What did these nails hold on the wall of the Commissariat in Oatlands, Tasmania?
Stones, nails, lines of history. The past lives on in the buildings in colonial settler towns like Oatlands where I am an artist in residence. I think of the way we had to write out lines for misdemeanours at school. Now I am thinking of the lines responding to this place that I will make and write while I am in residence here.
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A colllage for Dad ~ his work as a pharmacist
Collages are for me a kind of Memento Mori, a reminder of mortality and that what we do with our lives defines us. Much of our activities can be traced to the objects with which we surround ourselves. Unearthing these early collages from my own archives reveals a biographical portrait of my family ancestry.
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Artist Gabriela Soelkner and myself at the Coalesce exhibition opening at Mist Gallery in Cabarita, NSW.
Whether you are making art or appreciating it in its myriad of forms; immersion in art can be exactly the therapy you need on a grey and dismal day or when life itself feels a little overwhelming. Artists supporting each other gives truth to the saying, when one rises, we all rise together.
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Intense Rains - one of the artworks I sold in my recent exhibition Dispatches from the Arctic: Ice Stories.
What exactly is it that a buyer is looking for when they make the decision to purchase an artwork? Are they looking for an artwork which is the right colour, size or subject to fit into their home decor? Or are they looking for something else entirely? A fissure of pleasure experienced over and over again each time they look at the artwork in their own home?
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Advertising flyers and ticket to three pantomimesI I wrote in the 1990s.
How important is it to archive your creative offerings? As I have been cleaning out the garage I’ve found storage tubs filled with advertisements for past projects as well as old daily journals from the past twenty years. Making decisions about what to archive and what to throw out can become quite a dilemma.
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A selection of old artworks reconfigured as circles
Some themes become our ‘signature’. We may not know it at the time, yet they are the ideas, themes, motifs, colours and forms which repeatedly appear in our artworks, evolving through the years. Mine have been circles, networks of connection that encircle my thinking.
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Urban Dweller (detail) 2024. Collage of a digital print of a collage.
Collage has always been my default artistic practice. Yet last year I abandoned it as if I had ‘grown out of it’. I had quite forgotten the joy of tearing up paper and collaging pieces together. Now I have discovered a new inspiration: collaging collages.
Read MoreThere are so many things you could make, it can be hard to know where to start. I’ve been making blank notebooks using up old prints that I folded to become the little book covers. Creating these notebooks has put me back into ‘maker mode’. What will go inside them? The possibilities are endless.
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Lifting black clouds - WIP. Red paper pulp, old etching, black ink & white conti pencil
No inspiration, lots of procrastination. Endless scrolling on social media. It can feel like the black cloud of creative depression will never lift. Waiting for that day to come is an act of faith.
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Walking through Okunoin, the cemetery in Koyasan, Japan.
Writing for divine guidance is what author Julia Cameron describes as the fourth essential artists’ tool. Yet I needed to travel to Japan to fully appreciate why going on an Artist Date (the third essential artists’ tool) is so important and why I’ll also be scheduling in dates with angels as part of my artistic practice.
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