Biloela 2 day Workshop

Last weekend I headed up to central Qld to teach a 2 day workshop to Biloela visual arts group. After a train and 2 planes I arrived to find my suit case had not followed me. Luckuily Qantas were very helpful and sent it in a taxi the very next day.
We set up at the Redeemer primary school and the art room was great with metal benches and plenty of power outlets.
There were 11 students and all very enthusiastic encaustic beginners.

So two great days went so quickly and I got to see a bit of Biloela and enjoy the company of Maria Wiley and her family. We sat up late talking art and discovered we agreed on so much. The same types of work inspires us both. So I had a fab weekend and got paid for it isn't it a great job!

Encaustic ATC's

I have been making a series of encaustic atc's or artist trading cards. Using small canvas boards to work on, I have also used jumbo playing cards. Its great for experimenting and trying new ideas.
I have been playing around with orange solved papers,rusting papers,burning paper,bleeding tissue papers and all that kind of thing.Then combining that with some image transfer. layering colour and text as well.
The boards are gesso coated but as I am using lots of paper to cover that it seems to work out okay and they are only usually give aways so I dont worry too much about the archival qualities of them so much.

New workshops

In may and June I worked with Wollondily Arts group teaching 2 workshops. The first being my encaustic

beginners class followed by Image transfer worskhop.
They all came along with such great enthusiasm to learn the techniques and made some great work.

New work

I have been making a series of work called birdsong using encaustic,shellac and bird images with ancient script. In this one I also incorporated some saved teabag paper.
I have been collecting these and drying them out. I love the idea of pleasure twice round. Once as a lovely soothing drink which refreshes the artist and then next as part of the artwork itself.
Now I am on the hunt for coloured teabags.. what  about licorice and rosehip won't they be fun to use.

Workshops Doing Well

So I haven't written for a while but I have been so busy teaching and making that I just did not get the chance.
My workshops are going well and I am teaching at least once a month somewhere in Australia.
This upcoming weekend I am teaching Wollondilly Arts Group an image transfer with encaustic workshop.
Last month I did an encaustic beginners class for them and they were a great bunch of students. Here are some pics of the work they made.

They made some great work and everyone had a fun day, me included and my son Alex who came along to be my assistant.

The art abyss

Since the show three weeks ago I feel myself falling into the art abyss. I have been here before and if you have had an exhibition you will probably know what I am talking about.
I haven't been in the studio other than to tidy up and scrape wax off the floor. I am sort of lost as where to start now. I want to be inspired and find a new direction but i am just waiting for it to happen. Well I have been to see some exhibtions and did see some great work but I am not sure where I need to go in my work. I know it will all nut out in the end and I will be better for it but its kind of frustrating at the moment.
I can feel inklings of ideas but nothing solid as yet.  I went and saw this show last week at Dominick Mersch gallery in Waterloo ,Sydney

'Becoming Oceanic' Caroline Rannersberger

encausitc on cedar panels

'Becoming Cyclone' Caroline Rannersberger

encaustic on cedar panels

These were pretty inspiring pieces and unusual in that encaustic is not big here in Australia. She lives up  in Darwin.

I have a feeling I may need to work from my photographs that I take whilst away on holiday and am still trying to work out how to do that and make something interesting and textured.

Something using one of these maybe

  

I am not sure what I will do yet, but there must be a reason I take all these photographs of textures and rocks that I love. I almost can't believe they are made by nature they look so strange and interesting. I usually find something on every beach I go to that I want to photograph.

Also on my last holiday in febuary we had a couple of days of wild storms and the colours of the sky and sea were amazing. I would like to try and use these colours maybe

I really like the colours of the sky the water, the reflections in  the sand. All moody blues(good name for a band)and stormy greys and then those highlights of light yellows and oranges.

Now there's my inspiration!!!

Maybe my art abyssness is over!

The Show At The Watch House,Balmain

I recently had a weekend show a the Watch house gallery in Balmain with two other fellow artists. Dee Mc Millan and Judith Wilson. We were all fellow students at Hornsby a few years back and formed a really storng connection and friendship over our time together as art students. We have been throught many things together and given each other support and care through the good and the bad times. We have formed a close enough friendship that we can critique each others work and be honest about it. Our exhibition 'Connections' looked fantastic in this beautiful national trust building in gorgeous Balmain. A trendy and posh suburb of Sydney. Nice restaurants here, galleries shops with lovely things in them that we probably can't afford. You know those designer dress shops!
The Watch house was an old police station and lock up when Balmain was a mining town and there were pubs up and down the street. One of the officers lived here with his wife and 14 children, goodness knows where they all slept.

Anyway after a lot of work we got our work on the walls and it looked great, we had a fab opening night. and all sold some work, so it was pretty succesful. Here's what the rooms looked like.

All these rooms were cells at one point in the life of this building. the walls are beautiful sandstone. The original doors were still there too. Great big massive iron doors that were so thick there was no way you were getting out of there once you were in a cell.

We put this show together in 10 weeks adn the worrk all seemed to go together so well even though we hadn't planned it that way.

A selection of Dee's work, which are acrylic paintings and fabric and fibre pieces

A selectin of Judith Wilson's work which was alternative photography pieces and acrylic painting and dyed silk and  paper.

A selection of mo godbeer's(me) work. Encaustic on plywood and glass.

Its a bit hard to convey the atmosphere of the rooms and the building but it was a nice few days we had there and great to see all our work on the wall.