Sculpture or models?

Eli Mulvay's version of Da Vinci's helicopter

My version of a Moon Moth

A Sculptor lives next door

Trevor next door works in stone and bone and his partner Pam is a painter, mural artist and graphic artist like me.
Trevor has three commissioned tombstones on the go at the moment and Pam helps him sometimes with design drawings and I have occasionally helped Trevor with aspects of portrait design drawings and enlargement of design drawings for carvings.
Like mural and portrait commissions can often be, these tombstone commissions are very personal and close to a clients heart.
The privilege of trust and the pleasure of helping someone is often part of living the life of an artist.

Sculpture Installation; Decorating Auckland

This sculpture was carved in one piece out of a solid block of polystyrene. The head of the guy ended at a slightly wrong angle and I had to cut the head off and glue it back on with a wedge in the neck to get it just so. A few other minor defects were smoothed over with plaster and the finished piece painted with acrylic paints.
I was attending Hungry Creek Art School at the time and the guy running the school had a son in the billboard business in Auckland and a sculpture of a couple kissing on a chaise longue was required by a client, a new radio station; More FM (-more fun in the middle of the road). The art school's boss and I went 50/50 on this job, he had the contacts and readies and I had the artist's skills.
We met the son and his girlfriend at a photographers studio in Ponsonby, Auckland, where a chaise longue was and I took my camera and a ladder and photographed the lovers from every possible angle.
We then bought a huge block of polystyrene, a sheet of ply for a base, some folded sheet metal for a plinth and some steel rods to hold these three pieces together and I got to work on the carving in the art school's life drawing room. After sufficient disruption of the school's normal activities all was shifted to my big workshop at Warkworth where I made like Michaelangelo and polystyrene flew everywhere.
My partner in crime created the plinth and turned legs of the chaise longue and insisted on carving the feet of the couple, to keep his hand in, and the whole job was done in 15 days, from receiving the brief to being mounted on the billboard above a busy, major, central Auckland intersection.
The brief was for a sculpture to last 3 months out in the weather but it stayed there a year distracting motorists and pedestrians alike and causing many near misses at the busy traffic lights.
On the night before delivery of the finished sculpture it was installed in my lounge and we had the fire blazing, every heater in the house in the lounge on full and a hairdryer and heatgun blazing away, dog tired and sweating in the heat at 3 in the morning trying to dry plaster and paint. The last of the paint dried on the drive to Auckland as we raced to be on time to meet the scaffolders who helped with the installation.

Art and Music

 In the 90's I spent much time in Auckland, an hours drive from my then home in Warkworth. I was pursuing fame and fortune as a mural painter and murals were much in fashion then as decoration for restaurants, cafes, and upmarket clothing stores.

Fashions change but I had a good time for a while and ample opportunity to explore my Irish heritage at the many Irish bars that sprang up at that time.

There was an Irish renaissance at the time and I embraced it with joy, for, although a common or garden New Zealander I was ill at ease as there had been for some time in this country a great racial debate as the Maori population increasingly demanded their rights and redress for historical wrongs forced on them by the Pakeha settlers in the 1800's

I have no Maori blood and was quite unnerved by this drama as I thought that, taken to it's logical limits, this drama would eventually see me disinherited from my birthplace and kicked out!

Now just because a young man from County Clare decided to make a better life for himself away from the famine that swept Ireland for twenty years after 1840, all of young Peter Mulvay's life in fact, and took ship to New Zealand in 1861, did this mean that I, Peter Mulvay's great grandson, because of my lack of Maori blood, had no right to be here?

This scary line of thought led me to discover that I too had a race and a blood and this was black Irish from the West coast of the Emerald Isle.
Yes, I came complete with the requisite green eyes, slightly olive skin and black hair of County Clare.
And the knowledge that I too had a racial heritage was a comfort to me and I no longer worried about being kicked out of my country of birth.

And I discovered Guinness and single malts and those Irish bars had live music every night of the week! yay!

And I would take a sketch book along to those Irish pubs and after enough Guinness to conquer my shyness I would practice and practice high speed drawing and learn how to draw a violinist's fingers in the middle of a solo, catch a singers soulful expression and etc.

The amount of booze I drank did get in the way of my mural painting business a wee bit but I have so many sketches of New Zealand musicians that I am about to put to good use as paintings.

My mission for this winter is to make paintings and prints of all those drawings and I feel they may just turn out o.k. because they all came from the heart and I have many musician friends whose talent and art I adore.

R18 Art exhibition

The cradling of femininity

Who could resist an exhibition with that title? Not this kid thats for sure.

