Art and Culture

Judging by this cartoon I did in the late 1950's, there were quite a few things affecting my psyche. None of them, if my more mature judgement is correct, were leading me to produce any great art.

Well, I am still looking around and reflecting on what ideas and influences might inspire me to greater heights.

One of the fascinating things about memes (ideas passed from one generation to another and dispersed in a variety of ways) is that, like genes, they can have surprising origins.

We often accept our notions as original because they seem so right. For example, I am very keen on the idea that art is only completed when the viewer participates in it. Now I find that there is an art movement called Relational Aesthetics, whose proponents pushed this notion to its limits in the 90’s.

The fellow credited with recognizing and promoting exhibits of examples of this Relational Aesthetics is a Frenchman named Bourriaud. I suspect that his writings are rather like a good speech at a Toastmasters Club. They simply articulate better what you might be contemplating anyway. All credit to hime, however, for being a mover and shaker.

Bourriaud has now proclaimed the latest art “Ism”, even though the label he uses “altermodern”, does not end in “ism”. Altermodern is the new art of the post-economic apocalypse, he claims, arising out of negotiations between different agents from different cultures and geographical locations.

Like most people, I guess, I hope that in the long term the current economic crisis is a going to be a mere blip on the radar, but anyone, let alone an artist, would have to be culturally brain-dead not to have noticed it and be somewhat affected by it . That insidious beast Globalisation with its godfather Economic Rationalism is also bound to get a bit under your skin too, so thoughts about it are likely to be expressed in Art in a variety of ways as well.

Here is an example of "Altermodernity"Bare: Aleph Null Head by Charles Avery


If you want to know more about Altermodernity and see some more images of its expression, I suggest you follow this link.

Comments are welcome.

One-Man Shows Aint One-manned

We had the official opening of my first one-man show today.

Why "we" not "I"? No royal plural here, just an aknowledgement that a lot of other people were involved in this "one-man" show besides the bloke with the pencil and brush.

My dear wife, for one, who helped to sort out what to hang and helped me hang 'em. She also kept reminding me what her friends had said about the hand in one of my paintings and cooked up a storm last night for lunch today. Only two friends arrived. Thank God they did I guess.

Then there was Shannon, who provided the venue and Alan Bruce, President of the local Art Society and friend who runs the life classes I go to. He gave a lovely little speech to open the show. One of the things he said was that he thought I should focus on doing portraits of people who will sit "live" for me. Having spent some time during the last week trying to remember what the bottom of our model of two weeks ago looked like (See below) I could not have agreed more.



Howsoever, A great bunch of friends and relatives and friends of friends and relatives of friends and friends of relatives turned up for the actual opening.

And I sold three paintings! I consider myself a fairly unemotional guy but when the first one sold I got a bit wet around the eyes and Mary took me outside for a hug.

None of the pictures taken with my little camera came out clearly (See below) but hopefully Mary's cousin-law took some photos which will come out okay. If so, they could get into a local high class magazine.



Here is a picture of me and the people who bought the first painting. (I am the guy nearest the mermaid) Besides the blurring (which suitably expressses my feelings at the time) you may notice that the formerly conspicuous hand of the mermaid is now lost in the murky depths.

Cheers

Des

Hanging this afternoon

Mary and I are going to Bon Amici, a local coffee house this afternoon to hang my first "one-man" show. I never realised there would be so much "non-painting" work in being an artist.




There was, however, a lot of looking at what I had to hang. tidying up older works, trying to do some quick works to round things out, etc. One of my main sources of art income (such as it is) is doing caricatures, and Shannom, my friend who owns the cafe, expected me to hang some examples of this type of art. The nearest thing in that line I will show is a pencil sketch transfered by hand to acrylic on stretched canvas and titled "Theo".

Wish me luck!

The drawing I can't let you see

My latest adventure has found me mentioned on the front page of our local newspaper after my involvement in a murder case

Don't panic! The Toowoomba Chronicle suddenly found themselves in need of someone to do a quick sketch of someone in court (where no cameras are allowed). So they Googled and found me.

I had only 30 minutes to shower, get dressed in my suit and tie and drive to the courthouse. I did not get a really good view of the accused. There were two door latches in the glass doors between her head and mine. I had only about five minutes, as she had to make only a brief appearance. )The poor man she is accused of attacking had died overnight and they were upgrading the charges against her.)

Anyway, the reporters said I had done a good likeness and the newspaper Editor said he might get me to do a portrait of his wife. (presumably under different circumstances.)

However, to satisfy all my fans here is one I left to dry this morning.

It is based on a photo I took of one of my fellow sketchers at life class, It was done in acrylics on stretched canvas. Like most of my art that I photograph, it looks like I have a bit more work to do on it. Maybe I should put a brush in her right hand and hide her left with a palette and put an easel in the background or maybe I should get on with my next one!
Cheers Des

Serendipity

Serendipity was originally a fictional place where everything turned out for the best. Real life is not like that. We all have failures and even real tragedies from time to time.

Things can seem to happen serendipitiously, however, if you keep grabbing any opportunities that come along. like Ning social networks , for example.

Without actually realising it, I was already a member of a couple of Ning SN's when I clicked on the hot spot for "Create your own social network"a few weeks ago. Honestly, I was mainly motivated by curiosity and an urge to explore possibilities. I also had a hunch that maybe, just maybe, a social network focused on the Arts in and around my home town might help local people find local, up-to-date Arts-related information on the Net. So I created Arts Toowoomba.

As a result, the past few weeks since then have been rather busy as well as exciting . Getting focused on other people, however, rather than myself, has somehow turned to my benefit. My starting my own social network has surprised and impressed some of my older friends and even relatives, particularly my very savvy darling daughter.

I have also made some new friends (about 25 so far) including ones that tell me Arts Toowoomba is exactly what they have been seeking for a long time.

Last but not least, one of the local television people is planning to feature Arts Toowoomba and one of its members in her Arts segment later this month. Maybe the Green's slogan "Think globally, act locally " actually works.

And all this is happening while I have been working madly on my first "one-man" show. Who knows what will happen next!

Taking your art out there

I am a firm believer in Art for the people, rather than for some clique.

So I regularly take my pencils, paper and easel out to markets and shows and do demonstrations at art exhibitions. I do quick (ten minute) sketches, mostly caricatures for fun with occasional attempts at "fine art".

I will let you guess what I tried to do for this lovely lady.

How to Paint a Face

I use PhotoShop quite a lot in my efforts to create traditional art, mainly by putting photographs up on my monitor and zooming in and out when I draw on paper or canvas. Generally speaking however, I find Copmputer art either "too easy" if you do simple things and "too difficult" if your needs are more demanding.

At the same time, computer programs can provide a great way to "doodle" and explore ideas.

Here is how I drew the "Tango Lady" shown above using ArtPad:

http://artpad.art.com/?kec079xrin4

Have fun!

Des