one
alongside. Maybe not. The truck came
from a truck wrecking yard which I came across when I had to suddenly duck up a side turning when the phone rang.
I was actually looking for a foundry just north of Adelaide,
which may appear sometime. The truck yard was the most
stunningly amazing place. I took a great many photos and
then went back for more. A great hulking bloke said, "Look, it's
that tourist again" and I felt very old-ladyish but I shall give
him a print of the painting for him to scrutinise at his leisure
and find all the bits that don't join up quite right. A third
painting, also approaching the end, is another pile of cars. I
began this, feeling very enthusiastic, last April, but paused to
do the second Fence and Header and the two little ones for the
Savage Club prize, and it has dragged on ever since. Almost got
right back into it a week or two ago but, having mixed up a
paletteful of rust colours, realised those were exactly the
colours I needed for the truck, so that was the end of that.
The problem of doing two rusty paintings at once is I get
bogged down with all the brown paint so the fourth painting
currently only just begun is another simple, straightforward and
fun piece based on Muybridge's wrestlers with a great slab of
red at the bottom.
The fifth one will probably be
another fence but I recently took a lot of photos of some nearby
hills, so maybe it will be those instead. |
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| Torn poster from
Melbourne Lane |
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| Twisted tree on road
to Murray Bridge |
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| Foundry |
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| Pile of scrap at AAA
Wreckers |
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From a Muybridge Wrestlers sequence |
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Hills behind Reedy Creek |
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