I got word of this from my artist pal Berys (great name eh? Welsh, boyo..) by email a few weeks ago. Berys is a mover and a shaker and got her clever fingers in many pies to do with the Waihi art scene and further afield and I guess she made the connection between Life drawing (naked people) and R18 themes and thought I might like to know about this up coming event.
Fair enough I guess, I'm just happy to have people think of me now and again.

So the R18 art exhibition is put on by the Empire art gallery in Cambridge, out in the Waikato, not far from the river city of Hamilton where I was recently going every Thursday with my friend Barbie to an etching class.
Not a big deal to swing by Cambridge on the way home from etching one Thursday and check it out.
No sooner said than done!
I decided that I would exhibit 3 paintings in this exhibition, at $10 entry fee apiece and 30% commission on sales. Fine with me.

The only problem was to find some works that fit the label, i.e. adult content.
I did the best I could but all the time thinking exposure, and maybe the R18 label would attract well heeled art lovers to the exhibition who might not otherwise attend.

Junkie logic I know but what the hell eh?

The image above is one exhibited at this exhibition, which opens next Saturday and runs for 2 weeks. No explanation needed there I reckon.
The other two paintings exhibited are on this blog, one is a blue portrait of a woman titled Sarah's Quilt that accompanies an earlier article and the other is a painting of two women posing on a settee titled two models that graces the bottom of this page.

I hope they find loving homes these three babies of mine and I could do with some money as the auld overdraft is reaching epic proportions.
Nobody's got enough money right? and I will never bore you with my financial situation, I don't really care about money but it's there in all our lives like housework and the weather...
Not going to the opening, too far away and there is always alcohol involved in these openings.

I will keep you posted as to how this exhibition goes.

Art History

Waihi 1912

This morning I emailed my blog address to a friend in the U.S., Andy Reurich. I told him he could also google my name to find the blog and when I finished emailing Andy I googled my name and mein gott there is a heap of stuff there on me including all contact details.

And if I was a wee bit worried about baring my soul on this blog it's like forget about it! I'm out there in the world whether I like it or not. Privacy? Shit, that's a last century ideal, a philosophical concept for academics to ponder on.

I realized I can be found as easily as my art heroes, an interesting thought..

And speaking of art heroes I am reminded of one in particular who inspired me at a time when I was riven with self doubt (don't you just love words like riven? the english language is so cool).

This was a New Zealand artist, a girl of about 11 years old who was on the tele making a bit of a splash with her wonderful colourful abstract paintings and the media person interviewing this young lady asked her who her favourite artist was and without hesitation the young artist said "Me!"
And I was immediately gripped with a strong and happy emotion and thought "YES!"
This young lady and myself were then added to my list( it's a bloody long list mate) of art heroes.

No, I am not that vain but being one of my own favourite artists is a great tool to keep my dander up and not fall prey to depression and self dought as I am wont to do.
Many times I will do a drawing, a portrait, that turns out pretty good and I will look at it and it is like looking in a mirror. I see myself in the drawing because it is in my style and looks so old and familiar as to be almost boring as in it looks like it has existed forever, or as long as I have lived and is an old and achingly familiar friend...

If you know what I mean, hope that makes sense.

Most of my favourite artists are giants in Art history unlike myself and the young lady I saw on tele who so inspired me and some of them are: Shiele, Toulouse-Latrec, Degas for drawing and Vincent, Goya and Rembrandt and the unknown master who painted the Villa of Mysteries mural on the outskirts of Pompei about 63AD for their ideals or suffering or ability to express the inexpressable. But there are so many, so many.
I like to think of art as the oldest profession in the world, dating from the stone age when bands or small tribes of people would have had a leader counseled by a shaman and an artist (perhaps the same person) to work the sympathetic magic necessary to survive in a place of danger and wonder.
Another hero of mine is Betty Edwards who wrote two great books on drawing that take us away from sympathetic magic and into the workings of our bi-cameral minds. If you are at all interested in drawing read Betty.

Art virus

Busy day yesterday, Thursday. I got back to Waihi from the printmaking course in Hamilton about three and dropped by the Waihi College office to fill out forms to enable me to get paid for the Life drawing course I run there on Wednesday nights. Then on to the Post Office to mail off some money to the dear old Tax department that Valda, my accountant says must be paid by Monday.

Been up since six as the printmaking course is an early start and more than an hours drive away across the drought stricken Hauraki plains. Every Thursday for eight weeks there and back across the plains with my artist pal Barbara and watching the farmers fields slowly start to turn green again after the hottest, driest Summer for yonks.
That was the last day of the printmaking course, I learned a lot and got some good work done but glad now to have a break from that long commute.

