23 December 07
Morgan Wharf Franz Kline
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 and the sky got changed yet again, 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.
15 December 07
Torn Poster from Melbourne Lane
Twisted tree on road to Murray Bridge
Foundry
The weather is currently very hot so the paint gets thick and sticky very quickly, but at least it dries overnight. In the winter I use a hot box – 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.
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 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 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 third painting, also approaching the end, is another pile of cars. I began this 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 worked on that instead.
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.