Melissa Meyer

Melissa Meyer, Paint It Black, 2009, Oil on Canvas,60x50ins.

This beautiful work by Melissa Meyer is currently on show at Lennon, Weinberg, inc. in New York. It is worth a visit to their website to see the rest of the exhibition. 

The Friday Report

As you will have seen in earlier posts this week has seen me move into the studio.
I had two blissful days of painting and have a new work well on the way. I think that the light is so good in the studio that I should be able to take some reasonable images when the work is finished.
It was also the week when all the things I have been planning for next year feel into place. My gallery in Melbourne has scheduled my 2010 exhibition for early May and  I have secured an exhibition in Sydney at Depot Gallery for late June. So thats the next six or seven months taken care of.
Yesterday I visited the world of another artist. Whitely, the garden of cook, gardener, writer and artist Jenny Ferguson was open for inspection to raise funds for the local hospital. I had read Jenny's books and really wanted to see her garden. The Ferguson's are obviously financially very secure (understatement!). It was like visiting a palazzo in Europe with many acres of gardens with magnificent vistas and beautiful trees, sculptures and gardens.
Here is the garden view from Jenny's studio which would happily accommodate a family and sits beside the beautiful stables which are in the building with the clock tower in the background.

I managed to peek through the window into the very classy studio where works for Jenny's next book Pound Dogs are being created. Three or four dog beds! Oh well, back to life in my one dog studio. Jenny has recently published 'A Year in my Garden' if you would like to see more of gardens.

PAPER installation.

PAPER was hung yesterday at KickArts Artspace was hung yesterday and this is one of the installation immages I have just received from the exhibition curator Samantha Creyton. I am very excited to have been included in this exhibition and I am very happy with the way Sam has chosen to hang my work.

On travelling

Susan Buret Ghetto. © 2008. Paper and Pins. Dimensions Variable.

Since 1 February this year when I broke my leg and couldn't negotiate the 21 steps to my studio I have been in limbo, not intent on arrival, a sometimes pleasant and sometimes not so pleasant state. I have spent time stranded in the house as I waited to be free of crutches, time in the US as artist in residence at Ragdale, time packing and storing my studio, then unpacking some of it and in the last few days waiting for a mail order shipment of gesso to arrive. Today, after a 60km round trip to pick up some gesso I fell that I have arrived. I have spent the last few hours in the studio applying gesso to some larger canvases so that I can make some new works. 

I feel calm and empty which is the place I like to work from.

On a more pragmatic note it is a warm dry day so the gesso is drying quickly.  

PAPER opens 14 November at KickArts Contemporary Arts

PAPER an exhibition featuring six contemporary artists creating works with paper is on show at KickArts Contemporary Arts in Cairns, North Queensland between 14 November 2009 and 12 February 2010.
Four of my works are included in the exhibition so, if you are in Cairns, I would like to extend a warm invitation to visit the exhibition.

Sources of Pleasure

I enjoy hearing Roni Horn talk about her work. I haven't seen much of her work in galleries but I love her books and those about her art. When I watched the video below I was reminded of the description of the river in Herman Hesse's Siddhartha
"the river flowed and flowed, flowed ever onward, and yet was always there, was always the same yet every moment new. ..... the river is everywhere at once......everywhere at the same time" *
I first read the book in my early 20s and I've carried the words with me all my life often making work about these ideas.

A few mornings ago I was reading Gay Bilson's book Plenty when I found this exquisite description of a nest
"Another nest ('from my family's home:N'), is the same size as the first, but it's sides are higher and it is more cup shaped. It still sits in the fork of the small branch that held it in the tree. If I tried to take the nest from the branch, it would probable fall apart. The foundation (but once again the word is wrong, suggesting concreteness and solidity) is of dried grass. A large piece of faded wrapping tape is caught on one side, along with some now-brittle bubble-wrap: the presence of this unfitting human debris in nests always makes me smile. The crowning glory is a garland of leaves, built in a space made by the point where five smaller branches grew and which still retain foliage. Because of this, the nest is prettily crowned with this garland, still green although dulled, as if some bird saw that grass cup wanted for decoration and made play on classical Greek figures or Hedda Gabler." **
* Hesse,H., Siddhartha. Shambala.2002. excerpts from chapter 9.
** Bilson, Gay, Plenty. Digressions on Food. Penguin Lantern. 2004.

Roni Horn: Water