Pop Art Mural 3

Number three mural for Yellow Pages. I do them over weekends so as not to disturb the staff but this one took from Friday morning till Monday night because the wall was bright yellow and covered in fixed designer shelving which had to be removed and the surface made good and repainted white before work on the mural could begin. A real workup for one guy but fun too. It's nice to be working in a warm quiet office building on weekend days and nights while outside it's Winter in the busy city.

Self Portrait Lithograph, the artist as a night-mare

The act of creation is to be completely in the Here and Now, the cutting edge of all of infinity, in the moment, the only time that exists, the present.... living the very fact of consciousness....

And achieving this blissful state, if one is no longer a child, is made easier by getting into the rght environment.
The Lithograph studio for instance, where one uses English litho crayons and inks on 30 million year old solid blocks of fossilized tiny sea shells dug up from what was a Bavarian lake bottom and printing the resulting art on French rag linen paper made on 250 year old oak paper making machinery, this run through a 19th century American Litho press.
Here and Now. The only place that truly exists.
I know, weird but true, Hell I didn't make this world, I only draw and paint it so don't ask me.

Two Powerful Women. The Poet and the Librarian

Two drawings of a poet reading, below, the likeness. Above, the essence...

 
A drawing of Janice reading her poetry at a cafe in Tauranga. One of her poems, an understated masterpiece of only 5 lines, can reduce grown Women to tears. That's Power my friend..

Under Kris's cool, calm, efficiently helpful and stikingly beautiful exterior beats the heart of a seriously competitive netball player.
Netball is an ultra fast, intense and somewhat dangerous extreme team sport played by thousands of New Zealand Women.
The Maori word for Power, and much else besides, is Mana. In Kris this is as obvious and tangible as her graphically gorgeous thick black hair, eyebrows and coolly lidded black eyes .....
I simply had to paint this Woman!
And you can bet I was respectful and polite with her..

Savonarola's Chair, the film buffs version...

This is a photo of me looking for a Savonarola chair at an art exhibition in the old Masonic lodge building on the riverbank at Warkworth in late 2003.
I was unable to find one at this time but I did find a gorgeously dramatic portrayal of one on Eisensteins 1944 movie Ivan the Terrible (Part One) which my son Sam gave to me, in the scene where Ivan is laying seige to Kazan.
Do check it out. You will not be disappointed.
All you many many many many Savonarola chair fans who have found your way onto my humble art blog by googling Savonarola's chair should know that this chair is an Ancient Roman design of folding camp stool used by the Roman legions and unfortunately named after a religious idiot, a rabble rousing fanatic who caused a fuss in Florence in the 1490's and was responsible for corrupting the vision of one of my main drawing heroes, Sandro Botticello, by filling him with guilt and shame, completely destroying this brilliant artist's mojo and this maniacal obsessive fuckwit of the first order was eventually burnt alive by the Catholic authorities and I find it somewhat disturbing that amatuer antique investors and furniture fashionistas should be forever and always landing on my blog looking for information on a Roman General's camp stool unjustly named after a Goddamned iconoclast....
And it's kinda fun where life takes us and definitely fun to have an abusive self righteous tirade just like my man Savonarola, only I don't insist on you following my belief system.
Whatever you believe will, I believe, be revealed to you as truth.
Belief systems are surely like everything we are conscious of: infinite in variety and a matter of choice in what we focus on.

The Rocket Park Mural continues...

The mural as I left it on Tuesday afternoon. Much time was spent on getting the ladders and chair fixing brackets and background figures and elements just so and I will start to paint the children, six portraits, when I go back to work at the Marae next Monday....

Ron, a pastel portrait

It's frustrating for me that in relating my life as an artist I cannot tell you much of the people I have met, my family and friends. To be polite, you know, to respect other's privacy.
I don't mind baring my soul on this blog, warts and all, but I can't share with you much of my personal life where other's are concerned. Shame about that eh? but I think you can tell from my portrait of Ron that here is a man that has lived a life, a man with stories to tell. They are not mine to share with you but this man was one of many people who have inspired me. What a guy!

The Weekly Portrait: a new resolve!

My friend Janice is a poet and I drew this last Friday while she was watching and listening to musicians at the Local Vocal at Leah's Restaurant. I will see if I can post a new portrait every week

My friend Shirley is an Artist. I haven't seen her since I made this sketch several years ago. I have other drawings and a painting of her too. I like drawing and painting people.

The Rocket Park Mural comes back from the dead to live again and walk among us!!

