Although it’s winter here, the thought of sunflowers lifts the spirits and adds a touch of sunshine to this bleak weather.
I have been trying to use some colour and create a layering effect to get some texture to the background. There has been a lot of play, trial and plenty of error along the way but I’m now happy with the outcome and looking forward to trying more. Always looking for more ideas!
With lockdowns coming and going, it has been difficult to go anywhere very far afield for new inspiration. So my back yard and local neighbourhood has provided the ideas for my most recent works. The birds in the garden, the crows in the trees and the beautiful apple orchard along St Huberts Rd in the local Yarra Valley. It’s a wonderful place. I love just driving along this road. And of course love to include the local birds in my artwork. There are always so many in the garden.
Working with Lino you really have to think about contrast and it can be quite tricky not to go overboard with pattern work, which I tend to do. It is really important to have some solid white and black areas for high contrast.
After growing sunflowers during lockdown they became a source of inspiration for my artwork. It was fascinating watching the changes in the flowers as they developed, growing taller and producing those wonderful big flower heads. I have soooo many seeds now!
But what was also interesting was seeing the different sunflower art works created by numerous artists. We all know Van Gogh’s Sunflowers but do you know the beautiful paintings of sunflowers by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, both Austrian artists.? And of course David Hockney’s terrific new sunflower work. He too has been inspired by Van Gogh.
The first three are lino prints by me.
second row first image my acetate print and two by Schiele.
Third row two more by Schiele and the Klimt
fourth row two more by Klimt and finally Hockey’s piece.
there is such a variety of sunflower works when you start looking.
Now that I have a press of my own, so lucky, I can try different printing techniques which is great. I love learning new skills because you just never know what might interest you or what might spark a collection of new ideas.
I enjoy the wonderful work of printmaker Mami Yamamoto, who uses acetate sheets to create her beautiful mono prints, so I thought I would give this a go. So still working with a bird and garden theme I’ve started creating some simple monoprints.
it’s really all about the colour and shape with this project where as the black and white lino prints were about mark making and creating a texture. I’m really enjoying playing with colour again as I love colour so I’m going strong. One idea leads to another which is great and I’m keen to try different combinations of prints and perhaps some collage as well.
It’s all experimenting and that’s great.
Since we have all had to spend a great deal of time at home this year there was no way around it but to find inspiration in the local area. A beautiful area it must be said, the lovely Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges, have been the inspiration for these two lino prints.
The Crow Tree, inspired by the crows in Castella St and the other based on Cloudehill in Olida? Love to go there for a walk around the gardens and have lunch? Very much a favourite place to visit.
Plans are currently being made to get out and about more during the summer holidays, all going well. So hopefully more ideas will come to fruition and become lino prints.
Well it has been sometime since posting and I have not been completely devoid of creating but it has been slower.
With the ways things are in the world it has limited my creativity a bit and inspiration has been a little lacking, how about you?
So I have relied on places I know to inspire me. The beautiful Bruny Island off the coast of Tasmania. There is a narrow isthmus to cross from one section to the other and the view from the look out is fabulous, right over to Adventure Bay where I think Captain Cook stopped.
After that an experiment overlapping the same plate from the other direction. I what to play more with this as you get great texture.
And finally the gorgeous Yarra Valley. An orchard looking towards Mount Dandenong, it is a lovely place and you can feel like you are away from it all.
The big plans for a trip are on hold at present. I really fancy visiting the islands around Scotland, some family history there, and of course back to Austria. Love it there.
Now looking for a new source of inspiration for the next project.
Over the years I have tried so many different styles of painting. I love so many different styles and wanted to paint in a very clever, mature style that other people would like. I thought my naive style just wasn’t really good enough and then I just thought this is how I like to paint so that is what I am going to do.
I have seen more and more artists that paint in a naive ish style and their work is appreciated so why should I not paint in my true style. It’s important to create what you love and enjoy and not make art work because you think other people will only like a certain type of work. I think I have been underestimating myself and other people thinking my work is not good enough and now I believe it is good enough!
I’m happy with this piece. The vegetable gardens at Heide Gallery, Bulleen.
I recently discovered a wonderful artist Mami Yamamoto please look her up. Absolutely love her work. I really enjoy the idea of creating abstract print art but I’m really not very good at it. So anyway I thought I would have a go at this style of printmaking. I cut out some very simple shapes using acetate, inked them up and then printed them using my trusty wooden spoon. One day I think I might invest in a press. That part of the process worked quite well. So I set about layering different shapes.
The basic idea is there, I now have to think about colour, layers and what goes where. I will have another go because it was quite good fun. Now I just need to work out what to use the trial pieces for, possibly a book, just thinking how to make the most of the prints before I chop up the pages. Any suggestions.
It is a truly difficult time at the moment and all over the world people are confined to home isolation.
Now there is only so much cleaning, sorting, ironing you can do. Having a creative hobby has proved very handy and has kept me occupied. I turned to one of my favourite places in Australia, Tasmania and in particular Arthur’s Circus in Hobart. I had also just read about the female factory and the convict women that were transported to Tasmania.
I wanted to create a feeling where by Mt Wellington is looming over Arthur’s Circus and hopefully the sky also helps to create that effect. I’m happy with the final piece.
The second work ‘My Road’ is a view from the front porch. I am lucky enough to have a small park opposite my house so I don’t look into another home. So what could be more appropriate to creating in isolation than to use you immediate surroundings as your inspiration. Actually it is a little like Arthur’s Circus in that the homes all surround the little park. And of course there has to be a bird as there are always birds in my garden. This one a little black bird that is always happy to fossick in the mulch and flick it all over the path!
I have continued to play with artist book making. This time I started with painted and gelli printed papers, not knowing what they would become, and started chopping, cutting, removing, joining and adding to the pages.
I added some leftover prints or those that didn’t necessarily print properly.
What should I do with them anyway, you can’t keep everything! Of course birds focused again, peeping through the pages, looking like they are hiding in the garden.
This seems to be a recurring theme and I’m sure it is because I have always had a lovely garden filled with birds. Even as a child we had a beautiful garden and there were always parrots, kookaburras, magpies, honeyeaters, little black birds and tiny eastern spine bills and sometimes little blue wrens.
This book is not finished yet it just grows as it wants and that is a nice way to work. At other times there is a great deal of planning going on but not this time.
theartfields 