Span

                                         Track 2012, acrylic on canvas 50x50cm

This painting is currently in transit on its way to Stockroom in Kyneton, Victoria.  I have entered it  in a competition titled Span.  Span is a group exhibition exploring connection, distance, and the passage of time.  The painting is of the the dirt tracks on the sand beds around the pony club near Pretty Pool.

To Succeed or not to Succeed

Recently I was asked to post a blog on a Facebook site called Storylane.  It has been set up with the idea of bringing together people who blog about their lives - in some form or another.  The following question was proposed to me - a standard for anyone who has joined.  When blogging you can either choose to answer one of many proposed questions or write your own account.  When I woke up this morning I didn't really feel like cleaning the bathroom, so I sat down and typed this instead.

“What does it feel like to have started your own company?  How do you succeed?”

To Succeed or not to Succeed

An interesting topic, given that I have never really started my own company.  Yet this is a topic I have given plenty of thought to.  Recently I have come to think of myself more as a not for profit organisation, in that I no longer sell a product, rather I give it away.

I am an artist, although even calling myself that is something I often debate.  Surely to be an artist you need talent and skill and recognition and sales?  I think my last five tax returns I have posted a $0 income.  I am at the point where every time I pick up a paintbrush it is actually costing me money.  When I started painting and studying art at university it was with the carefree abandon that you have when you are young and naive.  My stretches (the wooden bars you stretch the canvas over) were hand made and never square (right angle anyone?) and I used to score the canvas and paint over it, making the pigment seep through to the other side (which in time will disintegrate the canvas, a conservators nightmare).  And they sold.

Twenty years later I paint on linen (when I can afford it) stretched over professionally made stretches and apply paint with labored precision.  Yet have no gallery representation and I have not sold a painting in five years.  Actually, that is not true.  I did sell a painting at a solo exhibition I had at a gallery in Sydney.  Unfortunately I was unaware that the gallery director did not pay her artists and months after my show she closed her gallery and vanished without paying the thousands of dollars she owed to her creatives.  She also effectively stole one of my paintings and when she eventually returned the remaining paintings, two were damaged beyond repair (wooden stretcher bars smashed).  But I digress; this is a story about success.

I must say at times it is difficult to understand why I continue.  I think it is the same reason as why I began.  I love painting.  Regardless of whether people/ galleries like it or not, I think it is something that is intrinsic to my being.  I have a belief that to succeed as an artist you need to succeed at networking.  In my opinion the art world is all about the Who and not the What.  Frankly, I am not a team player.  I don't particularly like the 'scene' and I prefer the corner to the spotlight.  While at times it is frustrating and annoying that I don't sell, it is also my rationale that I don't spend the hours applying myself to the business models.  In fact, when it comes to making money, there are a great many things I don't do.  What I do is paint.

And success?  Well how do you measure success anyway?  Profit margins and bottom lines or degrees happiness and personal achievements?  So do I consider myself successful?  Well, no.  Would I consider myself more successful if I sold paintings in a gallery?  That is difficult to answer because I also wonder whether I would succumb to the pressure of producing paintings that sell?  I am not a company I am self-employed and as such I have no one to answer to but myself.  As for how do you succeed, I don't think I can answer that, but my suggestion would be persistence.  Persistence, resilience and a bloody thick skin.

Arid Beauty

Spinifex

Bougainvillea

Port

Well dear followers, it may amuse you to know that I have entered a photographic competition.  Arid Beauty, organised by Care for Hedland Environmental Association and The Water Corporation is a competition held in association with National Water Week.  The above are my entries for the categories - in descending order Arid Landscapes, Flora and Fauna and Conserving and Valuing Water in an Arid Environment.  The photos were enlarged to somewhere around A4 size - being an expert in photography I am overly familiar with the size of paper and choose to use laymen terms for those of you less familiar.  They were then mounted onto foam core and framed with mount card.

These are the descriptions I gave for each entry:

Spinifex:  The hardy and resilient spinifex reflects the harsh environment it lives in, yet its presence in the landscape can also reflect something of beauty.

Bougainvillea:  Although essentially a weed, and a thorny one at that, the colour and intensity of the bougainvillea flower is one that always dominates its surroundings.

Port: The Indian Ocean and the shipping industry is the life-blood of Port Hedland, connecting it to Asia and ultimately the world.   It also nurtures the life of the turtles, whales and sharks that migrate through these waters.

The photos are to be displayed at the newly re-opened Wanangkura Centre in South Hedland from 22 - 26 of October and the finalists will be displayed at the West End Markets on Saturday 27 October where the winners will be announced.  Given the amount of talented photographers in the area I really don't expect to be a finalist, but the photographs will more than act as a reminder of my 5am walks and our time living in the Pilbara.