I got this thing about portraits
This one's called the poem..

And photos of the Rocket Park mural's progress will be posted as soon as there is some progress although I have to say more would have been posted here sooner had not my cheap Chinese computer that I bought just for emails and blogs and online trading and what-not spat the dummy big time after nearly two years sterling service and Andrew at Beach Computers told me the mother board was fucked and the hard drive was munted. Now I'm no computer geek but I reckon those adjectives are kinda universal and the meaning crystal clear...
"Andrew" I says, "do, mate, what you gotta do" and Andrew says to me "Tell you what John, I'll do for you, mate, what needs doin' and how will that do ya?" and I says "That'll do me just fine Andrew, yep, you're my guy, buddy, I trust ya, just do it"
And he did.
I've got, now, 110 gigs up from 40 and speed so fast I not only have to be sober to operate this scary machine but wide awake and both physically and mentally fully fit and shipshape and bristol fashion to the max... oooh ooh

The Rocket Park Mural dies an ignominous death

At a meeting of local Ward Councilers this design idea of mine was chosen to enhance Waihi's Rocket Park, a job I was going to do for free as part of my Community Service sentence that a judge gave me for a drink driving conviction. Unfortunately the people in charge of supervising my sentence had me work out my time helping out at the local Marae instead.
They were kind and flexible enough to allow me to disappear for a while to organize for myself the painting of a mural for the local community as my community service but little old me caught between the Hauraki District Council and the Justice Department and with all the good will towards this idea it just, in the end, didn't fly.
All part of living the life of an artist dear reader...
I had intended the murals (one each side of the Rocket) to be based on photographs of children and to be a very realistic illusion but with the scale slightly enlarged and the tones in the painting exaggerated so the paintings worked for the viewer at a distance.
Looking forward to the challenge I was but there you go... heaps of other stuff to paint anyway.

Marley's Mural, a Pictorial History part 6, basic design of the second canvas is sketched out at long last

So many interruptions have slowed progress on this mural but this is not a bad thing, it is just my life..
Now that I have selected the images for the mural and they are sketched in with paint on both seven metre canvases there is a whole new ball game as they say in the U.S.
Yeah, now I have to make it work, as a whole, and I want it to look like music; to have colour, tone, harmony and rhythm.
How I achieve this I don't know but that is the goal and Thursday to Sunday is my next opportunity to get stuck in and go for it, wish me luck eh?

Marley's Mural, a Pictorial History Part 5: the second canvas gets designed

Friday was a warm and bright, sunny Winter's day and I spent the morning making phone calls to sort out, and keep up with, stuff. Then I put on good clothes and walked up to town and got in some R & R, bit of shopping, couple a bevvies, home for tea and then out again for a few drinks with friends. Saturday was a big, vicious storm and the bamboo growing back of the studio smashed the edge of one of the studio roof's clear panels, the water leaking through this was blown inside by the fierce wind gusts but luckily blown clear over the canvas clipped up there and not blown far enough to hit the table and ruin all the drawings etc.
I love storms like that, they remind me of Wellington, where I grew up.
Saturday afternoon and night and Sunday afternoon and night I worked on the canvas in the cold draughty studio and now both canvases are ready for finishing - which will probably take two weeks.

The Waihi Rocket Park Mural, a cautionary morality tale. Part One: In which a recividist criminal hatches a cunning plan to get off the chain gang

Waihi's Rocket Park

John goes down the slippery slope of bad behaviour!
 
THE CRIME and SENTENCE

In an earlier post I told of losing my drivers licence after having a couple of beers too many at my favourite bar in Katikati one hot Wednesday afternoon last January and then driving home via a police road block on highway 2 especially placed to catch just such people as myself.
Busted!!
Eventually I had my day in court and as well as losing my licence for a year and a day I was sentenced to 150 hours of community service.
On the appointed day I had my friend Sandra drive me to Paeroa to the Probation Office and there I explained to the good folk in charge of my sentence how lucky they were to have such a rare and especially fine variegated species of mural artist on their books and what wonderous things I could do for the local community.......
In formal no-nonsense prison guard speak I was informed that I would be on the chain gang for at least a month (at least one day a week labour in service of some community organization or other) and then we would see what we would see..
I see said I. Yes. Yes of course. Sir.

THE CHAIN GANG!!

