staying home,creating and sharing…no.3

when creating artworks often i am finding of late they need to sit a while until they are finally completed to the finished historical piece. sometimes you can only give so much to a painting. a couple of recent works for example of this is- fading sweet peas, oil on canvas 28 x 35.5cm, i worked on this painting about a year ago, i did like it, but felt it wasn’t fully resolved but was unsure of the next move, so i put it down for a while. i sat with it, then one day after finishing another painting, i thought yes! the background needs more tonal work, more life. and then as you can see, this artwork now sings, i was so happy, and so were my intagram likers’, i think it my highest ‘like’ of a painting thus far… who knew? anyways, the other work that this happened to is a painting i just have completed yesterday, it too was lacking, i couldn’t work out why? what did it need? of late i have been partial to a bit of gold as you can evidence in my recent works, and a stripe, oh versace! it is called pink rose spray with gold stripe, oil on canvas, 38 x 58cm. i had it sitting around since april, thinking yes, no, yes, no…. finally, after thought, contemplation, and waking up in the middle of the night …i knew what it needed, a damn gold stripe, oh and now this work is complete, another win… in my humble opinion. i think it is important to like what you create, then why bother at all really? so this kind of thing hasn’t happened to me much, i usually create a picture to its final, then it is done, then move on… as an emerging artist, obviously as you paint more, you have more work, you are more critical of what you do, as you know more, etc etc…and you can just do it…i’m still working it out, as any artist can agree.

which leads me to the next cool great thing that happened yesterday. as we are still in lockdown in sydney, i went to a meeting on a zoom like platform and it was called create-art-exchange and it was run by eramboo, which is this wonderful bushland gallery and studios in the northern beaches council area, here we all shared some of our art experiences and i shared about my new website which you are reading from here, right now… and others shared their artworks, practice and their findings of competitions etc, it was a really great platform to connect with like-minders, as being an artist is such a solo story… you are creating in the studio, thinking your own thoughts, so having a little contact every now and then is so vital. this activity, create-art-exchange happens when it is not lockdown time, and i have been physically to it a few times over the years. connection is so important as we all here, all over the world have experienced such isolation of late going towards two years now, it has shown me how much we need companionship, we need each other, we need that human contact… it makes us feel alive, i don’t think i could exist very well without others…

oh, and the other day a cool thing happened, so the wonderful maria stoljar who writes this amazing podcast and you tube and instagram called talking with painters was doing a live chat in the botanical gardens and it flipped up on my phone (while i was working) and i got to go there at the very time she was there, it was so nice to see the harbour bridge and the opera house, and the green gardens in real time, its experiences like these when you are staying at home that make little pops of joy to your life, thanks maria! you legend! over the past years i have listen to her inspirational podcasts when i am in the studio, its like the artists she interviews are so damn interesting with their stories and their art making practice and all, so if you are an artist or interested in the arts and you havn’t listened to her podcast, i totally encourage you to do so. asap…so for my artmaking the next thing i am about to embark upon is some botanical drawing… from the last blog… camellias…fleurs, and so on it goes…so this is about all from my art blog this week, it is nice of you to read to the end… bye from camellia studio, have a great week!