blackfisharts ABOUT my art

 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...

 in this time of looking back in order to move forward in my daily doings in the studio i found this altered book that i created during travels from Tasmania to Tokyo to catch up with family. A wonderful trip - so lovely to spend time with family filled with new sights, sounds and smells This is an altered book ... a 1963 (abridged) copy of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". I had a great time re-reading this book whilst altering it during my time in Tokyo. And how wonderful to explore all the sights and find new places to see art, gardens and fish ! I am a quiet fan of Koi and goldfish. I attended galleries in small alleys, big exhibitions in magnificent buildings, found sculptures and outdoor happenings, an antique shop and great food. Not so great coffee except my daughter had an excellent coffee machine at home so i could start the day filled with vigour. In this altered book pages include collage, additional new 'pages' that fold out, windows, mark making, fou...

I am inspired by so many artists .... this i think reflects the diversity that permeates through much of what i do.  So how does this come about ? A large part of my arts practice includes reading, research and seeking out artists of interest. First ... current artists of interest include : Matisse - love the flat shapes and colour Rothko - love the colour, transparency and abstraction Jasper Johns - love his encaustics, ways of working and Cy Twombly - love his mark making and sculptures Andy Warhol - love his use of bright, flat colour his subject matter David Hockney - love his paintings and use of technology in creating art Brett Whiteley - sensuous drawing in exploring space from the model into the landscape Jeff Koons - love his mind - I watch many a talk with him ... here is one. and a documentary here . Tacita Dean - love her work & ideas, writings and her mind. Lovely works here. an interview here William Kentridge - what is not to love about his work and...

i had completely forgotten but was woken with a kiss and a 'happy Valentine's Day love' ... so nice. And then i was into my day ! - dental appointment, picked up some veggies to plant, a load of washing, and 3 hours in the studio painting. and it seems i have to get ready for dinner too .... how nice, feeling that fortunate feeling i get every day. dinner where? its a surprise ! ... we shall see so ... for Valentine's Day i remembered all the hearts i was stitching over time (and a little mosaic) ... here they are ... HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL - i hope you too enjoy the fortunate in your day, time, space. 

to get these wondrous images of mud as it dried across my studio floor. These are a smattering of nearly 500 images i photographed on the day after the flood.  3 months after moving to country Tasmania we experienced a flood - nothing like the awful flooding that many experienced, all over Australia, where mud came up in their houses, waist high, destroying everything. Thankfully, our home is up a hill and it was the creek on our property that rose 6metres in some places and flooded paddocks including the one that is in front of my studio. Up until 3am the flood rose in metres that engulfed the creek border encroaching about 3 metres across the land. We were moving furniture and #snowcone onto higher ground finally going to bed at 3am. The flood came and went the next 4 hours we slept, up and over paddocks and into my studio. When we got up in the morning around 7am all looked fine - the creek was as high as when we went to bed at 3am and it flowed across the roadways on the p...

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'.  

I have been looking back in my journals for the past year assessing where to now. There is also a pile of paintings, drawings, cloth etc that are 'finished' which i am going through. This article was prompted by finding/looking at these two paintings (below) - They are so similar, created months apart! I am quite struck by the similarities .... intuitive shapes, marks, values and to a small extent, colour. And the similarity in the final outcome. (acrylic and paintstick). Musing, below, on looking forward, these pieces and the materials i use - plus a little bonus video of the lovely #Snowcone at the bottom of the post. A few projects and ideas for projects have been bouncing around for a couple of years (notes, researching deeper, ideas, drawings, mark making, photos, art of others etc). I paint every day, collage may be daily for a week or so each month, textiles is slow stitching at night and intermittent dyeing, painting cloth etc. Last year i started using my Ipad...

  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.

  back to these again .... well, unpacking a bag ful and these two are both 'finished' ... as i have been musing over the past two years of journals and painting and art making i am back to considering mark making ... very obvious in the stitch, i think. Again, intuitive, no thinking apart from maybe shapes and colour but otherwise exploring 'my' stitch and some technique. the spiral is a 'rope' made from a hanky torn into strips ... the square it is on is a rusted bit of cloth, against a bit of light muslin all on wool blanket piece.

  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

  playing with ideas - using the scanner and pulling the image into pixelmator pro. as always i like to explore how much information can you lose before the image is no longer what it is. sometimes though losing even more image can provide a perfectly cool abstract image. might try that next.