Shapes

Last night's podcast was The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art about Rothko's writings. This mornings diary was playing with fuzzy shapes.

Reading the landscape

Back in the studio painting trees.  Looking out at my 360 of silent sentinels, all blushing with colourful new skin after springtime exfoliation.

Playing with a sheet of paper retrieved from the braille library by Ali George.

Tree study

acrylic on paper

2015

Interstices in the city

As I wait for the bus each night, in the city, I enjoy the light escaping through the windows of the buildings all around.  I'm not sure why, but at certain times of the evening, the light is more golden, warm and inviting.  The interstices look cosy and I wonder what is happening inside each small cave.

Today I am up at Barney View and playing with prints (hand cut monoprints, acrylic on paper) while I'm waiting for the primer on my new boards to dry.

Towards abstraction

With apologies to Robert Andrews who teaches the course, and taught me.  Playing with the view of the forest from my studio.

Ups and downs

I am painting trees.  Very simple vertical abstractions.  Walls of them.  Anita West told me today that vertical forms evoke stability and horizontal forms evoke calm.  I must have known.  This is just what I want to produce for people to experience.  Trees, solid and vertical.  Stability.  Lines of them across the room.  Calm.  

Stability and calm as an antidote to the vertigo of modern life.

Treescape
2014

Sue George
Acrylic and liquid graphite on board

Off the wall

Another inspiring visual.  My morning walk, Pigneto to San Lorenzo, in Rome.

Inspirations - Jessie Trail

Jessie Traill capturing the same sentries, years ago.  I am inspired to capture the background, the light through the distant trees, with the simplicity achieved here.  The interstices in the  leafy screen.

Good night in the valley where the white gums grow
1922

Jessie Traill
49.7 x 46.5 cm
Link to the NGA

100 things

In the spirit of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, I sat down today to refocus and think about the things I love.  It's a getting-in-touch exercise that i've done many times over the past 20 years.  It is interesting to see what changes and what stays the same.  I notice, more verbs.  Fewer nouns.

1. Being alone
2. Being alone at Barney View
3. Painting
4. New canvases
5. New boards
6. Taking off
7. Having no plans
8. Options
9. Anna
10. Andi
11. Ian
12. Ally
13. Playing with an art diary
14. Imagining people will see my art and be uplifted
15. Dreaming of paintings
16.  Dreaming of art projects
17. Helping people
18. Helping people to progress their own dreams and goals
19. Morandi
20. Morandi's still lifes
21. Painting bottles
22. Trees
23. Sally
24. Dreaming with Sally
25. Dreaming about teaching
26.  Thinking and talking about teaching projects
27. Walking around urban landscapes
28. Taking photos
29. Noticing
30. Photographing walls
31. Photographing grates
32. Oranges
33.  Orange blossom
34.  The thick scent of orange blossom in Sicily in spring
35.  Favingana
36.  Swimming off the rocks in Favingana
37.  Elliot Heads
38.  Jane
39.  Swimming
40.  Langlands Park pool
41.  Swimming along in Langlands Park Pool, watching the clouds.
42.  Coffee
43.  Strong smooth coffee, with milk (first of the day)
44.  Sunrise
45.  Early morning
46.  Early morning with coffee and art diary
47.  Dreaming
48.  Ian's arms
49.  Reading with Ian
50.  Cream buns
51.  Isle of Man
52.  Walking around the Isle of Man
53.  Fleshwick Bay
54.  Peel Harbour
55.  Ellerslie Farm
56.  The Dillons
57.  The Dillon's
58.  Dr Tim
59.  Contemporary art galleries
60.  Abstraction in art
61.  GOMA
62.  QAG
63.  Beaches
64.  Jane Austen
65.  Dickens
66.  The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon
67.  Seoul
68.  Insadong
69.  Paul and Paulina's, Seoul
70.  Sundubu Chigae
71.  Jinju
72.  Paris
73.  Thursday nights in Paris
74.  Gallery crawls on Thursday nights in Paris
75.  Art supplies
76.  Old art supply shops
77.  Leather
78.  Hand made leather visual diaries
79.  Fine art paper
80.  The fireplace at Barney View
81.  When Graeme comes to dinner at Barney View
82.  Istanbul
83.  Open minds
84.  Intellectual rigour
85.  The English spelling of rigour, colour and the like.
86.  Museum of Art and Design, Columbus Circle, New York
87.  Big Al's studio
88.  Staying the night at Big Al's
89.  Spotted gums
90.  Stands of trees
91.  Ho Chi Minh City
92.  Wide leg pants
93.  Water
94.  Autumn
95.  Moreton Island
96.  Snorkelling
97.  The Tea Shop, Jinju
98.  Ferries on the Bosphorus, Istanbul
99.  Northern New South Wales
100.  Bird song in the morning.

Tree change

The bush changes colour in the rain.  I arrived one night in misty rain and drove into a forest of fluorescent trees.  I wondered if I was imagining it.  In the dry the spotted gums are pink and grey and blue.  With a little moisture they turn bright green.  So very beautiful.