Well I really enjoyed the chain gang, the work was good exercise and the company great as everyone of my workmates, guys and girls of all types and ages, were all there because they had fucked up in one way or another and there was no bullshit or judgement and we all got on with enjoying our days work and chipping away at the hours we owed the community.
A typical day would be a van load of us arriving at a local small communities' war memorial hall early on a cold Winter's morning with a trailer load of gardening and scrub cutting and lawn mowing tools and we'd all get dirty scratched and blistered and leave the place looking a whole lot better than we found it. Satisfying work actually and no shortage of good humour...

A PLAN IS BEING HATCHED!!

After a month or so in the trenches I told my gang's boss of my local councillor's favourable attitude towards me painting a mural for the community.

A CUNNING DISGUISE IS CAREFULLY MAINTAINED ...

Because of my punctuality and reliability I was given my head, so to speak, and I used my newly returned head to finalize where and what and do some design drawings and submit them for approval to a meeting of ward councillors.

THE PLAN..

Waihi's rocket park rocket will be made more of a feature with the addition of two large portholes through which can be seen the rocket's crew comprising of my neighbours Leah and Kevin's son Daniel age7 and my pal Georgia's daughter Amelie age 5 and my grandson Mateo age 2 and a half inside the rocket preparing to take off.
Kinda cliche but very cute.
Along with this I will be making some changes to the rocket's colour-scheme: red nose cone and silver gantry tower. At present I await the delivery to the studio of two large sheets of thin galvanized metal for me to cut to shape and paint the porthole murals on. These will then be riveted on the rocket.
And my debt to society will be paid. Yay!

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE NEXT EPISODE BOYS AND GIRLS??
WILL ALL BE REVEALED??
WILL THERE BE A HAPPY ENDING??

Marley's Mural, a Pictorial History Part 4: Images and Design Ideas hit the canvas at last

Tuesday 22 July 08: A mural comprised of some of my drawings and photos of musicians and the sheet music to a Ricky Lee Jones song begins to come together on a 7 metre by 1200 primed canvas.
The other 7 metre by 1200 primed canvas will have more of the same and the sheet music to a Warren Zevon song.
The mural panel shown here will be high up on the left interior wall of Marley's Music store and the other will be high up on the right.
I had no definite idea of how this would come together when I started Tuesday morning but it began to take on a life of it's own and I got a wonderful natural high and could not sleep until four in the morning Wednesday.

Tile Mural, Thermae Christina, 117AD.

This Bathroom decoration was painted on 35 white glazed terracotta tiles 200 mm. square.
The paints used were firing enamels and gold and platinum.
The tiles were fired 4 times, a risky business but all the tiles survived and the completed picture, measuring 1400 x 1000 is fixed on the bathroom wall. Permanent art although the gold, being 24 carat, is a soft metal that shouldn't be cleaned with abrasives if possible.

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.

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 Child Artist's Dreams

My bed was a wire wove with a kapok mattress with a hollow made by my skinny young body curled up in the foetal position with my hands together, as in prayer, under my soft pillow.

The bedroom was a dark and dangerous place that in the night became all of space with looming shapes of planets and stars and stuff that stretched out into distances all around so far as to be too scary to imagine.
My bed was my spaceship and as long as I had the covers up and over my ears with my eyes shut and just the very tip of my nose sticking out I was safe, yeah, and warm. Being safe was a special feeling, delicious with danger because if any part of me bar the top of my head and the very tip of my nose were out of the bed covers then I was exposed to the unimaginable rushing extremities of endless space in every direction, dark, cold, vast vacuum and ominous dark planets here and there behind any of which could be lurking the Monsters...

There were three monsters any one of which could get me any time the bed covers slipped as sometimes happened and I had to be quick to cover up they came so fast! Like that ! one of them would be there by my bed! Woah! And I could sense them lurking behind dark shapes of planets or flying far off through space but always ready to swoop if my space ship opened the tiniest crack...
One was a ghost, big and blurry, one a ferocious huge eagle and the worst was a monster too horrible to picture but thick and lumpy like a giant without legs and powerfully strong in the worst possible way and they could all fly at lightening speed to get me!

So much for the dangers without, in the cold vastness all around but I lived safely within my warm bed space ship and in there I had all I could ever need to keep me happy forever!
Yes! in my space ship I had my supplies and plenty of them, a toaster and bread and butter and peanut butter and a knife to spread the butter and peanut butter on the toast and also big stacks of drawing pads and pencils and pencil sharpeners so I could draw anytime, anything I wanted to draw.
This was my life and my means and reward for living, every night in my warm bed in my cold bedroom and I would draw and draw and munch on toast and peanut butter traveling always through space and keeping myself safe till morning.