Lino printing as a starting point

Images from the residency studio. 

Working with lino... but breaking the rules in order to interpret the seed capsule cross-sections in a somewhat painterly way. 

Rushing off to an appointment I willpop back and add more details later.

Identifying species I collect is always interesting. The Cooper book on Rainforest fruits of Australia is a huge help.

another cross section...

Cairns Residency Week 1: Orientation

Living next to a Botanic Garden is a great pleasure, albeit temporarily! I only have to walk a few minutes to be here at the entrance of the Visitors Centre at the Gardens.

This board lights up at night ... 

The gate below leads into the Tanks Art Centre in the Gardens precinct... the exhibition will be on here.

Home for 4 weeks ...a comfy Qld-style house on stilts!

The back yard

All week Ive collected seeds... identifying them all will be a task though!

I've borrowed these interesting guides ( above left) that are on laminated fold out cards and make for concise reading!

I brought with me a bundle of drawings on A4 that are simple working drawings for inspiration. I like to have visual prompts around to feel the space is mine.

after 5 days the place is looking very lived in!

Seed collecting has been helped along by the fact that I gave a brief intro on my project to the Garden staff on Thursday... I get messages to say there are things waiting for me in their outdoor lunch room.

The conversations with staff allow one to feel quite at home... the fact everyone is so friendly is a huge plus! 

Today being Sunday I have not meetings and plan to spend a long day in the studio... week one has been so dense with meeting everyone and getting oriented to  the house, a new studio, the city of Cairns as well as the Gardens.

Huge thanks to Curator Chris Stannard, Gio and co. The only thing I am having to seriously adjust to are the Midges (tiny biting insects which leave nasty itches) and insects of all kinds. Note to self: apply sunscreen when going cycling into town! 

Open this Saturday, 8th September, 10am till late!

Hello...

I've been catching up after 3 days of the Open Studio event last weekend. I'm also OPENING THIS SATURDAY 8TH of SEPTEMBER as well as I have some visitors coming and want to work all day on paintings for Cairns.

I'll be there from 10am till nightfall... at 134 Latrobe Terrace, Paddington... My Studio is on the left of the Gallery toward the back ... down a few stairs. If you live around these parts... come along!

Very pleased to say my brother-in-law Robert took photos friday night for me after busy times getting ready for the Open Studio weekend. Thanks Roberto!

This is a little concertina book with a wonderful piece form Ben Okri's Epic Poem ' Mental Fight'

The Ben Okri text from Mental Fight above reads:

We are , more or less,
the makers of the future,
We create what time will freeze,
And a beautiful dream shared and realised
by a beautiful mind,
is one of the greatest gifts
we can make for our fellow beings.

NB Mental Fight: Okri's 1999 epic poem, Mental Fight, is also named for a quote from the poet William Blake's "And did those feet ...,"^[17] and critics have noted the close relationship between Blake and Okri's poetry.
Listen to an audio here.



The weekend event... three days of sun and cool spring breezes ... was exciting to set up ready for sharing with those who came by! Having painted solidly since late June there was much to show...especially new work heading to Cairns for Exhibition there in October.

Roz (do visit her gorgeous blog) came over on the day on Friday and made a splendid contribution... especially with curating the work. Being a makeshift space in terms of exhibiting it called for lateral thinking and aesthetic ingenuity.

Ive always loved arranging things, curating collections and personal artefacts, so it was a  new thing to hand over and to such capable hands I relished the opportunity to step back and see through another's eyes.

In fact the entire weekend was an wonderful chance to see through the eyes of others... every conversation takes one somewhere different and in this process one learns a lot. 

WIth 6 weeks till the opening of the Cairns Show I found it perfect timing indeed to discuss both the artwork and project in general. One painting that had been out of circulation whilst on loan gathered attention and in a spot with good lighting had me consider it all over again and wonder why I'd not painted more works like it.

Of course I must thank everyone who came along and took time  to engage with the work. The studio has been refreshed... a wonderful fresh breeze has come through taking old energy with it!

Online visitors are also to be thanked for greatly encouraging words.

My family were a great help... surprisingly my siblings were for once all in the sme city..so that was fun and a great support! Big thanks to Janna and Olivia!

Adept Display is a  business my Sydney-based brother Lindsay has been running for the past 6 years . I like that hanging systems make it far easier to create a feature wall of artwork of different shapes and sizes. My Brisbane-based brother Russell now installs the hanging systems here.

And if you need a framer ... Nobel Framing I can totally recommend if you are in this city. Accustomed to working with artists and Art Institutions Pete Nobel is a good problem solver... and story teller I might add!

Wrote this post several days ago now .... then ran out of steam before publishing it. I've actually since taken more photos at the studio but distractions abound... so much going on I'll have to get back to that later!

Cheerio,

S

Archival Quality Limited Edition Prints for Open Studio Weekend

With the weekend's event kicking off tomorrow night I am glad to say I came home at 10pm tonight... and am reasonably sure all will be in place by 5pm tomorrow. Coming down with a virus last week was probably a very good thing... forced me to stay home and during that time I made plans for this weekend and used strategy in place of endless exertion of energy. 

