Sunday, October 17, 2010

echoes


"... every now and then, we skirted a universe (or else a universe skirted us), but it wasn't clear whether these were a number of universes scattered through space or whether it was always the same universe we kept passing, revolving in a mysterious trajectory, or whether there was no universe at all and what we thought we saw was the mirage of a universe which perhaps had once existed and whose image continued to rebound from the walls of space like the rebounding of an echo."
- Italo Calvino (The Form of Space from Cosmicomics)

Sunday, October 10, 2010

The Big Draw!

A drawing of people drawing Leger's Trapeze Artists @ the Big Draw, National Gallery of AustraliaI coordinated an activity based on Leger's painting using tracing paper to have fun with overlapping, layering and movement. I also really enjoyed seeing artist Gosia Wlodarczak create a drawing and talk about her process & ideas. 

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Monday, October 4, 2010

Julia and the Deep Sea Sirens - Family Pets

watercolour on Arches cold press paper

album launch, photo credit: Huy Nguyen

I recently had the opportunity to paint a CD cover for my good friend's band, Julia and the Deep Sea Sirens. I have enjoyed listening to the band grow over the years and their new album Family Pets is absolutely beautiful! Julia is a super talented singer and songwriter and has a great group of musicians behind her. Fun fact: Julia tried to teach me how to draw horses in grade 2 and she designed the horse on the cover to match with her shadow puppet graphics on the interior booklet of the album. I highly recommend you check out their music!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

gape

lithograph, 55 x 75cm

For this image I worked directly on a large lithographic stone, spontaneously combining and composing elements of form and texture from a single seashell that I turned over in my hand and looked at from multiple points of view. My approach was inspired by William Blake's words, "To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour."

Friday, October 1, 2010

abalone


2 x 1m watercolour on stretched hot press paper, based on microscopic observations of an abalone shell. I wanted to bring this piece of the shell onto a human scale to explore the way that I imagine myself in relation to it. The time I have spent looking at a minute section of nature under the microscope has only reminded me of the immensity of nature and the reality that I am not really that much bigger than the shell. Below are a couple of details, the texture in the background was created by spraying water into the semi-wet watercolour wash... hope you enjoy :)