This is a link to some of the other entries http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/337433573017091/

Twenty by Twenty

Dawn 20x20cm acrylic on canvas

Sunrise 20x20cm acrylic on canvas

Night Lights 20x20cm acrylic on canvas

These paintings were inspired by my morning walks.  Yes I am one of those crazy people that wake up at 5am to go walking every morning.  I enjoy it.  I love the cool air and the quiet.  But I especially love watching the sky change from an inky black to the pastels of the pre-dawn.

Curiously enough, these paintings began with the intention of being aerial landscapes.  They are the result of several thought patterns that connected one afternoon.  After attending a judges walk through of the Hedland Art Awards, I realised that a number of indigenous artworks were created by painting bright colours on a black background.  In my work I always paint on white, and sometimes even paint an extra three coats of white on a pre-primed surface.  

I had also been inspired by an aerial painting of tyre tracks in the desert which is both lively and lucid.  It reminded me of the Landgate website I found last year when I was researching maps of Port Hedland.  I had intended combining the two to create a painting from the computer, but I also had the images in my mind of my morning walks.  I guess they won.  What I find kind of ironic is that I had painted these images fourteen years earlier, horizon lines, seascapes, sunrises.

I am yet to return to the computer to paint, and who knows, maybe I won't.  I guess I will wait for the inspiration to hit me again.

https://www.landgate.wa.gov.au/bmvf/app/mapviewer/#  Zoom in over the flood plains for a bit of excitement.

Also, visit my photo album on Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/siobhan.kelley72?ref=tn_tnmn

Pilbara plein air

Salt Pile 20x25cm, acrylic on canvas board

Dry Lake Bed 15x20cm, acrylic on canvas board

palette

It's a funny thing.  When you think of the pilbara you think red dirt, and lots of it.  But this morning I sat down along the roadside to paint the really big pile of salt (read enormous) from across the dusty flats where Pretty Pool Creek winds its way inland.  Although I drive passed there almost everyday, it only occurred to me this morning when I sat down to paint, how green it is.  Not only that, the earth is not red.  Not in the dry river flats.  They are sandy.  Raw sienna mixed with naples yellow.

The other funny thing that happened to me today is two people I know saw me painting.  This is a first time event because I usually only painting 'plein air' when I am on holidays.  But I promised a friend a painting of the pilbara and I have been wanting to paint Port Hedland since I have been here, I have just always found an excuse not too - too hot, too many flies, too windy, no one to look after Charlie... (Ella is at school for all of you who were about to call the Department of Human Services).  

The final funny is that after approximately an hour and a half in the sun and wind, I had enough.  I packed up, disappointed with two really lousy paintings wondering if this is the point where I just give up.  At home I pulled out the paintings and the palette to fix a little spot that was annoying me and found myself spending another hour in the kitchen repainting.  The skies were not right on either of them - I know, how hard can it be to paint a blue sky?  You'd be surprised.  I also retouched the foreground on both paintings and repainted the salt pile, which was a insipid white, to a bolder (slightly less insipid) white.

I'm not sure what I am going to do with these paintings.  I have considered doing many and trying to sell them at the local craft market.  Or maybe I will keep them as a reminder of my time in Port Hedland.  The more I look at them the less I like them, but that is often the way it goes.

Gradient Wind Analysis: Heidi

Gradient Wind Analysis: Heidi 120x120cm acrylic on canvas 2012

This my entry for the 2012 Hedland Art Awards.  It is a wind map of Tropical Cyclone Heidi that crossed the coast of Port Hedland in the early hours of January 12, 2012.  My first ever cyclone, and a direct hit.  Thankfully it was only a category 2.  Two months later Tropical Cyclone Lua (seriously, who is responsible for naming these cyclones?  They are cyclones after all, not puppy dogs) devastated Pardoo, some 150km north east of Port Hedland.  It was a category 4.  I remember seeing footage taken by the owners of the road house.  The rain was coming in vertical, forcing it's way through every gap and crack it could find.  Light fittings became water features, bowsers were blown over, as in out of the ground.  Watching it on television was terrifying.  Although there was something of a let down in the community that it missed us altogether - we went to red alert.  The school closed, the shops closed, the port closed.  It is actually illegal to be out of your house on red alert.  Then to have nothing happen (I actually think it's windier today than it was on March 17), was sort of disappointing, but after seeing that footage I was so grateful.  I am convinced our 'house' (fibro shack with gaping holes in both floors and walls) would have resembled a live in swimming pool. 