So it's four o'clock and I've heaps more work to do starting at fiveish and I'm now thinking how nice it would be to be sitting at a table outside the Sterling Tavern watching the passing parade on Waihi's main street and sipping on a pint of Guinness.

It's a spiritual world we all live in friend, a paradoxical place where we all exist in dimensionally and temporally limited finite material form. Growing, changing and eventually decaying and dying, but all of us endowed with limitless infinite imagination! O yes! Be careful what you wish for because all our dreams, good or bad, if we hold them dear, will come true pal, sure as eggs are eggs..

And it seems like no time at all till my pleasant wee dream of sitting outside the Sterling with a pint of Guinness is an actual reality that I am experiencing! Miracles! Every day miracles happen to us! Just imagine something and the bountiful universe makes it so! Just master fear and my what a strange and wonderful place we exist in!
I must admit I sometimes have a bit of trouble with letting go of fear and there are people, especially those involved in the media, politics and finance who seem to take a perverse delight in promoting fear amongst their fellow human beings.
Perhaps these sort of people are in the grip of fear themselves and are desperate to manipulate their environment and the people around them to ensure their own power and comfort.
All I can say to that is ignorance is bliss you stupid, blinded by your own intelligence, egotistical, idiots..

Meanwhile there I am living my latest wee dream, sitting outside the Sterling with a pint of Guinness, the sun comes out and a trio of hard working gold miners come out for a beer and a cigarette at the tables outside and we get into a discussion about the difference between the tent of the sky above us and the temple of the sky above us.
I can see that I am going to have to ask Denise for another pint of Guinness if I am going to make any sense of this conversation and before long we are all pals and do the handshake and intro thing and what do you do John?
Artist Dion
Hey you the guy painted the mural by the memorial hall?
Yeah that's me Jimmy
So Jimmy's got a house bus that needs a mural on it and I give him my card.
Jimmy's got a dream of a mural and I have a permanently running dream of making other peoples mural dreams become reality so there we are together discussing this....another day, another miracle....
As Warren Beatty says to Faye Dunaway in the movie Bonnie and Clyde when he is telling her how he was released from prison the same week he cut off his toe to get off work detail:

"Ain't life grand?"

Two pints of Guinness down the hatch and it's time to get back to work.
Home I go and start taking paintings off the wall, into the back off the wagon they go along with a ladder and hammer and my picture hanging gear and off we go to see Leah and the ladies at Chambers restaurant and spend the next few hours rearranging the displays of paintings that decorate Leah's restaurant. Leah is a friend of all local artists and musicians. She and her husband Kevin are from the South Island and friendly- as people as most Mainlanders are.
They live across the road from me and are trying to sell their lovely house because it has limited garaging and they have four vehicles but I hope it doesn't sell because they are good neighbours.

I get home from my busy day at 8.30 to find two missed calls on my cellphone from Sandra, and one text, as follows:

"Today i got a comment on blog saying click here. Checked it out on net & it could lead to virus site.
Best to have comment settings on word verification to avoid auto comment programmes. Can u tell barbara & let me know if u don't know what to do."

So I ring Sandra, my computer whiz artist mate, and she fills me in on this almost interesting phenomenom and she tells me her latest.

I ring Barbara and tell her about this possible art virus thing and she tells me that she got a comment on her blog from some guy in India with the click here thingy and she clicked it and now there is something there that she cannot delete.

Hmmm. An opportunity for fear to upset our three art bloggers peace of mind?
Maybe. Maybe not. I'm goin for maybe not myself.

First Friday of every month is music night at Chambers restaurant and about thirty local muso's take turns to entertain and Sandra and I go to draw the musicians and enjoy the scene.
I will be seeing Sandra there tonight and can update her as to Barbara's situation so Sandra can arrange to open Barbies blog and clean it up for her.

Art virus? What sort of person would bother to do something like that?

Ignorance is bliss I reckon.

Commercial Art

Today is Easter Monday and this is the day I finish the drawing up of a large picture to decorate a doll museum.
The interesting thing about commissions like this one is that I get to look at, and learn a little about, all sorts of things. In this case the world of doll aficionados is opening up to me.
I have long been aware of collectors of antique dolls but was not aware that there are people who make high quality porcelain dolls with hand made shoes and clothes, the collectable antiques of the future. Like barbie dolls but bigger and way more expensive.

