Pictures of Nothing.

The title of my post actually comes from the title of a series of lectures- the Annual A.W. Mellon lecture given through the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC...In 2003, a short time before he died, Kirk Varnedoe delivered his lecture series titled "Pictures of Nothing- Abstract Art since Pollock"...It has been since made in to a book and is available as a podcast on iTunes and the National Gallery's website. Varnedoe was an amazing scholar, academic and worked for 20 some years as chief curator of painting and sculpture at MOMA. He has been a valuable source of information to me to try and make more sense of Abstract art, because even though I have an understanding of it and it is what I do, sometimes it can be difficult to explain it to others. I have found that Varnedoe's writing and work on the subject to be most interesting and thought provoking and has been very helpful in giving me some ways that I can articulate what I do and for that I am thankful that I encountered his work...




Speaking of work, well I haven't posted much new work on here in a while- mainly due to me being buried in my study and not being together enough to actually make much in the way of paintings...You will be glad to hear that's changing though- also because as you may know, I went to America for a stretch and so I saw many wonderful things, which I will tell you about in another post, just for that purpose- otherwise I could just ramble on for hours...

So I completed a painting for a friend of mine, who spends so much of her time giving to other people, I decided that I would give something to her to thank her for her very vocal support of me and my work and also because of the inspiration she has given me- Have a look at www.theruthbarkerproject.com.au to see the fantastic work she does promoting organ donation awareness...So here is some photos of some various stages of building up the painting to the final finished painting- called "Breathing Light II" as a companion piece to the first painting she bought from me.








This one is the finished product now in Ruth's collection- "Breating Light II" 2014, Oil on Canvas.





I've also been reworking some old paintings- well, I picked out a few old paintings that I hadn't seen in a while and some that I thought I finally had the know-how to actually finish now...I had these three blue and white paintings that I had been planning on finishing off for ages and so I took the necessary step of beginning to add new layers of paint- beginning with reds. It's been good to continue with these ones as I was never happy with them in just blue and white - as you can see...





and so then I took the lead of an earlier work I had completed in this manner called "The Mechanics of Desire", pictured here


The Mechanics of Desire, 2012, Oil on Canvas

and now I've begun adding the colour, they have taken on a new lease of life...





A few others I dug out of the archives either for some work or just to spend some time hanging in my house are also seen here...


This is finished, but still remains untitled- from 2012.


This one shows some of my earlier explorations of monochromatics, it's called "The Spectre of Dentistry" from about 2010 and believe it or not it's about my fear of the Dentist.


I'm in the process of working out a few things to do to this one, I'm going to rework it slightly- Untitled currently and also from around 2010.

So my intention has been to try and spend an equal amount of time in the studio as I do at my job job type job to try and take my painting as a serious endeavour...at this current point in time it seems to be working out but we'll see how that goes when the Uni hammer comes crashing down...I will eventually edit this post and put dimensions for all of these pictures, but if you want to know sizes on any of these pictures, hit me up and I'll let you know...

Just to finish, here is a quick picture of me and one of my favourite paintings ever- Jackson Pollock's "Autumn Rhythm" from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York...as I mentioned, I will contribute a large amount of words to my overseas adventures at a later juncture...until then, take care and be nice to all the other humans...