Pop Art Mural

Another weekend spent in the office's of Yellow painting large Pop Art onto a wall.

Dog Painting

 The dog finished before distressing. I attacked it with sandpaper and scrapers which was fun. This is a brand and had to be done just so and in a tight time frame. It was great to be back on a building site with all the tradesmen and their cheerful energy and also great to have a visit to Wellington where I grew up and where this is located in the heart of the city.

 Day one. Drawing up the puppy 
Below, the finished puppy, distressed and aged and ready to sell shoes and finished a day ahead of schedule..Aren't we good wee doggies?

Music Mural, the left hand panel

Music Mural, the right hand panel

Marley's Mural, the continuing story Part 8: one half of the mural is readied for exhibiting at the Waikino Spring Art Exhibition

Live music with Marley's mural as a backdrop

Installed in the Waikino hall just a few hours before the opening night

Nearly ready to go to the exhibition, the second mural panel is on the table awaiting it's turn...

Janice helps me finish the painting, we worked day and night for a couple of days to prepare the mural for exhibiting at a local Art Exhibition prior to the mural being installed in Marley's marvelous main street music shop...

Painting on Glass, or, Commercial Art is a fishy business

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.

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.