Squared: Greenhill Galleries, Perth

Moonrise road, 2009, oil on linen, 30 x 30 cm

Opening tomorrow in Perth is Squared at Greenhill Galleries June 26 - July 11. Squared is an annual exhibition where gallery artists are invited to produce one foot square paintings. It's a very popular exhibition amongst the local collectors with many well known artists participating such as Jason Benjamin, Peter Boggs, David Larwill, Jasper Knight & Robert Juniper.

This year I am only including 1 painting in Squared, Moonrise road, which is a study for a larger work. Less is more & this painting is one that I'm quite happy with.

Exhibition at Greenhill Galleries, Perth

Almost Gone, 2009, , oil on linen, 111 x 137 cm


This painting and 11 others are on exhibition in Perth at Greenhill Galleries. The exhibitions open on Friday, 29th of May and runs until June 13.

Oh, and yes, the painting "Almost Gone" has long ago been completed, apologies if anyone was waiting to see how it turned out? I have been so preoccupied, I can't believe it's so long since I last posted on my blog. To make up for it, here's a new painting ( also in Perth ).


Before Sunrise, 2009, oil on linen, 40.5 x 45.5cm

Now all I have to do is get my "Small Paintings Project" kick-started again....there should be a new painting up within the week.

Almost Gone

Almost Gone, (under painting), oil on linen, 111 x 137 cm

This painting is beginning to take shape, the colours & tones are crudely blocked in to not only get rid of the white of the canvas, but to also give me an approximate ground to work the final layers of paint.

Almost gone, the last remnant of the sun which has already set. The marking of time, another day gone leaving a momentary glimpse of beauty before darkness descends. It's a magical time of heightened colour that changes so fast that I'm drawn to. An obsession in capturing this time of day, the change from day to night, but it's not an obsession about capturing sunsets just for their beauty and nothing else.

Beauty with an edge is the aim.

As an artist working with and using imagery that can be seen as beautiful, I keep myself from slipping into mere beauty by the haunting words of Wagner. In one of the best artistic put downs ever Wagner dismissed the composer Daniel Auber's music as: "The work of a barber who lathers but forgets to shave".

Daniel Auber was hugely successful in his time, with 50 operas to his name, he became wildly rich, but little of his music has survived into this century....mainly because so much of it was light, fluffy, beauty for the sake of beauty and for success.

"The work of a barber who lathers but forgets to shave".

It should haunt ever artist.......I should write it on a note, pin it on top of my easel and have it remind me never forget to have an edge! To use beauty and not be seduced by it, nor to use beauty as the only means to seduce the viewer of the painting.

Another day passes through you

Almost Gone, (just started), oil on linen, 111 x 137 cm

I titled a recent painting "Another day passes through you" from a line in a Dave Graney song called "You wanna be there but you don't wanna travel" and was promptly struck low by a nasty virus. Watching daytime TV, bored out of my mind, time wasted, days passing through me whilst going nowhere fast. I had time to reflect on that choice title for a painting and whether this new one "Almost Gone" will jinx me in some way?

Almost gone, just started & more photos to come.

Bushfire Appeal Art Auction at Brunswick Street Gallery

Into darkness, 2007, oil on linen, 30.5 x 30.5 cm

I have donated the above painting to the Bushfire Appeal Art Auction.

Brunswick Street Gallery is holding a charity art auction on Tuesday 3 March at 6pm to raise money for the victims of the Victorian bushfires. All proceeds will go to the Red Cross.

There are 100 works in this auction, so come and grab some great art and help out people who suffered from the bushfires at the same time.

24 paintings a year

I've never been a prolific artist, rarely having painted more than 30 oils in a year, but lately I have been thinking of restricting the amount of art I release to only 24 paintings a year. I think that's about the right amount of paintings to give the right balance of quantity of work with the time needed to maintain quality.

Over the last few years I've been taking longer to make each painting, everything from searching for images to the painting of more complex & detailed paintings. For some time now I've been wanting to paint less and concentrate on painting better works. To exhibit less often, with less work, but make the paintings major works.

24 paintings, that's all that I'll release each year.

I'll also continue with my Small Paintings Project, as it's a valuable way of making studies for major paintings and also a way people can acquire something affordable. I also want to produce a couple prints each year in small editions and I think that's enough art for me to make in any year.

Some artists are prolific, I know of one who produces 400 paintings a year and is still considered "collectable". I choose to go the other way, a notion that less is more. Artists who I admire for their controlled release of art are John Brack, Jeffrey Smart and more recently Rick Amor who has gone from exhibiting 30 paintings to a dozen or less per exhibition. These artists, over time have developed formidable reputations without flooding the market with thousands of paintings. During their lifetime, these artists, painting modest amounts of work each year end up creating hundreds of great paintings....and that's enough!

Getting the right message across

I came across this sign on the weekend as I was speeding into nowhere like an oblivion seeker desperately searching for something new to paint. I had to pull over and take a photo of this sign and after driving off it took some kilometres before I stopped laughing at how ludicrous the sign appears on face value. On a barren road in the middle of nowhere who is keeping a lookout to see if you're eating your banana?

I still had over 200 kms to go of empty road driving and my self amusement turned to thinking about the importance of getting the right message across. I was pushing myself to find new things to paint, but what exactly? I would only know when I see it and then I'd have to mull over it for ages to see if it really fits in with what I want to paint and the body of work in progress.

You come across some weird things sometimes and I do have an eye for the quirky, but you can't just paint something because it's odd enough to catch your eye? See photo below....



So, I keep searching for the undefinable new subject matter to be present under the sky that'll make something worthy of being painted. This year I am planning to release only 25 oil paintings from the thousands of photos taken. The distillation process is all important to get not only the right images, but for them to also be a consistent body of work. That takes a lot of time looking, shooting and reviewing before a painting is decided on.

