Packed up paintings

Last week I finished my paintings for the show at LeBasse Projects opening July 17th 2010. I'm feeling excited about this show and will be flying to LA to attend the opening, so if you're in LA please come and visit. If you want to be on the preview list for the show please email the gallery. More details about the show to come later.

Today everything was packed up and sent. The packing took me 5 hours! I'm so happy everything is done.

Moths Print Release

Moths print is now available from Paper Tiger.

Title: Moths
Edition Size: 25
Print Size: 12" x 14.25"

Signed and Numbered Edition Print
Printed on Archival textured fine art paper

Kangaroos

Prints coming soon! I've just finished signing these and have posted them back to the US, they will be available from Paper Tiger, but not yet. I don't know when but I'm sure it will be soon. All proceeds go towards a plane ticket to LA so that I can attend the exhibition I'm in at LeBasse Projects in July :)

A few weeks ago I was in Bright for an autumn break. Bright is a pretty alpine town around 4 hrs drive from Melbourne. This was where we stayed:


And this was the view out the kitchen window at dusk:


Wild kangaroos hanging out on the grass! I took a really short (9 second) video of the kangas hopping around:

LeBasse Projects Gallery: Showcase SF

This weekend is the showcase with LeBasse Projects in San Fransisco. You can see all the works in the show here on the gallery website. The show is short and only runs 'til Sunday so if you're in San Fransisco you only have this weekend to catch it.

More info is on this e-invite:


Here are my paintings for the show, all 30x24" (big for me) and oil on canvas (a nice smooth canvas that I stretched myself). Thanks again to Neil for taking the photos of my paintings.


Cat and Mouse


Moths


Rabbit


Bird


I've been looking for photos of the show on the net, there are a whole lot on flickr and I found this one with my paintings in it:

Sherbrooke Forest

One of my favourite places to drive to is Sherbrooke Forest in the Dandenong Ranges (around an hour out of Melbourne). I take lots of photos when I go and I've been trying for a while to work out how to get the forest into my paintings. I've been finding it difficult because I'm not sure how much realism and how much abstraction to use, I also know it will make my paintings take much longer to create with so much detail. I might make it one of my goals for the year to figure it all out.

Here are a few photos I've taken. The tall misty trees in the background are Australian Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) which according to wikipedia is the tallest flowering tree species in the world.

These two photos were taken on the edge of Alfred Nicholas Memorial Gardens/Sherbrooke Forest.

Three Apples

Next month is the Three Apples exhibition to celebrate Hello Kitty's 35th Anniversary. The show will be held at Royal/T in LA and feature over 60 artists. I'm excited about this show - the opening sounds like it will be a great night, I'm just sad that it's all so far away and I can't join in the fun.

Wild flowers in WA

I just got back from a week in Western Australia. I had never been to WA before, it somehow seemed a lot more Australian than Victoria, the botanic gardens was almost exclusively native plants. I finally get why the national flower is wattle. The damn thing is everywhere.

I know looking at holiday photos can be a bit dull, so I've kept it to just a few (I took over 1000!). And this is kind of related to art in the form of inspiration and reference.

I found the wreath flower, it was somewhere in the middle of nowhere (as you can see from the photo). They (the friendly tourism office?) tie pink ribbons around trees and poles that have wreath flowers near them so you can find them more easily.


Wattle. Is it a flower or a plague? I'm really not sure.


wild flower field:


Lesueur National Park - kinda felt like there should be dinosaurs wandering around for some reason.


Black Kangaroo paw at Kings park. Might be good to draw:

Los Angeles

I'm now back in Melbourne. I had such a great time in LA, just hanging around, going to shows and getting a feel for the art scene over there. The highlight was definitely seeing my work up on gallery walls in person for the first time. Also seeing the new LeBasse Projects gallery - it's such a great space.

Thanks to Beau, Kim and Christine for putting the show together, putting up with my hanging around the gallery (and drinking all the coke from the fridge...if you're wondering where it all went :) and driving me around to see some sights. And thanks to Yoskay and Nate for letting me stay with them.

If you are in LA and haven't seen the show, it's on at LeBasse Projects or you can view it online (although it looks better in person). I took a few photos before the show opened:







I was showing in the project room, so to give some context here's a photo of the main gallery where Yoskays show being hung. I wish I had taken the photo when the show was up, rather than when it was on the floor and everything was a mess, but oh well:


I took the bus around LA and did some sight seeing on my own - here is Santa Monica Pier:


The Beautiful gardens at the Getty Center:


And my favourite painting at the Getty, a still life by Jan van Huysum. The details are amazing, with the fruit overly ripe and covered in insects:


I can't wait to start painting again, but for the next few days I'm organising and cleaning my flat so that I don't get dust in the oil paint.

Apparition Print Release

It's been a while since I released a print so I'm excited to announce that online print store A Paper Tiger has just released a print of my Apparition drawing. Details are on www.apapertiger.com, It's only an edition of 25 so get in quick :)

Wild Fields - upcoming show

Honey Hive (for upcoming show)

It's been a while between posts. I've been so busy working on this show. I'm just about done (1 more week of working to go), I've been working 7 days a week since the end of Dec and am amazed at how little I've produced from so much effort. I will have 3-4 large drawings and 3 medium paintings, I guess art just take a long time with a fair amount of the work being preliminary - sketching, ideas, photographing models (thanks Suzie!), walking around the streets with a camera finding the perfect tree to match my sketch (sometimes I have to take bits from different trees and join then together).

I've decided to call the show 'Wild Fields' because it's the thing most common between all of the works. Maybe that's telling me I need to get outside a bit more?

I'm flying to LA in a week - can't wait! I haven't been overseas for 3 years - much too long.


Honey Hive - detail