setting up the new studio....

Its been a little over a week now since moving into the Studio at Percolator Gallery... and some very late nights have been spent there getting into the ambience of it. I wrote post here at the Visual Eclectica blog that gave the details about this move recently.

                              Here are some shots taken in the studio yesterday.

Three tables are arranged in a U-shape and shelving spans two adjacent walls...so Ive laid out journals, concertina books, and small works...and these Op-shop cups and saucers I found a while ago. Behind them is a DNA sketch from the recent residency.

                     ...playing around with 3D possibilities with an essentially 2D work.

                                                           Small framed works from 2007

                             some of the recent journals and two new ones waiting to go.

Loving the fresh white walls to put up ideas to muse on.

Its all so delightfully fresh and organised at the moment... even flowers from 

a lovely young artist who showed her work in the Gallery above last week.

                             A journal from 2007 ...enjoyed reading this quote the other day and also
                              working with the colours and composition on a new work last night.

The wonderful thing is that I have had the luxury of time to explore and look at old work and recent and research a bit more on the origin of motifs I like to work with that are based on seed forms or  related ideas. This simple motif below is a recurring form in work this past ten or more years. From Ancient Greece I have actually handled cross-sections of seed capsules that correspond to this form.

Using acrylic paint, ink, and aquarelle pencils and crayons I did 

a lot of work on quite large sheets of paper pushing around the ideas.

             This is the kind of prep work and processing of ideas I love to do but have not had space to      
               really go for it for some time... so I made sure to make the most of these precious hours.

                                                reworking the journal image form 2007

the seed pod templates I made to play around with ideas 

for layering larger forms on busy under-painted works

                                       Cutting up large works and making concertina pages
                                           on which to work over was an engaging process

 I adore this book which I bought in 1990 after stumbling into a second hand bookstore near Melbourne University. I worked constantly from it for number of years and then never could let it out of my sight even if not referencing it after that. Its became my bible and I thought a great deal about the contents of this book... always on the look out for things that referred to this unique cultural heritage from former times. Recently I did considerable research about its author Flinders Petrie, known as the father of Archeology. I discovered there was a Museum in London and my only regret is that I didn't make that connection last year when I had opportunity to visit whilst in London. So many questions have come from the recent research. But that's another post!

I spent last night trying to get down as many variations on a theme... being this motif which is in essence an infinity symbol as well as, perhaps, a seed capsule.

               Its was such a freeing things to simply work very quickly on one image after another...
                   keeping the sense of animation that is a quality I love to have in most work i do.

Well... I wasn't intending to load all these images up ...but as I've 

neglected this blog recently perhaps its just as well I have.