When the producer of Radio National’s The Arts Show decided she wanted this image for the web-page, to complement the radio program I’d been in with Ed Ayers, (listen here) she emailed me. “Can you tell me more about this one?” she’d asked. “Is it still the hundredth shed? Where is it located?” I’m sure…
Six years ago, in September 2012, I was the judge of the first Holy Name School Art Show. Judging children’s art is always problematic, so this blog, which is a transcript of my opening night speech, addresses issues of competing and being an artist, even at primary school age. It gives advice to children and their parents’, that is relevant to all artists.
There are people in charge of curating private, corporate and public collections, but there is something very special about the personal collectors that Christine knows. This is a comment about how people collect, what it feels like to be collected, and how a collection is the intersection between one person’s creative episode and other person’s life episode.
I live in a place known as “The Wok” My car, at lunchtime today, parked down town, told me it was 43 degrees Celsius. As I got on the road it came down to 36 which is still a bit warm, but about typical for summer here in the part of the sub-tropical north affectionately…
Susan Webster sat across from me at the cafe near the old gallery. She’s an Ag-journalist, but we we weren’t there for work, though we’d talked about her novel, and my paintings and the state of the dairy industry and more. Suddenly she said something about using photos in art. “Wait” she said, as I began, ” let’s record this”. So she did. This is a transcript of what she heard.
I am a storyteller, as are all artists. Some tell stories of what they imagine. Others tell stories of where they’ve been, or how they feel. Artists in academia tell stories that have footnotes [1] Like many of my contemporaries, I tell stories about what I see. I tell visual stories about the sheep and…
While I’m thinking about ‘the artist as writer’ I want to tell you about the first time I came closed to being a published author. I know that there are degrees of being published, and hierarchies within those degrees. But in the 1960’s the world on on-line publishing was not even the twinkle in the eye of a programmer (who was not yet even the twinkle in someone else’ eyes). For me, in grade six, the promise of a publishing contract was enough to get me scribbling…
I thought I’d google “professional artist”. You know the feeling. It’s a middle of the night thing. This time it was dawn and my brain would just not stay asleep for a moment longer, even though my body craved it. I thought perhaps, with all the times I’d written “full time professional artist” in intros…
Last blog I wrote about how creativity was everywhere in my daily life. This month however, I want to talk about how to add some actual art to our lives. In real time. Facebook and You-Tube can feed an art habit, but I firmly believe we need to step away from the phone-screen, and the small-screen,…
I almost missed the email from Alyson Stanfield’s office at ArtBiz Coach asking me if she could feature one of my paintings on her blog a few weeks after. I subscribe to her blog, and have had other emails from her about the courses she runs. I didn’t have time that day, I thought, to…
Actually I do know a lot about art. I’ve been a full time artist for nearly 30 years and this statement is one I hear often. Interestingly, I’ve found that people who say this DO know about art, even if they think they don’t. There’s a presumption that art is only for the educated or…
For the last few days I’ve been on a sheep station west of Tenterfield. Along with the fabulous Julia Harpham, our hostess, we’ve been conducting what we’ve called our FULL MOON ART RETREAT. It’s a residential art workshop I teach, where a group of artists stay in the shearers’ quarters, have our studio in the…
This is excellent example of how NOT to take a photo of a painting. But… there are no reflections, most of the painting and the frame is in the photo, and you, the audience, can have an idea of what the painting looks like. It’s been worked on since it was first photographed, and needed framing…
Is it me, or does my lifestyle engender a sort of jealousy that seems out of context from how hard I actually work? I was in the library the other day and saw a friend. She said ” I love your life!”. I wondered then if perhaps she loved the version of my life that…
In the lead up to my exhibition I did some writing. Some went into various print media, destined for Europe (The Art of Watercolour – French and English Versions), or Australia (The Australian Artist). Some was destined to wrap up last night’s fish and chips (the Northen Rivers Echo). But in this digital age one…
As a full time professional artist I live the creative life. I get up every day, go into my studio and make paintings. I paint pictures about the sheep and wool industries, specialising in artwork about shearing sheds. I get to travel all over rural and regional Australia for inspiration, and I love what I…
