Well I have been slack haven't I.  First entry in a while.

Whats been happening.   Not much.  I still don't have a regular job which is a bit of a worry, but at least I am getting to paint a bit.

Currently I am doing a bit of still life.. I have always shied away from still life because I don't like the tradiutional vases of flowers, jugs and fruit that you see all over.  I wanted to do something a little minimal, as realistic as my abilities allow, and is not fruit/jugs/vases/flowers etc.

It took a while, but one afternoon I noticed Debbie-Lee's old sneakers laying on the lounge room floor, and I thought what a good subject!!.  I photographed them and painted the following painiting.. in oils.

PUMAS,  September 2008, 91.5cm x 91.5cm (36in x 36in), Oil on Canvas

I have also decided that its about time I was serious about marketing my art, so I am going to put together a series of paintings for an exhibition then flog them around some galleries to see if there is any interest.  They will be still life paintings, starting with Pumas above.  I have already started on my second painting of a pair of old boots.... they won't all be of shoes, just things I find that could be turned into a still life painting.

I'll keep you posted

Pete

I decided the other day to drag out my acrylics... It was while I was playing around with multimedia...  I just got tired of painting and decided to splatter some paint onto an old canvas I had.  I mixed everything.  Acrylics. oil paint, water, solvent.... then dribbled it around the canvas.. this was the result. 

Anyway... It caused me to get my acrylics out again... I started to underpaint with acrylics, then coat with linseed oil, then layer an oil paint mix over the lot... It created an interesting effect.. Then I just startet to play with Acrylics as an underpaint for my oils.  I was working on a black ground with white paint, scrumbling it in, and building it up in layers... easier with Acrylics because they dry between layers.  The result was pretty neat.. looked like a loose charcoal drawing in reverse.. I liked it so didn't go further with my plan to use it as an underpainting.. I have been experimenting with this style since, but using a white ground, painting blocks of underpaint colous, then scrumbling in successive layers of black.

This is the first painting where I used the black ground and white acrylics. 

This is the latest.. I added colour blocks as an underpaint.. 

I'm having fun with this so will keep going... I might try some landscapes as well to see how they turn out.

catch you next time

Pete

OK.. Now that I have the basic outline defined, I need to think about how I am going to paint this thing.  By that I mean which style do I use, what is the bascic structure of the painting etc.  I could go with a smotth blended painting, a pallette knife work like my self portrait last year, or some other style.

Firstly the background.  I am thinking of a reverse representation of the land, which is something our indigineous people have an affinity with. If you look at the origins of the aboriginal flag, it is meant to represent the earth (red), the sky (black) and the sun (yellow circle in the center... it looks like this

This flag is now widley and readily recognised as representing the Aboriginal people in Australia... My guess is that a lot of people don't know the origins of the flag, nor do they know the meanings of the red, black and yellow symbolisation.

By reverse symbolism I mean lets use the land to represent the flag... have a landscape as the background, in red, black and yellow.

I put a quick study together with Ivan as the central character to try this out.  I think it will work out OK.

This is the result.

Debbie-Lee and I just returned from 12 days in wonderful Phuket, lying on the beach and everything else that goes with a vacation at a tropical resort. 

We stayed at the Kata Thani on Kata Noi beach, the southern most beach on the western side of Phuket.  Kata Noi is pretty quiet and doesn't have all the razamataz that Patong has, so we went into Patong on a couple of the rainy days to do some shopping, site seeing etc. 

I was amazed at the number of art galleries and of the resident artists that sit there all day and paint for the tourists.  From a skill standpoint they are very talented, and can create a very reasonable copy of any painting you give them a photo of...  Want a Van Gogh in your loung room, a Dali in the study.. no problem, and all for about A$100. 

Two things struck me... 

1)  How little these artists get paid for their work, yet they create quite good works of art

and

2)  How unfullfilling it must be to spend every day copying someone elses art work, or at least someone elses style. 

In the U.S. there are many "art galleries" that are about the size of a small Bunnings that focus on selling this type of affordable art.  In the U.S they source from Mexico, where I presume they have the same sorts of art factories as I saw in Phuket.  I know that you can also source these paintings from Indonesia and the Philippines, and I guess many other 3rd world countries.

 In Australia, although a few of these "affordable art" stores exist, it is not a phenomenom that has taken hold.... but when it does, it will not bode well for the local art industry.. Think a struggling artist has it tough today... wait till they are competeing with $100 specials from Thailand.!!!!!

Debbie-Lee came to me the other day and mentioned she had met someone who would be a good subject for the 2009 Archibald Prize.  She had met Ivan through mutual friends.  Ivan is an Indiginous actor on stage and film.  He is also one of the stolen generation, so he not only fits the arts, sciences, letters & politics criteris of the Archie, but is quite topical in this year of saying sorry our aboriginal brothers and sisters who were taken from their families as children. 

I met Ivan last week and we discussed the project.  We were keen to try and represent something of Ivans life  rather than just a pictograph.  We decided to try and portray the inner conflict Ivan has... being born into Aboriginal  culture, yet raised by white foster families. 
Our initial sitting just consisted of discussing the project and outlining a few ideas as rudimnentry block sketches.  Then we set a date for a sitting that cilminated in a number of photographs that I could use as reference material for  the final painting.
I then spent some time formatting the outline in my mind, and finally put pencil to paper to create some study sketches  to test the viability of the cencept I had in mind.  

These are the final two.. I have decided on the second sketch as it  portrays more of Ivan's features and poses him as standing proud as an Australian Aboriginal, comfortable in his heritage.  The surrounding figures are various poses representing the westernised Ivan, complete with accompanying mixture of  emotions. 

What do you think?