In the biography on Edward Hopper by Gail Levin, Hopper who was notoriously slow to decide what to paint, would take many month long painting trips into Mexico and come back with maybe one watercolour. I'm not that slow, but I do take my time and meanwhile, the journey to finding the 25 paintings is as rewarding as the finished paintings.

The right time at the right place

Lately I've been taking photos of stopped clocks and I'm yet to decide whether to to do a small series of paintings where the wrong time is juxtaposed against the evening sky? There is something about a painting of a clock is always being frozen at a set time, just as a painting of the evening sky shows the clouds, the quickly changing colours and light frozen in a moment in time.

But the clock is broken or unplugged, mounted above a business that has long ago moved on, or gone bust. The clock is showing a time that cannot be, a sign of things past and no longer there. For some reason I noticed a few these clocks during the last few weeks and wondered if a beautiful late evening sky, a captured moment in time above the wrong time would be the making of interesting paintings?

I've started the process of taking snapshots of the clocks for reference, now all I have to do is be be there at the right time to also get the right sky.

Chasing the sky

The Opal Sky, 2008, oil on linen, 135 x 135 cm

These last few weeks have seen some of the most frustrating photographic expeditions for new images to paint. The craziest one of many was a 1,200 km day trip into Victoria and down along the south coast back to Adelaide. All along the sky was perfect, but I suspected it was too good to be true, the sky can break your heart and often does.

The plan was simple enough, leave early, drive to Keith, down to Naracoorte for breakfast, on to Penola (where Dianne couldn't resist antique shopping). Then over the border to Casterton then Hamilton to see the regional gallery and have lunch. From there we went down to the coast, Portland and across to Mount Gambier.

Along the way I was hoping to find something that I could use, even though the time of day wasn't right, but nothing caught my eye. At Mount Gambier I had a site I wanted to photograph, the Odeon Star theatre and giant bowling pin. The whole trip was planned to take photos at Mount Gambier, Robe and anything else stumbled upon.

(The Odeon star sign & bowling pin showing how badly lit it was)

The Odeon Star theatre was badly lit from the setting sun, falling just behind the building and not on the neon sign, nor bowling pin. The problem I discovered was we were there in Summer and it needed to be a Winter shoot. The road the theatre is on runs East/West and in Summer the sun sets Southwest, just behind the facade of the building. In Winter the sun will set slightly Northwest lighting the building with perfect raking light.


I just went through my archives and found a photo I took in August 2000 which has the light raking across the front of the building. I was in Mt Gambier for an exhibition my paintings were in called Rural and Urbane at their Regional Gallery, The Riddoch Art Gallery

This trip I wanted to take a much later photo with the neon on. I rang the Bowling alley the day before I left and they said the neon sign hasn't been connected in years. But there is an exact copy of the Odeon Star neon sign at Semaphore Beach, Adelaide which works and I was going to use the Mt Gambier location and then use the working neon sign to make the painting.

Anyway, off we sped to Robe to photograph the Obelisk with just over an hour of sunlight and about 100kms to travel. All the time the sky was looking great, but the closer we got to Robe, the more it changed for the worse. I nearly diverted to Beachport to guarantee a half decent shot of the sky over cliffs/water, instead going for broke we made it Robe with just 12 minutes before sunset.

It was to no avail as the sun fell behind a low bank of clouds turning the sky colourless and the Obelisk looking dead.
This is what the Obelisk looks like (photo not taken by me)


After that all that was left was to have dinner and drive the 336kms home. We opted to skip dinner in Robe thinking we should be able to pick something up along the way, we were wrong. The next 220 km were the most barren you could imagine, not a single thing open in the few towns we passed, nor any traffic. I would take note of the time taken between seeing an oncoming car and it was on average about 20 minutes. Being dark, no traffic it was just a matter of time before a huge kangaroo leapt out in front of us. I braked and I still don't know how I missed it, a few inches at most?

Out in the middle of nowhere, over a hundred kilometres from anything open, nearly half an hour from when the next car passed, we were so lucky not to be written off by a kangaroo. Back in Adelaide after midnight, hungry, 16 hours on the road, 1,200 km travelled, not a single useable photo taken, but we had a great time.

Exhibition in Perth

Into the night 2, 2008, oil on linen, 61x71cm

The painting above is in the Greenhill Galleries Christmas Exhibition.
If you are in Perth and would like to see the exhibition the dates are December 10 – December 24, 2008.

Meanwhile I am in the slow process of formulation what I'm going to do for my next solo exhibition which is also happens to be in Perth. The exhibition opens on 29th of May 2009 at Greenhill Galleries and for the last month and a half I have been taking photos as well as going through thousands of old photos to see if I've missed something that can be used?

It takes time for an exhibition to start to gel and you cannot force it to happen. The ball starts rolling after I have a few images to work with and then the rest fall into place. As you start you never quite know how the whole show will look and where new ideas for paintings will take you. Trusting in your ability to pull the whole show together is important, as is not worrying if the early paintings will be unified with the later works?

As I said, the exhibitions fall into place in an organic way, rather than following a pre-prescribed script determined well in advance.

One thing that has been helpful this time is looking at a whole range of other artists work and collecting a file of images to refer to. Simple things like an image with a particular green in it to remind me that if it is possible to try to use that in one of the paintings. There are paintings of skies from the history of art and also there are artists who I admire that have no visual link to my work.

The process I go through is exhaustive to get a body of work that is unified in concept, but isn't repetitive. I am not a lazy artist, the type who comes up with one idea for an exhibition and then makes 20 slight variations for it.