Shards

Here is a little story about how how the triptych "Shards" came into being. My painting friends and I really wanted to have a "painting day" because we were always busy with other things. So we decided on a time, had a nice shared brunch then set off for Cornwall Park. It was the middle of winter, but that didn't stop us, although quite a few of our fellow artists didn't make it due to the cold or sickness. Obviously its an activity best suited for the mellow weather of summer.

Making the most of it, we brought materials and prepared painting surface. There were only three of us on this occasion and it was raining, at one stage quite hard, but it was those moments that make the experience of painting unique (who else would be crazy enough to huddle underneath a tiny pavilion in Cornwall Park).

I brought along a piece of gutsy card with several layers of gesso, my trusty acrylics and Indian ink, gouache, my favourite scrapers (I hardly ever use brushes). While wandering around the park, I tried to find what I wanted to paint, and found a tree near the pavilion with gouged out symbols in the bark. With a flurry of my dynamic painting style, I etched in the painting surface. Then from the site, I used sand, mud, the rain and a piece of fallen bark to create the foundation for "Shards".

Tiny Flower

Tiny flower which I managed to juice out every nuance in a blue pen sketch (there shall be more!).

Originally I had a blog where I did blue pen sketches once in a while, but then the novelty wore off and subjects were difficult to find so that all went away. There was a freedom found in the line art of the pen, which I explored for the while I did the blog. I do have the whole collection of them so periodically I'll put them up here.

Mediterranean Coast

This painting has deviated from my usual style in two ways. Firstly, it is done in oil paints while I usually never touch the stuff (I had learned to use them however, so I wasn't working blind to the world of oils). Secondly, I usually don't paint with realistic colours, rather I usually opt for the nearly monochromatic palette for abstracted atmosphere.

Why did I break all my stylistic rules?

This was a gift to my sister, who has a strong sense of confusion with anything abstracted more than an impressionistic style. So we were walking down a gallery one day and we saw a painting similar to this one. She instantly took a liking to it and I also wanted to try out a different way of painting. To say the least, it was hard as my every movement bent toward the "freeness" that I obtain in my own style of expression. And I lacked painting medium for oils.

This was a fairly sized boxed canvas oil painting, and it went safely to my sister's home where it now sits somewhere on display.

Desert Solstice

Every piece of art comes with a story - often it is this history that bestows an inherent value upon the work.

Desert Solstice is one of my earliest works that I enjoyed having sat on my desk for ages while I decided what to do with it. Eventually there was an art swap and it now belongs to Tony Brown.

And what did I receive to adorn my lonely wall? "The Carnival" a photo by Cathleen Tarawhiti. It is now a permanent fixture in my room and a constant source of inspiration.