Today I picked up Limited Editions prints I'd ordered from original works. During the recent Journal course I conducted over a 5 week period I dug out texts I am fond of, including some by Ben Okri. These were incorporated into works on paper...and I had a request for prints last week so picked them up tonight.

The files for these images were so large I had to work at reducing the resolution a couple of times over.

Now its a little hard to read...the original print is amazing in its clarity.

The text is the final page of Ben Okri's stirring epic poem written for the New Millennium titled 'Mental Fight'.

A little about Ben Okri from British Council | Literature:

In his recent book, A Time for New Dreams (2011), Ben Okri describes poetry as ‘the great river of soul-murmurings that runs within humanity’, and ‘true literature’ as ‘the encounter of possibilities’ that ‘tears up the script of what we think humanity to be’. 

Such poetic metaphors and humane concerns indeed characterise the peculiar beauty of Okri’s writing. This can be read as blending the African oral storytelling tradition with Magic Realism. 

A long-time resident in London, Okri takes as his grand subject the post-colonial history of his ancestral Nigeria, conjuring up panoramas of souls, visions, dreams, and suffering humanity’s struggle against exploitation and corruption. The latter especially resonates throughout the fabulous trilogy of novels that began with The Famished Road (1991), his several collections of short stories, essays, and poetry volumes including the just-published Wild (2012). Other important subjects for Okri are the demands of art and politics, symbolised in rich flights of fancy, allied to Jonathan Swift-like satirical allegories.

To read the whole article click here.

The second artwork quotes a much-loved excerpt from Arcadia, a novel of Okri's from around 2004-5. I cant tell you how many times I have painted text from this chapter of the book.

If you are interested its quite straight-forward for me to take orders to print on demand and send inside Australia... I will have to work through the OS scenario before I make that offer.

Send a message if you wish to know more.

And if you live near me then do come over to the studio in the next few days and say hello!

cheerio,

x Sophie

A WEEK TILL THE OPEN STUDIO WEEKEND

This time last year I was working flat chat to get organised for the Research and Residency trip to the UK ... there were long lists of tasks to be getting through everyday... and definitely not much time for painting due to talks, events, serious fund-raising efforts and planning for the UK.

This year I am taking off again in September for a residency much closer to home...  there are definitely costs involved and fundraising efforts in place but most importantly there is a lot of painting happening whenever possible to be ready for the upcoming OPEN STUDIO EVENT the weekend after next...see below for dates... AUG 31, SEPT 1 & 2.

Rainforest Patterning : Seed-capsules ... cross-sections 90 cm sq, acrylic and ink on linen on canvas.

A recent work is this Rainforest seed-capsule cross-section painting which was a theme from 2010 which I wanted to explore further. A June trip to Cairns to check out details for the September Residency and familiarise myself with the Wet Tropics region meant I was able to collect pods to bring back and draw plus meet a number of interesting people at the Botanic Gardens and Tanks Art Centre where I'll be based as well as the Australian Tropical Herbarium.

Cairns journal

read the post about this work here.

On another tangent... I became connected to an important story in Regional Queensland through a friend working with

I signed on as a sponsor for this organisation for their Leadership Awards to be announced on September 6th. A logo was created by my friend Bev Ryan with an image provided that I use as my Facebook Page Logo ...so I was delighted to view it on the website article about the awards.

 a new Logo for my Studio

Awards will be made in three categories:

• Business: for women showing leadership in running or managing a commercial rural, regional or remote business. This includes agricultural businesses.
   
• Community: for women showing leadership in running or managing a community service or group in rural, regional or remote Queensland. Includes not-for-profit.
   
• Professional: for women showing leadership providing services in the employ of an organisation or government body in rural, regional or remote Queensland.

Working on the Homage to the Seed project over the past (almost) three years has illuminated so many factors affecting our Global Seed Heritage ... whether one looks at Habitat Biodiversity  or Agrobiodiversity. Women increasingly are becoming leaders in this demanding era.

Rural and remote communities face huge challenges everywhere... in Queensland drought, fires, floods and cyclones have all hit savagely in the past 5 years. Besides these natural disasters Mining is increasingly seeing Farmers have to stand up for their livelihoods. And that's for starters. Long aware of the role of women in rural communities from my own family background I am thrilled to be a sponsor and contributing artworks to the winners of these awards.

The awards will be announced at this Conference...

Meanwhile I will be in Paddington at this OPEN STUDIO EVENT planned for the beginning of spring.

Read more details on this at the previous post.

Now for a sneak preview of whats coming up in Cairns.... I'll post on this again closer to the time and it will be on my website too. Opening night is October 12th!

This is the poster for the exhibition.

I'm at home today fighting of some dreaded winter thing that has not set me back badly... fingers crossed I'll be right as rain in no time... certainly plenty going on around here.

Best to you all,

Sophie

ps do come along if you live in this part of the world! Or share with friends if they are local!