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REVOLUTION, THE EASEL PAINTING, THE POWER
The role of art and artists has altered over time. The ancient world is full of monuments to power, records of the doings of civilisations and individuals, and examples of the transmission and perpetuation of culture
FEAR OF THE DARK…AND THE LIGHT
For a week I’ve manned an exhibition of my work...
MaADNESS – THE NECESSARY INGREDIENT FOR SUCCESS
There is an assumption that you have to be mad to want to an artist and if you succeed then the evidence of madness is obvious.
Ruskin, artistic virtue and a just society
There is no doubt that the art of the last century or so has reflected massive social change and that both the technology used to create art and the subject matter would be unrecognisable to Ruskin.
THE CULT OF THE NEW AND THE OBSESSION WITH NOVELTY
Much has been written about the idea of originality in art but in the end just what does ‘originality’ mean? Before the 20th century it wasn’t a term much considered. Artist studios were places where apprentices went to learn from the master and with the advent of Art Schools, nothing much changed. The cult of originality is a 20th century obsession and yet it ignores or neglects that much great art was produced within the western tradition using traditional techniques.
Considerations of Proustian genius
The narrator hypothesises that all artists owe allegiance to a moral contract
The Proustian Process
The equivalent of Proust’s cahiers are my note and sketchbooks. I record, interpret and examine continually both as a painter and a writer.
Exhibition of drawings at Port Adelaide
HOW WILL WE DEFINE THIS ERA?
Historically we can look back over the last century and see how art reflected the time in which it was made.
IS IT MY MEMORY OR ONE THAT I APPROPRIATED?
Memory is defined in the dictionary as ‘the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, or of recalling or recognising previous experiences’. How that process works is still a mystery as is why some impressions are registered and retained and others are not. Recollection is another matter. Having something ‘on the tip of your tongue’ is a common phenomenon. What eventually brings it to mind? Synaptic association?
ART, THE MEASURE OF CIVILISATION
The 80s is forever condemned to being defined by the gaudy concoctions of Jeff Koons and the 90s by a shark in formaldehyde and the soulless reconstructed planes of Keiffer. Even now some two decades later, it seems as though art and artists were raking over the corpse of civilisation rather than defining it.
IS IT IGNORANCE OR JUST PLAIN STUPIDITY?
I hear people refer to work as abstract all the time. Sometimes it’s simply a lack of understanding and sometimes it’s a derogatory term suggesting that any work that doesn’t imitate nature in all its detail, is not art.