The picture I am drawing is an enlargement of another artists work; a doll makers logo that is a group portrait of nine dolls faces set in a frame of rose leaves and flowers, very nineteenth century looking and my job is to enlarge this four times the size and hand draw it on a prepared board.

Sign makers could enlarge this by mechanical means for a few hundred dollars but would lose clarity and detail on the way and as money is no object I am commissioned to do the job by hand.

Pays the bills this sort of work and is a real challenge as I did say "sure I can do that for you, I can do anything!"
I've no interest in ornate frames of rose leaves and flowers, thats just work but portraiture does interest me and getting each of the nine dolls likeness's and expressions just so is the satisfying part for me. Portraiture, capturing a likeness, expression, emotion and character is all in the drawing of the eyes and mouth, where all expression lies.
Gotta go now and finish the hats and hair of three porcelain dolls.. hope your Easter Monday is a good one.

A busy week

The week before Easter began with continuing the mural I am finishing for my dentist, Mark Smith. Mark is fixing my teeth in exchange for me decorating one wall of his son Zachary's room with a medieval scene.
Zachary is 9 and his mural is based on an original drawing of his showing a knight in armour astride a rearing horse holding his sword up in a bravura gesture and viewed from a castle interior through the stone arch. The mural is painted on canvas and stapled to the wall and the stone arch is made of polystyrene and ply and is screwed to the wall so it is removable. I tried to make it interesting enough that Zachary will still like it when he is older and his tastes may have changed.
It's been a fun job to do because there is no money involved and Doctor Smith is a fun guy, manic, creative and interested in everything and he and his wife Diana have three boys and their house is always filled with energy. I come out of their house smiling, good people, excellent job to have

Finished and photographed Zachary's mural Tuesday and you can see it on this blog, at the bottom of the page.
Wednesday I was continuing to draw up the doll museum painting and Wednesday evening was Life drawing class and Thursday was to be an early start driving to Paeroa to pick up my pal Barbie and on to Hamilton, an hours drive away, to attend our etching class.
I am very keen on printmaking and have all the gear in my recently finished studio but felt I needed a refresher course to get up to speed on etching and to organize the etching part of the studio in shipshape and Bristol fashion.
As I had Mary the doll museum owner coming on Thursday afternoon to check on my progress with her job I decided to miss the etching class for that week as I felt a bit overwhelmed.

Yes, stress... I am thin and nervous and capable of doing six things at once but then I can lose it and get shot down and have to work desperately hard to avoid crashing and burning...
Depression is my nemesis and ally and the adult monster I have to keep tucked up and safe from.

Thursday evening Barbie and Sandra came to visit and they drank a little wine and I drank more than a little brandy and coffee and Sandra helped Barbie and myself with our blogs.
Sandra is a good friend a great artist and computer whiz and the three of us have fun playing with and planning blog ideas.
We are just kids having fun, I think that's one of life's meanings; play, have fun - I hope you have fun in your life dear reader..

Good Friday I spent in the garden keeping ahead of the jungle and getting stress release and all the rest of the weekend was spent working on Mary's doll portraits, a difficult and intense job but very satisfying because so challenging.

Early days

One of my best friends at Seatoun School (I had two best friends there, just lucky I guess) had a father who worked for one of the three big department stores in Wellington, James Smiths. Every year James Smiths put on a big Christmas parade that packed the city's streets with thousands of kids and their parents and my friend Bobby's Father made those floats and giant moving models and costumes of all kinds of story book characters.
I thought that must be the best job in the world, just wonderful!

One of my Father's friends was a commercial artist who did a logo for the Black Knight Licorice company. A medieval knight in black armour with a lance and riding a big black war horse. I was very impressed with this piece of art work and I thought that being a commercial artist must be the best job in the world!

When I wasn't reading or playing with the neighbour's kids in the pines or in the tracks and zig zags that went down through the bush to the sea I was drawing. Drawing was something I liked to do and my Father kept me supplied with A5 notepads and pencils from a friend of his who worked at a big place called Commercial Print. I went through a lot of those pads and pencils.

Reading and drawing came together in comics and the comics that really inspired me were English war comics. What those artists could do with black ink on white paper was amazing to me. A blinding white hot explosion in the hot desert sun as a tank took a direct hit, the dark interior of a doomed English bomber trying desperately to get home through the black winter skies over Germany. All drawn with accuracy and attention to detail.

Much later I made, with a friend, a float for a St. Patricks day parade, I've created a couple of business logos and I have a story that could become a graphic novel but my life as an artist mostly revolves around murals and portraits.