30 May 2006

Yet another silly personality test...

Put your mouse pointer over the different colours:

It's a bit like a Sophie Tauber collage.

Ake! ake! ake! kia kaha e!

Just took a break from updating the old website to sit outside and smoke a cigarette while admiring the glorious twilight colours get more and more intense. I heard once that Aotearoa can be translated not only as 'land of the long white cloud' but also as 'land of the long twilight' - there not being much of a twilight in the tropics and all.

Thought it was time there was a paintings 2006 page, not that there's anything new on it as yet (nor very much for that matter - my fault for spending the first quarter of the year or so sitting around being nuts). So I just waved a magic wand and turned some (but not all) things that were categorised as drawings into paintings. Good eh?

I've got a few more on the go, so hopefully there'll be something new soon.

28 May 2006

Black Bart's flag


Arrrr...

Oh yeah

It took 14 years, but the ex-wife and I finally got around to getting divorced last week.

25 May 2006

Internet connects us all redux

I've jumped aboard Saatchi's new venture.

24 May 2006

Some pictures

Hmm, the scans turned out a bit bright. You can't really make out the all-important additions by Acacia McFadgen (age 4) to Self-portrait as symbolist:

Not so sure about this one:

Nor this one:

But all this one needs is a bit more gouache at the bottom there:

16 May 2006

Art rules (OK?)

1 Make things that you want to see, not what you think other people want to see. Don't follow fashions.

2 Avoid gimmicks and formulas.

3 Read widely, including things you disagree with. Try to understand why the writer thinks the way they do.

4 Do not limit your interests to art. Remember that every facet of human knowledge and endeavour was someone's passion and that good ideas can be found in the unlikeliest places.

5 Be critical, especially of yourself. Do not be unnecessarily swayed by other people's opinions, but be prepared to change your mind if you have good reasons for doing so.

6 Be aware of what's going on around you, but beware comparing yourself with other artists.

7 Never do business with someone you don't respect.

8 Try to notice every detail.

9 Try to draw every day. It doesn't matter what.

15 May 2006

Song for the day


AAH! AAAH!!
HA HA HA!

Take the blood out of an alligator, yeah
Take the left eye of a fish, yeah
Take the skin off of a frog, yeah
Yeah, and mix it up in a dish
Add a cup of grease swamp water
And then countin' one to nine
Spit over your left shoulder
And you got alligator wine
Alligator wine - YEHE HUH UH
Your porcupine
Is gonna make you mine, oh yeah
Yeah, is gonna make you mine
It'll make your head bald, babe
I say it make your toes freeze
It'll turn your blood into steam - ASHHH!
It'll make you cough and sneeze
You gotta scream UHH like an eagle
You gonna roar like a mountain lion
When you get finished drinking
Good old, yeah, alligator wine
Alligator wine
Your porcupine
Is gonna make you mine
AH HUH HUH
Meet at the stroke of midnight
By the swamp down in the wood
I'm gonna make you love me babe
Like you never thought you could
You gonna break my magic potion
And your blood [...] eye is gonna shine
You gonna be scared forever
Too much alligator wine
Alligator wine
WHOAA - alligator wine
Yeah yeh, is gonna make you mine
HUH HUH AAH
Alligator, alligator wine
HUH AAH

- The one, the only, Screamin' Jay Hawkins

13 May 2006

Internet connects us all

Got sent a link to a New York art blog yesterday. If that's far too serious, I also got sent a link to an utterly futile blog.

I've also been foolish enough to get engaged with the Artbash site based in Christchurch.

11 May 2006

The art of noise

Not sure I approve

I bumped into a woman I used to work with at an opening last week, and she blithely told me she'd used some of my images for a class on transferring images on to ceramics:

06 May 2006

Yet more reading

I'm slowly making my way through Theories of modern art. I've only read specific essays in isolation before, but not the whole thing sequentially. I'm up to the Cubists, and enjoying it immensely. I've been breaking it up with detective novels, including this great Agatha Christie about a business doing murder by valve amplified black magic.

02 May 2006

This and that

Pierrot le fou went off last night. It was perhaps the silliest of the lot - complete with musical numbers and all. It also included a brilliant line that went something like 'a case of mass hysteria all by myself'. I want to see Breathless and Alphaville again now.

Off to a couple of openings tonight, despite feeling sick as. It's always good to keep tabs on what people are up to. I believe one of them is a group show of works on paper.

I'm going to give the oil painting a bit of a rest for a while. All I've been doing is generating a pile of half finished paintings. At the moment I prefer the immediacy (and ephemerality) of drawings and watercolours.

I've been making a bit of headway with my plans for an avant-garde tarot deck - only got designs for three or four trumps, but I've got a fairly clear picture of the style for the lot in my head. The minor suits'll probably be black squares, planes, bottles, and red triangles. Might need to do a bit more research though. This may have to involve biting the bullet and paying my library fine.

01 May 2006

The end of the Godard

We've the last of the Godard retrospective tonight (well, there's Contempt on next week, but we're going to flag that - saw it on the big screen not that long ago). Last week's was extremely enjoyable and very silly, and I have high hopes that tonight will go out in style.
visitors since 29 March 2004.