Small Works for Winter Happy

Winter Happy at GIGS, Gateway Island, The Causeway, Albury Wodonga. Opens 4pm Saturday August 24 2013.  This is a group show with Nan Hoysted, Mary-Jane Griggs, Susie Losch, Portia Janson and Mary Rose Riley.

I've started a series of small works based on the winter sunrise that I see some mornings from my loungeroom window. I've been photographing these spectacles on and off since winter 2012. It's an uplifting start to the day.

 Small canvases staring with acrylic.

Very loose and not worrying about too much

 Always lovely to start a work

 I will always reach for the paint before any other medium

But I also love mixed media and have made many small mixed media paintings since 2006 for my personal postcard exchange project and also for the 2012 Brooklyn Art Library Postcard project in NYC.

Capturing the warm light on a shower in front of a huge cloud will be challenging. Keeping a visual freshness as well as capturing the sense of the source is the task.

Such amazing shapes in the sky, each morning a new show.

I have seen some unbelievable skies over 20 years. Red clouds hanging in front of leaden canopies. Incredible colours, the effects of light diffused by atmosphere is hard to beat. The question arises - why try to paint it? Not trying to reproduce but celebrate.

Brain change - from studio to work

No studio today preparing for back to work. But printed out photos of paintings for VD as I like to have a visual record of studio work at hand.

Working across forty canvases is challenging but fun. The trick is to keep them moving and not to get too involved with just one.

There are still a few at the earliest stage but I have worked on most about three times now. As long as I finish the weekend having done some work on all forty plus worked more on the panoramas and the small works for GIGS I will feel ok.

Some of the trees feel reminiscent of gum trees but most don't and I don't want to be literal- I'm creating what will be a large installation of small canvases that need to work as a whole.

Playing with shape, colour, paint, how to deal with surface, playing with dividing the composition, paint effects. The familiarity of the subject allows flexibility.


The other project feels more difficult at this stage possibly because it's different to the tree project, smaller scale and working across the suite of canvases rather than individualising them at this stage.

Early days and haven't decided how to 'dilute' the tight patterning but will keep thinking and processing. This will be a long process I think!