Studio Work ABOUT my art & others

Early Summer i went on a #getaway to Boat Harbour - spent 3 days there soaking up the sun, isolation and beach.  A nice visit from V and lunch at the restaurant was a highlight.  I treat all my #getaways as a 'residency' and go on long walks, photography and do drawings, writing and reading. the drawings en plein air shown in the earlier blog post led to these two little books. fine art photography of my time at Boat Harbour can be found  here a short video of a beach walk at Boat Harbour #Tasmania

I am infatuated with 'place', a sense of place and our place within it and that art is a collision of the intellect and the visceral.  Abstraction excites me.  The struggle, in painting, continues to align concept/vision with ability, the technical aspects. This is why I work every day. The mornings are for computer work, admin, tidying (maybe), sorting, research and reading/writing. Working daily, on various projects and ideas I paint in the afternoons, across media including oil, acrylic, pastel and watermedia. Looking back on the last year, the struggle to abstraction continues. You can see abstractions in other artworks i do including artist books, asemic, prints, ipad drawings, photography and drawing.  1. search the label on this blog.  2. (check out the last 12 days of ' looking back' (label).

  Dedicated to #13 ..so, New Year reflections - 13 days of looking back on 13 projects over the last year Day 11 - artist books. I create books using photography, abstraction, altered books, books holding creative exercises, ICM, chemigrams and more on various projects. i also hold occasional (winter) workshops on creating artist books.

Dedicated to #13 ..so, New Year reflections - 13 days of looking back on 13 projects over the last year Day 8 - photography

This was my second trip to Boat Harbour , an idyllic spot to regenerate and fill up my cup again. It is also a time to mark yet another birthday and take the opportunity to go on another #getaway for a few days. Vince came to visit which is unsual as he needs to be dragged away from home and his business.  We spent a lovely day of beach walks, lunch right on the beachfront and the afternoon was spent watching US elections for Trump take the Whitehouse for a second term. lunch at  Seekers Bar & Cafe   beautiful ocean, quaint book exchange & drawings en plein air For art photographs of my time at BOat Harbour go to fyneimages note to self: explore  further afield ,still close by, next time.

Very happy to have my images published in Free Expressions No.82 - February 2024. Free Expressions is a publication of members' work of the Contemporary Group within the Australian Photographic Society. I met Anne, an artist working in the photographic realm, many years ago at a local photographic club and years later we met up again via the facebook group. About four years ago she introduced me to The Denison 5 minutes out of Bicheno , Tasmania and stay at accommodation right on Denison Beach . We have visited together a few times and stay here for 3 nights choosing summer and winter over the years. This has culminated in a joint submission to Free Expressions tackling two perspectives of this wonderful place. My challenge was not to have the same images as Anne as we do have similar perspectives in going for the micro and inevitably, potentially would have similar imagery. So with this in mind we never saw each others contribution to the magazine until the article came out !...

 a summertime time out.  so nice. Although i live 2 minutes from a beach I occastionally head out to Hawley Beach, a 20 minute drive from home, for a bit of time out and a beach walk. mesmerising and breezy

Heading out to see the exhibition and will take an overnighter so i can explore the beaches and take time out. Always enjoy the opportunity for a #getaway, albeit a short one but will take my time driving up (and back) to fill out the two days. The artwork of mine that made the finalist list is called 'An Impossible Telling' ... images below of my piece and when it was framed, prior to delivery.  CONGRATULATIONS to Robyn Harman for taking out this years Bay of Fires Art Prize.

 I am very excited to be a finalist in the Bay of Fires Art Prize this year - feeling honoured when I cast my eye over the list of finalists - I am in great company. This prize is held on the East Coast, St Helens , Tasmania and is 3.5 hours drive from home. I am thinking i might combine viewing the exhibition with an overnighter - a mini #getaway and explore the area. See a list of awards & exhibitions for Gina here

 AI (artificial intelligence) is everywhere at the moment even in Tasmania. I am hearing and reading about it in art, science, literature, medicine. Wonderful playlist here on TED talks regarding AI and how it can be used in art including statistics and numbers as sculptures, patterns and moving visual feasts. A few of my own favourites from TED talks are listed at the bottom of this post. I enjoyed this article recently on AI stating the 17 best AI artworks created. I have been playing with AI on a website called Dalle2 that creates artworks out of the text you put into it. Initially I found it fun but quite quickly it then became un-rewarding for me and i wondered if it could work using my own art. So i took an image I had created on my Ipad from a photograph taken at Boat Harbour on a 4 day #getaway. Do let me know what you think and what your experience has been with AI. This is the original photograph taken at Boat Harbour , some year in May. This is what it looks l...

After working through a prototype of an idea i had in mind I printed out the pages. I took images from one of my beach escapes #getaway. I worked through the idea of a particular binding to take the concertina folds, cut the back and the two stable door front openings out of acid free book board and covered them in the prints i had chosen. The prototype went well ... but this, what i thought was the 'final' book is not quite what i wanted. It looks nice enough but its not right enough. The images are of #getaway to Denison Beach , Tasmania two minutes out of Bicheno - a beach I visit, with a friend, on regular #getaways ... I chose images that play with longer exposures to create a lovely abstract notion of the beachscape, without losing the idea of the beach. I love the colours and the feeling of being there. There will be a few more surprises when the book is finally created and this comes from working through the 'plan'.  

  A stage of exploring limitations - To do this I set a rule of only make 5 moves or less and each move is to be different in some way to the last one and to the whole (not to repeat marks or moves) Limitations in mark making, size and in colour. Acrylic on 300gsm cartridge- approx 10x8cm.

  Going through sketchbooks from the last two years looking at pages that I like for various reasons - I find it difficult to step into non objective abstraction so the idea of landscape is currently prevalent in my sketchbooks. This, even when it is abstract there is still a horizon line and the idea of sky and land. I am thinking its because #getaways are important to me and my sense of attachment to landscape/ocean. My works are always done in the studio taken from memory and emotion. In the landscape itself I walk, photograph, collecting, some quick sketches if i am organised. Photographs are mostly macro, seeing the small things, patterns, shapes, colours ... abstractions of landscape. I 'work' every day, slow stitch at night and these things I have learnt - I love what i do love colour I am not afraid of colour I am a messy painter I am not a planner; I dive in and wait to see where it takes me I love texture and layering, a pallimpsest My interest in 'mapping...

  Inspired by these artists, Hockney and Warhol I have been playing with images i have taken on my #getaways. These are on the road, in Hobart and Coles Beach Devonport. Photographs are pulled into pixelmator pro and the hues of the actual image taken is 'muted' somewhat and then sent to my ipad where highly saturated colours are layered over aspects of the image. David Hockney , well into his 80s, plays with an ipad doing daily drawings. I like the saturated flat colours that he and Andy Warhol use which sparked my 'what if' regarding my photographic images. I have been painting over black and white photography for a few years now so it didn't seem a biggie to do so with the ipad. I will post these painted photo prints and ipad drawings of pears, life drawing, landscapes etc in future posts.

  a couple of hours walk along the foreshore in Devonport. Muted with colour enhancements. The bird was added later :) .... Pulled together from my photos

  A typical beach walk with no-one around and the light catching shadows rippling across the edges. Plover at #Penguin Beach.