Exploring pavements

At Macro Testaccio I saw some interesting works created by painting and drawing over a photocopied image. It looked like a useful technique to explore the visual possibilities.

pavement (studies)

2016

photocopy, acrylic and gouache

210x297mm

In praise of the cracks that appear

As usual, I'm traveling and taking in foreign pavements, grates and the cracks which (happily) predict the impermanence of it all. Ancient Roman roads seem to suggest triumph over time, but if you notice, the tree roots and mossy fissures tell a different story.

Yesterday, at the MACRO Testaccio, I spent time thinking/sketching at the old tables in the courtyard and enjoyed the imperfection of them. Why is the slow breakdown of things so appealing to me? It suggests time, experience and story. There's not much story to be imagined in the shiny plastic tables at the MAXXI, by comparison.

 I have been experimenting with ideas to celebrate the everyday fissures. The happy signs of aging and decomposition that act as a sort of momento mori. It is all impermanent. 

Anyway, I tried a few different things, but decided that pavement cracks and the like require no embellishment. 

Pots

From the archaeology museum, Citta di Marsala, October 2016

Playing with light

After visiting the Hopper exhibition in Rome I've been playing with light. Trying to improve my skill at rendering light on and around different objects. 

I'm still painting pavements and walls, cracks and interstices, and trying to convey something of the alternative universes inherent in these spaces. Minute biomes (usually unobserved) but also the suggestion of something from the other side or some alternative dimension seeping through the cracks. 

I think Hoppers windows-into-rooms achieve a similar impact. The light pours into an interior (various settings) from the sunny outside. 

Micrographia

Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1664) is a visual atlas of everyday life, under the microscope. It was compelling at the time because it drew attention to something previously unnoticed. The tree series was a rendering of the forgotten/neglected/unnoticed landscape. A call for attention.

At the moment I'm focussed on the pavement. The walk to work. And noticing.

Moving on

Breathe 2016: Scenic Rim landscapes in liquid graphite was everything I imagined it to be. I created a forest in a sacred space.

Many thanks to all who came along.

A few images from exhibition (Click Mick Photography).

Anniversaries. It's been 20 years!

Dear Ali George,

Did you remember that it was 20 years ago, in 1996, that we held our first exhibition. Social Fabrics at the Metro Arts Gallery. Textile art (you) and found object sculpture (me) in that beautiful long white gallery. Mum was still young enough to climb up the stairs!

I don't think I have any photos of that exhibition. I'll have a look when I'm at Barney View next.

Many many thanks for your encouragement and companionship on the wonderful journey that it is.

Much love
Sue

Exfoliation

This week I finally got around to photographing this work from the late 1990s. It was in an exhibition at the Moray Street gallery as a paper collage and then, for about ten years it was in every exhibition I had. I painted over it in layers, year after year.  Then finally in around 2005, when I painted my Petticoat series, I decided to stop altering this one.

If you look carefully you can see it is exfoliating, tiny glucose shaped (carbon ring) flakes of paper. These are remnants of thesis.  I cut it up and incorporated it into the painting.

Petticoat
1998-2005
Sue George
acrylic and pen on paper and board, 1000 x 1000 mm

Breathtaking MyriamB

This week an email from Atelier Aspecifico MyriamB popped into my inbox and took my breath away.  I stumbled upon MyriamB in her studio in San Lorenzo when I was visiting once and taking a morning walk. The studio was a wonderland of collected things of beauty and fascination. I could have spent hours there.

Al Ghazzali and alchemy

I chanced upon Al Ghazzali, firstly through a BBC podcast and then by wandering through the net and finding his 'The Alchemy of Happiness".  So much simple joy in existing treasures.

And I read a 'parable' of sorts about two countries, competing to create the greatest artwork. One creates a dazzling colourful work and the other, directly opposite, an empty, shiny surface in white marble which reflects the colour in muted splendour.

What a restorative and inspiring focus!

This is what emerges from the works I am painting at the moment. This is how they express themselves and I have struggled at times to explain why they resonate with me ... and therefore keep emerging.  The white space, the empty space, speaks volumes about the trees. It reflects them and reverences them.  It calls attention to the 'life' around us which we seem to dismiss.

study, 300 x 300 mm
acrylic and graphite on paper and board
2015

Evening light

Surrounded by trees. The view from the studio.

acrylic on canvass
2016

Playing

with acrylic, gauche and paper.

Memento mori

I am up in the studio working on my trees. Works on paper (up cycled shredded paper, quilted, liquid graphite lines) for the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, 2016 Works on Paper competition. All very joyful and (potentially) mesmerising, with fine, fine hand work absorbing liquid graphite in tiny channels created by the sewn marks.

A minor miracle given it was accompanied, throughout and without relent by various urgent Bealster activities such as beating the shit out of the upstairs rug, moving the saw bench out of the rain (and into the studio space) and, finally, a passionate monologue about changed arrangements for storage of camp ovens and dry wood.

Memento mori (detail)
Liquid graphite and stitching on recycled paper
2016

Grey

I could spend a lifetime exploring texture and tone in greyscale.

Walking
4 April 2016
QUT Campus, Brisbane

Kick starts

Kick started the year with a clean out at Barney View and the new Gillies Ridge Art Studio will soon be in full swing.  The studio at Barney View lies at the foot of Mt Gillies, nestled underneath an imposing granite ridge, in the middle of a 'returning' forest of spotted gums, ironbarks and other gems.

It was selectively cleared for timber in the 1980s so it is with some heartfelt determination that Ian defends it now and enjoys the regrowth.

It is the competing regrowth of tall gums which creates the dominant vertical stripe in the Gillies Ridge landscape.  Everything is racing for the sky.

Watch this space for a tree-house warming in July!

Kick started the day at Paper Moon Cafe.  I woke to no coffee! Well, beans-without-grinder. But a morning at PMC listening to Leonard Cohen and I am revived.

Details

I'm testing new software to see if I can get my blog posts to share on Facebook correctly.

Using IfThisThenThat software :) ifttt.com

The image below is detail of a recent work, liquid graphite on paper on board.

Details

Painting trees at 28 Young Street today.  Preparing for an exhibition at Percolator Gallery in September 2016.

Loving the serendipitous detail of the trees. Liquid graphite on paper on board.

The Still, detail, 7 February 2016