Heidi was frightening because of the unknown.  It went from a category 1 to a category 2 and tracked from 200km south west of Port Hedland to a direct hit.  I learned of our upgrade from blue alert to yellow alert from the deli staff at Woolies.  Being my first cyclone I was not yet familiar with the terminology or their meaning.  By early afternoon we were on red.  It was windy.  By night the wind had intensified.  We went to bed at 11pm and lay awake listening to the wind.  I kept thinking 'it can't blow any harder', and then it would ramp it up a little more.  It was dark, it was raining, there was nothing to see, yet I had to look out of the window.  The palm trees were bent forward.  There was no gusty, there was just relentless howling wind.  The eye of the storm passed through around 5am, by which time I had finally gone to sleep.  That day was spent in a daze of sleeplessness.  The all clear was given around lunch time.  We had minimal damage.  A lot of leaf litter and puddles, and the back fence which came awry (and six months later is yet to be fixed.  I may have mentioned this in a previous blog).  

So I am grateful my first cyclone was not a category 4 and I eagerly anticipate the opening of the Hedland Art Awards.

shadows and sun

Beacon, Point Samson.  Acrylic on canvas 12x18cm.

I painted this while on a weekend retreat at Point Samson at the start of the month.  I painted without a palette because I had thoughtlessly left it at home.  It put me in a mild panic when I realised what I had done, until I decided to embrace the freedom of being paletteless and paint on regardless.  So I applied paint directly to the canvas - in sparing amounts so as not to overwhelm the tiny canvas, and mixed paint wet on wet and in the tops of lids.  Do you know I surprised myself.  The white at the horizon line glows, and the graduation of colour through the water is seemingly seamless.  I also did a small pen sketch of the beacon before I painted it, which I will try to include an image of.

Can I just say how wonderful it was to walk away from everything for an hour or more and listen to...other peoples children, the silence, the sounds of the beach.  how wonderful it was to sit and think about nothing more than how to apply paint to canvas in order to resemble something of what I could see before me.  Selfish and self indulgent and wonderful.  I started 'plein air' painting when I returned to university, and I hated it.  My canvases were too large for what I was trying to achieve and usually took between 6-8hours.  Obviously within that time planets revolve and shadows move, so what you begin painting in the morning would often no longer be there by the afternoon.

That exercise did make me pay more attention to colour and shape and shadows.  A heightened awareness of my surrounding environment you might say.  I remember catching the train to uni one morning.  After a week of gloomy Melbourne winter skies a sliver of sun appeared.  "Oh, wow, look at that shadow.  Oh-my-God it's a shadow, Oh-my-God the sun!"  But I noticed the shadow first.  Now I paint on postcard size canvases that I can hold in one hand.  They take roughly an hour, which is long enough to sit and focus on one aspect of the landscape without loosing interest or shadows.  And I love it.  I am hoping to do some more 'plein air' paintings before I leave Port Hedland, but it is my desire to return to the Pilbara without children or husband and spend a week in the desert painting...sigh.

Clothes line in bloom

This is real, it is not an art installation, although I wish it were.  I had a fantasy once, a long time ago when I had my very own Hills Hoist in the back yard, of creating a maze by pegging long plastic sheets to the clothes line.  I wanted to enter in to a sculpture prize - no idea which one, which ever one would accept me no doubt.  I had another art fantasy of covering an entire room in bubble wrap, a sort of interactive art work if you like where the audience were encouraged to pop all the bubbles.  Extra point for the ones on the ceiling - some analytical thinking required there.

But the above image is real.  It is in fact our back neighbours yard (and flowering clothes line).  I'm sure she would be quite horrified if she knew I had taken photos of her clothes line and posted them on the internet.  There is a man coming to slash and burn and sculpt the terrain in to something that looks less like an art installation and more like a suburban desert garden.  (I hope you all noted the lush green and lively looking vegetation that dominates this suburban desert garden.  Not all red dust.)

The reason I have access to my neighbours clothes line is because our back fence partially blew down during our first introduction to a bit of wind in the Pilbara. cyclone Heidi.  The reason the fence remains an invisible barrier is due to the quote to repair it.  At $17 000 (no that is not a typo) neither side of the fence are particularly thrilled to spending that much money on a fence, and considering neither party live in their Pilbara mansions, neither party are concerned about fence that they won't have the pleasure of enjoying.  Meanwhile, we have made friends with our neighbour, whom we otherwise would not really know.

Now to the art.  There has been a bit going on since my last post.  I have been in contact with the Courthouse Gallery regarding the completed 'Pretty Pool Creek'.  Excitingly they are going to hang the paintings for their next exhibition opening in late June.  I have also started a painting for the Hedland Art Awards, which I have titled 'Gradient Wind Analysis, Heidi'.  It's a weather map of the wind the day after cyclone Heidi.  I wasn't clever enough to think about printing out weather maps of cyclone Heidi the day of the cyclone, although I did regular print outs of the forecast tracking maps of the cyclone as it approached the coast.  However, there was something about the wind gradient map that I found more engaging than all of the tracking maps.  I will post a work in progress in my next post.  In the mean time, enjoy the blooming clothes line.

