Shapes, glorious shapes.

Phoenix flowers. Experimenting with bottle shapes.

From the ashes of resentment

Experimenting with bottle/jar form and print application techniques.

These using ink with plastic supports to print the initial shape, underscored by drawing (pencil, 8B) and painting (watercolour).

Phoenix blossom
print, pencil, and watercolour on paper, 24x33 cm

Phoenix blossom
print, pencil, and watercolour on paper, 24x33 cm

A print a day #5

Away from the studio at Barneyview, so improvising. This one with an ink pad, and the top of a pencil sharpener.

ink on paper

Piecing paper

The ragged and stitched effect in the 'scarred landscapes' series, looks incongruous on pristine, watercolour paper. Too stable.

I am exploring options for supports which can embody more of the fragility I am trying to convey.

Torn, pieced, and reconstructed drawing paper feels perfect. It's not something I can show here, in pictures, but the feel and sound of it is so appropriate. It is a tactile experience.

scarred landscape on watercolour paper

120gm, torn, pieced, glued and painted

120gm, torn, pieced, glued and painted

pencil (4B) on reconstructed paper

Cicada season

The cicadas are deafening. They are the background to summers at Barney View. 

I watched, yesterday, as a friar bird swooped in and enjoyed a juicy cicada snack. 

A print a day #4

on Thursday

print of pig viscera, on paper
100 x 150 mm

A print a day #3

on Wednesday

acrylic, and charcoal
print on paper, 100 x 150 mm

A print a day #2

on Tuesday

A print a day

Playing in the studio.

on Monday

Kino

Who knew?

Kino, eucalypt sap, abundant in drought stressed trees succumbing to borers, dissolves in mentholated spirits to produce a coloured varnish.

I’m experimenting with kino wash on canvas and on paper, to create dry, burnt landscapes.

January 2020

acrylic, viscera, kino and charcoal on canvas
100 x 150 mm

Focus on resentments

I created an artist's book. A catalogue of incendiary resentments, and then sensibly burnt it.

catalogue of incendiary
resentments

burning resentments

ashes of incendiary 

resentments, real and 

imagined

Visceral records

I found a new material. Viscera, porcine, dried. Sold to artisan sausage makers. It is perfect for recording the visceral finds.

festering resentments,
print, viscera and acrylic on paper
10 x 15 cm

Internal landscapes

The archivist has been busy. I have been working on a series of prints, drawings and paintings, to document the internal landscapes of loves and resentments, shames and joys. I began in 2019 trying to work out how I would display the findings.

I felt like a resurrectionist, exhuming and documenting the sort of stuff no-one wants to see. In the manner of Hunter, with his Atlas of the Gravid Uterus. The whole expose crosses a line (or three).

Should I create an atlas, an archive, an annotated bibliography? A cabinet of curiosities?

I started drawing specimen jars. Somewhere to store things, in the interim.

print on paper, 10 x 15 cm

Scarred landscapes

Inspired this morning by the idea of a Tasmanian landscape, as required for the Glover Prize. I've been in the studio at Barney View drawing scarred landscapes, droughted and blackened by fire. I imagined the Tasmanian landscape with its open wounds, and what lies beneath.