Tapestry Girl x Other Nations

Spent a few hours yesterday setting up a bunch of paintings at Berkelouw books in Newtown, Sydney for an exhibition I’m having with an artist called Niki McDonald, who does really beautiful embroidered pieces inspired by street art from Sydney and Melbourne. The works will be upstairs at Berkelouw bookshop (6-8 O’Connell Street, Newtown) until 2 July, and the opening is from 6-8pm on Sunday 13 June, so if you live in Sydney feel free to come along for a glass of champagne while you browse the art and books.

Thanks to Yulia for helping me hang the paintings and surreptitiously taking pictures while I was doing it.

animal love: other nations

The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth. -Henry Beston, naturalist and author (1888-1968)

Some paintings from my residency at Fraser Studios that just ended… should be having an exhibition of some of them in March.

‘all is broken all seems brittle’

‘we are the dead’

‘strength implies weakness’

‘have power to shake me as they pass’

‘keep holding on baby blue’

animal love @ gallery 285

Here are two new paintings created for “Meet THE DEALER”, an exhibition currently running at the beautiful  Gallery285 in Sydney.  It’s open for another week, so if you’d like to see these works in the flesh, as well as pieces from 5 other young artists, get down to 285 Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst before the 5th March.

mini animal love

My mum likes to tell people that I was the only child she knew who could look at lambs playing in the field and think of lamb chops.  When I announced age 21 that I was becoming a vegetarian she was incredulous.  I’ve always been fascinated by animals, and as a result fairly good at drawing them.  On the internet I’ve discovered thousands of people who share my fascination, and endless email forwards about tigers adopting piglets, and youtube videos of unlikely animals engaging in mortal combat.  These drawings are my response to the strange symbiosis of cruelty and kindness, beauty and horror that exist in this thing we call nature.  All of my animals are drawn life size, and I research those which are extinct as carefully as possible so that the anatomy (if not the colours) are reasonably accurate.

These are a few mini animal lovers, each one is about 10cm x 15cm, pen and ink and acrylic on canvas.

 

animal love

I finally finished my paintings for this semester.  I’ll just post them here with minimal commentary, since I’m now exhausted from 36 hours of continuous drawing.

 

 

 

 

 

And some bonus images… One of my early paintings from the series, and a picture of me in action.