‘Day by Day’ — acrylic on canvas, 355 x 460 mm. Available.
‘Changing Planes’ — acrylic on canvas, 355 x 460 mm. Available.
“Whatever happens next, it won’t be what you expected.
If it is what you expected, it isn’t what’s happening next.”
Brian Eno
The Sound of Things — acrylic on canvas, 205 x 610 mm, 2019. Available.
“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
Hermann Hesse
A Rose By Any Other Name — acrylic on canvas, 250 x 250 mm, 2019. Available.
“God bless our contradictions, those parts of us which seem out of character. Let us be boldly and gladly out of character. Let us be creatures of paradox and variety: creatures of contrast; of light and shade: creatures of faith. God be our constant. Let us step out of character into the unknown, to struggle and love and do what we will. Amen.”
—
‘A Note on God’ by Michael Leunig
Another milestone and another slideshow… seven years on WordPress! This last year has been a whirl of six-word poems, experimental word art, black canvas paintings, and music. Lots of music. Not a bad year at all. In fact quite a good one : )
Exploding Colour — acrylic on canvas, 250 x 250 mm, 2018. Available.
In the words of painter Adam Wolpert…
“Whenever I try to finish a painting by carefully cleaning up all the parts—removing smudges, perfecting the drawing, spiffing and polishing—as I work, the spirit slowly drains out of it. This approach to finishing leaves me unsatisfied and leads to my either abandoning the painting before it is complete or just stopping and calling it “finished” in spite of my dissatisfaction. I know that Nature is not polished and uniform, all clear, clean and tidy, but raw and variable, messy, ambiguous, and indefinite. And above all, nature is dynamic. It stands to reason that a painting of Nature must somehow include these qualities. What if focusing on details and formal accuracy won’t ever get me there?”
“What if I just focus on representing the underlying essence of my subject and my relationship to, and feeling about, that essence?….Perhaps the best way to finish a painting is to try to move the subject ever more towards that state. I know when that character is developing in my painting because the image inspires that particular feeling I have when I stand before it in Nature. I know to keep working as long as I can make something more like its essential self. I know I need to stop as the image begins to move away from itself and become something else. Mysteriously, sometimes this process goes on for many days and even weeks as I devote hour after hour to the piece, other times I breathe a painting into being in a few hours, almost effortlessly, and only need the good sense to leave it alone (which is surprisingly difficult sometimes). So perhaps, in this way, my practice of finishing can be guided by Nature herself.”