Today I caught them undecided.  The rain was light and misty and blowing in from one direction.  On one side the gums were dry and pink and the other ...

Unknown unknowns

I was reading this week about the joy of the unknown unknowns.  The books you find in a bookshop that you never knew you'd love.  The visual jewels you chance upon, when you take the time to notice.

The first time I drove to Barney View.

Inspiring travels

I've been away for a few weeks in Sicily and on the Isle of Man.  Both islands weave their magic.  I travel the world and see footpaths. They inspire me with their crumbling surfaces, the cracks and crevices.  The interstices.  The spaces in between telling the story again.

A mini moment

I am painting moments.  Suspended time.  This tiny miniature this morning on a timber off-cut.

A little time
2014

Sue George

acrylic and liquid graphite on timber
10 x 10 cm

Mementos

Dad's old workbench, now art bench. Transforming ...

Life is indeed beautiful

Enjoyed waking to autumn this morning!  The heat is gone!

The studio, Barneyview

Abstraction

In the studio at Barneyview today.  Experimenting with abstraction, inspired by leaves all over the ground up here after the rain.

Abstraction 1 (study)

2015


Sue George

Acrylic on board
25 x 25 cm

Changing horizons

The ridge line from Byron.

Acrylic and liquid graphite on canvas.

Sunday morning bliss.  Notice that great essential my art process.  Not the coffee.  The toilet roll.

The ridge

Inspired by the landscape of the Scenic Rim 2015

Mt Maroon

Excited about the possibility of working with Scenic Rim visitors to create mountainscapes.

Mountains of inspiration

New workbench in the Annerley studio is now covered in mountains.  Time to document.

Saint Mary McKillop - A commission

A portrait commissioned by Sally Neaves, Penola Catholic College.

I wanted to paint Mary McKillop the old woman.  The wise woman.  I extracted this portrait from a photograph of Mary McKillop taken after she had had a stroke in her later years.

Mary McKillop
2013

Sue George

acrylic on canvas
600 x 600 mm

Nude studies

Evolving nude.  Pencil then acrylic on paper.

Gravestone

Along the same lines.  

Experimenting with composition and style.

Memento mori

/mɪˌmɛntəʊ ˈmɔːri,-rʌɪ/

1. 
   

   n. an object kept as a reminder of the inevitability of death (fr Latin).

   
   

   
   

   
   

   I'm fond of this one.  The first acrylic I painted, enjoying the tones in the Dutton Park Cemetery under the trees.  Also a great reminder. 

   
   

   Last night I woke and had trouble getting back to sleep.  Worrying unproductively.  I picked up a book at random from the shelf and flicked it open to ... Schopenhauer on life as suffering and the consolation of embracing it.  Suitably consoled.

   
   

   
   

   
   

   

   
   

   
   

   Memento mori

   2012

   
   

   Sue George

   
   

   acrylic on canvas

   35 x 35 cm

   
   

Women can't paint

Words of wizzdom from Georg Baselitz: 

 Women don’t paint very well. It’s a fact,” the 75-year-old German artist told the German newspaper Der Spiegel.  

Women can't paint

2015

Sue George

acrylic and liquid graphite on paper

140 x 190 cm

Perspective

Keeping everything in perspective.  Mornings at Barneyview.

The clearing |charcoal|

The clearing
2014

Charcoal on paper

Suspending time

Inspired by Guy Maestri's roadkill paintings.  The dead rosellas.  Suspended.  Their beauty captured and revered.  Suspended for a moment in time.

Rosella
2014

Guy Maestri
Oil on board



I saw these works at the Melbourne Art Fair and they were breathtaking.  At the same time Israel was bombing the life out of Palestine and I couldn't help thinking of all the lives (colourful, sacred lives) extinguished like roadkill during the bombing.  No one seemed to care.  I wanted to take those lives and suspend them, Maestri-like.  Reverence them.  Remember them.

Roadkill

2014

Sue George

Acrylic on board

The time of day

What a difference a few hours makes.

The clearing (midday)

2014

Acrylic on paper

The clearing (afternoon)
2014
Acrylic on canvas

The clearing (midday)
2014
Acrylic on canvas

The clearing (afternoon)
2014
Acrylic on paper

Interstice /ɪnˈtəːstɪs/

An intervening space, especially a small one.

I love this word.  I've been absent.  I am not a faithful blogger.  I get busy and distracted.  I'm not normally avid of people who insist on filling the interstices, as renovators so often do, making sure they obliterate all sign of the gaps.  I love the interstices.

But here I am filling the gap.  I thought I would bring my blog up to date.  Artworks from the interstices.

Ian's gate
2014

Acrylic on canvas
80 x 80 cm

Mountainscape series

I created a series of small mountainscapes with the same focus (background/foreground duality and emphasis on negative space).  This series acrylic and liquid graphite on canvas.

Mountainscapes

I have been painting mountainscapes inspired by the Scenic Rim.  It is the negative space that inspires me.  The white out.  I want to capture the negative space.  The free space.  The escape from the escarpment.  I am inspired by Frank Kline to work on the negative space until you can't tell which is intended as the negative space.