Still life with wattles

Wattles are in season and I was very taken by their yellow powdery beauty. For weeks I drove around with secuteurs in the car looking for an opportunity to snip some off, preferably from public property. Finally succeeded in sneaking these on a dark rainy night (location best not disclosed!).


Taking advice from Paul and Sarah, I plonked the lot on the studio floor for a more interesting composition. And attempted to follow Paul's colorful style by placing the mandarins in a teal blue bowl to make the colours sing.

Wild landscape workshop

On Saturday I attended an enjoyable workshop where Art Est's funny art tutor and raconteur Paul McCarthy regaled us with stories and showered one and all with good natured insults. Paul tells us that he has been painting for 30 years which seems incredible for a 45 year old. His work is wonderfully loose and gestural. He is a colorist and will put the most brilliant teal or magenta on with effects that I can only envy.

Paul's style is relaxed and he works pastels into the dried painted paper to give it highlights and to emphasize lines. Here is an attempt I made of a scene down the Illawarra.

Great isn't it? It only took me 2 hours. So I had another go. This time I got into trouble straight away and had to be rescued. This painting is definitely more like Paul's style. It is abstract and colourful.


I don't think I've quite mastered the colours but the loose gestural way he works is rubbing off. I'm quite inspired to paint a few more pieces now that I've restarted. Have to remember a few tips: 1. Line and colour interruptus. Boring to have large areas of one colour or a straight line 2. Work the whole painting at once : do not focus on a small area 3. It's ok to have strange colours so long the tone is right.

Illawarra landscape

During the school holidays I took my daughter down to Stanwell Park where we stayed at a lovely house with views of the bush and escarpment. We took our sketch pads and charcoals.


I haven't done sketching for quite a while which makes it a nice change. We also visited the Wollongong Art Gallery where a series of gouache and ink paintings were on display. The resident artist Maree Faulkner has a lovely whimsical style.

Ethel Carrick and E Phillips Fox

Over the weekend we made an excursion to Brisbane to see the exhibition Art, Love and Life featuring the works of Australian artists Ethel Carrick and E Phillips Fox. Carrick and Fox were married around the turn of the last century and went to Europe to paint. Both are fabulous painters of quite different styles.

Fox painstakingly captures the effects of light brilliantly and preferred subjects of the leisured upper classes whilst Carrick paints markets and beaches plein air. Carrick's style is much more gestural and somewhat under developed but full of live. Towards the end of their lives together their subjects converged although their styles did not change.

What impressed me even more than the artworks was the Queensland Art Gallery's iPhone app which replaced audio tours. Selected works have videos available and QAG even provides free wifi to enable visitors to download videos. Well done QAG! And may this blaze the trail for the Art Gallery NSW and National Art Gallery to follow.