I just remembered another fabulous work of clothes line art.  I'm not sure if I can copy the image without permission, so I will include the link.  Please enjoy.

http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/work/395.1993.a-c/

Holidays

Flinders 12.7x17.8cm acrylic on canvas board

Approaching Storm, Franklin Road 12.7x17.8cm acrylic on canvas board

Sphinx Rock 12.7x17.8cm acrylic on canvas board

Holidays...ahhh, remember them?  We have just returned from one.  Oddly enough, we went 'home' for our holiday - is that an oxymoron?  It was delightful to be able to go outside again without breaking into a sweat just standing still.  In fact we relished the sweet fresh air as the doors parted at Melbourne Airport (that definately has to be an oxymoron).  Our driver apologised for the heat of the car, left sitting in the sun, while we loaded our bags and strapped the children in.

"Oh no, this is not hot", although I did notice a trickle of sweat running from his temple as he drove us away.  "Oh," I thought "Maybe it is hot".

I think I managed to achieve most things on my holiday wish-list.  Shopping: check, facial: check, painting on a beach without children: two out of three.  Can you guess which ones?  The day I painted 'Approaching Storm, Franklin Road' was hot.  So hot in fact that my paint was drying in the palette before I could put it on the board.  It was hot, I was tired, I had two children and a husband to keep an eye on, and the storm was approaching, although didn't reach us for several hours after the painting.  Actually, it looks nothing like an approaching storm.  It looks like a calm, still day.  After I had finished and was in the process of packing to leave my daughter saw it and cried,

"Mummy, that's beautiful"

"It's a bit of a mess actually"

"No, it's really beautiful"

"Thank you"

I can't argue with a five year old, and I might as well take the compliment I thought, although I still believe it is a terrible painting.

So we have returned 'home' to the heat, although it is cooler at night and in the mornings, and my enthusiasm for painting has waned.  Remember the Pretty Pool Creek painting destined for the gallery, only several weeks away from completion?  Nothing.  I feel tired just looking at it.  I am guessing it will return, that spark, but for now painting is a chore. (That absolutely is an oxymoron).

Pretty Pool Creek

Pretty Pool Creek 2012, acrylic on canvas.  Each panel measures 41x41cm.

This is a sneak preview of my most recent painting destined for the walls of The Courthouse Gallery gift shop.  It is still weeks from completion, and although I continue to measure each line to the millimetre, I have relaxed a little.  Some of the purple outlines are less than perfect, but there are so many of them that I am prepared to let them slide.  What am I talking about?  There are many small lines covering the canvases and yet I am obsessively trying to paint each one completely and perfectly straight, which is difficult given they are only 3mm wide.  Recently I have been painting until I have pain in my hand and shoulder and obliques while meticulously painting each one of those little (expletive) lines straight.  Oh the joy of painting.  

On the up side, my husband finally conceded that he liked the painting (all three of them - it's called a tryptic).  I also invited a friend over for water, muffins (it was 40C and hot beverages were just out of the question) and painting critique.  She also sided with the affirmative.  

"Why don't you like them?"

"Because I have been looking at them for so long I have become blind to them."

"Just finish them and send them to the gallery."

"Oh I will.  They only need a few more weeks and then they'll be finished."

"What?"

So then I preceded to do what I was once taught to never do, show all the faults.  

"Look at this line here, and this bit here..."

"What?"

"I couldn't possibly sign my name and ask people for money for a painting that looked like that."

So I guess it's back to the table and easel for a couple more weeks of side numbing pain.  

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I haven't asked the octopus (the one who resides under my easel in the painting corner) his opinion yet.  I feel he is going to be a tough critic and refuse to seek his advice until I am satisfied this painting is complete.  

Studio Corner

These are two images of my palatial studio/ toy box, where I try to spend as much time as I can painting.  The images on the wall and easel are of Pretty Pool Creek and are destined for the Courthouse Gallery gift shop, which I view as a practical solution to having paintings for sale in the gallery without the stress of painting for a show.  This way I can also gauge feed back, which I am eager for as so far the only people to have seen this painting have been my family and unfortunately their feed back has been less than helpful.  

Conversation with five year old daughter:

I like the one that says 'Creek'

It's one painting

Yeah, the one on the end

No, it's one painting.  It's three panels that make one painting, it's called a triptych

Well, I like the one on the end

Conversation with husband:

What do you think?

Which one don't you like?

It's one painting, three panels, one painting it's called a triptych, what do you think?

Why don't you just keep going, or start another painting and then see what you think.

ARGH!  Sometimes I miss the interaction of other artists in a communal studio space.  Sometimes I yearn for a conversation about line and colour and composition and application.  Sometimes I would just like a simple answer to the question, 'What do you think?'

Anyway, I believe I have reached a resolution of the painting (all three of them).  I will post an image of the completed work before it hangs on the walls of the Courthouse Gallery.