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.

More organic forms

My studio mate Jo lent me this great book by Clayton Ball on building ceramics minus the wheel. It was written in the 1960's which makes it over 40 years old. The aesthetics of those days were quite different: texture was big and chunky organic forms were in. Quite a contrast to the more delicate and symmetrical forms usually made of porcelain and thrown on a wheel.

I love both types of ceramics but without a wheel, Ball's wonderfully gutsy forms certainly captured my imagination. If something was going to be hand-made, it would never be symmetrical so why even try? Embracing the quirks of hand made objects and exaggerating these imperfections in fact, lent the end product an undeniable charm.

As an experiment, I built this vase? sculpture? using newspaper as the stuffing following Ball's instructions faithfully. When texturing the clay, I first used a banksia with it's wonderful curves and indents. However the imprint looked too much like pubic hair and when it got too close to the leg, it all looked too much like male genitalia for comfort!

My hubby thinks it looks like Shrek and Doreen said "Fiona? Is that you? Have you grown an extra ear?"

More gumnut inspired ceramics

Here is a pix of my pot with flower frog lid. It is very idiosyncratic and inspired by mushrooms and lunar craters. This specimen is not yet bisque fired.


I made a smaller frog which I won't make a pot for. Too hard...


Also made another pot that has gumnuts on top. However the lid won't be a frog as it's very difficult to get the holes through the stem to be large enough to fit flowers through.


I plan to glaze the nuts a bright green with the inside a dark burgundy. The pot itself I think will be a celadon green and it's inside burgundy.

Gum nuts inspiration

A few weeks ago, I noticed that the flowering gums are in bloom and looking great. But with the recent rain and gales they have been blown away leaving the sculptural forms of their nuts behind. A walk around the neighborhood (secateur in hand) lent me the opportunity of collecting and examining a number of different gumnuts.


Aren't they beautiful? I am using these as inspiration for my pottery. Although not posted too often here, I've been busy thinking about and making clay models and pots. There is considerable time lag with ceramics as there is a need to bisque fire and then glaze before a second firing. Also all that waiting in between to gather sufficient numbers to fire. However I shall take some photos of works in progress next opportunity and post it here.

A Commission

Those of you who follow my blog will know of the avenue of autumn leaves http://mengwoo.blogspot.com/2010/06/plane-trees-in-autumn.html that I painted last year. Whilst at our house, my brother-in-law Jeff and his wife Toom admired the painting but I had no idea they were interested in purchasing it. The painting was exhibited last year and they were just about to purchase it a few minutes into the opening, when a red dot was placed next to it. "What does that mean?" Toom asked the gallery owner. "That means that it's been sold!" he explained.


Having missed out, Jeff decided to commission me to paint another just like it. Now, a commission is a commission, right? Artists can't afford to turn these away, can they? Yet, my personality is such that doing anything once is fine (there's the bits about trying something new, finding something different to explore and improve on) but painting the same subject twice? I fobbed them off with the line that I've to have autumn trees before I can paint them.... which gave me another 6 months to think about it. Well, autumn was definitely here in Sydney. In fact, the wind has blown all the leaves off now as officially, we are in winter. So I've run out of time, and had to knuckle down and produce! Thankfully, it is easier the second time around. I plan to give the painting to Jeff as a present for his next birthday. He tells me he has a space awaiting (6 months of a blank wall..... I do feel a bit sorry and hope this will be an adequate compensation).

Underwater scene

On vacation in Redang Island off the east coast of Peninsula Malaysia we enjoyed snorkeling in the clear waters. There were abundant fish life and in some places numerous reefs. My 7 year old is an accomplished swimmer and skin diver. Here is a painting I completed of her joyously exploring the ocean.


It took me 4 weeks to deal with all the jobs domestic and workplace after my holiday. Only now can I get back into painting and sculpting and all things creative.