Crops

Last week I spent every day and night painting.
I had started 6 paintings nearly one year ago and they all came to a stand still and dropped off the radar while I made the difficult decision to move out of the family home. After finishing the paintings for the Hamilton Connections show, I went back to those 6 paintings, They were images derived from sections of previous paintings I have done. Using the computer images of the paintings in the Microsoft Paint program, I cropped them to come up with an abstract design that I liked.   

I finished those initial six and felt very happy with them. They seemed to me to be my first truly mature works. I took them to show Dr Elizabeth Arthur because I was anxious to get a knowledgable reaction. She was very encouraging and positive about them. So much so, that I went home and took the other 12 canvases of the same size ( 40cm x 61cm) and drew up a set of images created in the same way as the first 6. 

Elizabeth had told me about the Stadel Museum exhibition currently on at the National Gallery of Victoria. I told myself that if I could complete theses 12 paintings by Thursday night, I would go to the NGV show on the Friday. Each night from Sunday to Thursday I stayed up late into the night painting. The first two nights I was up until at least 3 am. On  Tuesday and WednesdayI stayed up until after 5 am.  I was on a roll, and would get up at around 10 am to see what I had done the night before. It was eye opening to see with fresh eyes each morning, because I was so constantly working between the canvases simultaneously that I didn't really stop and stand back to take in what I had done.

I finished at about 1am on Friday morning and went to bed before getting up at 6am to catch the bus to Melbourne. The Stadel show was great and because I went late on a weekday it was not overly crowded. It was worth the entry fee ($23) just to seethe two small Paul Klee paintings on display.There were pleanty of other good paintings to see as well.

On Saturday, I packed up all 18 canvases and took them to Elizabeth's gallery to show her. Her reation was wonderful and she seemed genuinely excited by the prospect of hanging them in her gallery. They are abstract images at first view but have been derived from paintings I have made primarily of heads and figures. They are landscapes and figurative paintings simultaneously. They are structured with a collage mindset and intuitive colour use. Of all the paintings I have done over the years I am most comfortable putting my name to these 18 Crop paintings. For me, they have been the most important series I have created in terms of my artistic development. Images to be posted soon.