Creative Thinking and the Inner Artist

I can still find it a challenge to write a media statement especially a personal one I want to have published relating to an exhibition. I discovered a long time ago that if you write an interesting informative article, and offer to be available for, or can supply a photograph, your words will often get published in whole. Journalists are busy people so if you make their job easier, all the better. It does need to be written well and not be ambiguous, so have a trusted friend or two check the article.

For a media release I like to use the Who, What, How and What IF formula I began to use a while back. WHO – is the article focused on and WHO is it trying to reach?. WHAT important message it is conveying? This can include statistics but add a sense of mystery ‘ it comes as no surprise to find there is a hidden layer within her work’ and be a little poetic, such as.. a recent collector said ‘ there is a richness, a diversity, a vibrant strength at the core of this work ’ WHAT can include other important things related to the person or event. Make it enjoyable to read so they will want to be involved.

HOW can the reader go to this event is next in the article , and what other important alternatives are there that they might find interesting. WHAT IF is for the alternatives, if they can’t make the opening event for instance,  and want to see more online. Don’t forget to finish with times, dates , addresses and telephone contact. Make sure to add your address and phone number at the very top in case a journalist wants to contact you. If you include a photograph please make sure it is a good clear image, at resolution which could to be used for different effects.

Meanwhile,if you happen to be in the Ipswich Region in Queensland in the next month, [ this is not part of my  media release blog story by the way, just some relevant information ] I have a diverse selection of my artwork and books being featured in an interestingly  unique gallery space in the old East Street church and antique precinct until the 26th February. Along with paintings will be some of my photographic works that have been developed through a hands-on artist lift process. The gallery name  ‘Naked Arts’ stands for art at the core I am told.. sorry, in case you are wondering, the focus is my wilderness landscape paintings.

The exhibition will run from 21^st Jan – 26^th February and you can enjoy refreshments and have a book signed at the gallery on Saturday 28^th January. Naked Arts Gallery and Studio is located at 86 East Street, Ipswich and open 10am to 4pm. [Closed Tuesday and Wednesday ] Contact Tom on 0418 150 705. See the  Video of us hanging the show.

The images below are examples of the digital, artist hand lift limited edition prints which are in the Ipswich exhibition.  All articles and images on this website Copyright Lyne Marshall 2012

Ghost Gums, digital hand lift

Hooked on You

The hiatus between Christmas and New Year is a great time to pause and reflect on the past year and also on our dreams and aspirations for 2012.  I was encouraged to put my New Years resolutions into writing by one of our local papers, and it was an interesting exercise. Because we live in such unpredictable times, with so many crazy decisions being made by those in power, I wanted to say a lot more, but in only a few paragraphs it wasn’t possible. Personally I would like use 2012 to get back to basics and work fruitfully with a lot more fresh ideas.  Having just come back from a few days at the Woodford Folk Festival  I am even more adamant that having a ferocious curiosity for life, and a defined purpose for living, to create a better world through art, is the only way to advance.

I witnessed history in the making in the performances of some of the talented young musicians like Joe Robinson, who won Australia‘s Got Talent in 2008 at the age of 16.  He hasn’t wasted a single day since, living in Nashville to play with the greats. His guitar playing and singing were indescribably beautiful, even the frenzied electric guitar solo at the end of the show. I heard veteran and distinguished performers talk, such as singer songwriter, artist, actor and academy award winner Buffy St Marie, who has made a difference to the way we think about the indigenous peoples of the world.  She said she didn’t want to follow the crowd but do her own thing and didn’t think she would make it in her career because at times she stepped way outside what was expected in her folk genre. It was only after some of her love songs were recorded by the greats in the industry that she stepped up to ownership of them.

In the light of all this wisdom my first resolution for 2012 is to see everyday as a gift and not waste a single one so I hope to be more forgiving and generous and also finish a third art book that’s been incubating. My second is to get my physical body in shape: be fitter, eat better, loose a little weight and walk more to explore nature. My third resolution is to crack wide open the ideas, research, and techniques I have been exploring to reintroduce printmaking processes using my love of photographing wild places. I am searching for the right way to display these prints alongside my painting to extend what I already do. I have decided to start our small and let it grow.

How will all this make a difference to the world, well I don’t know at this stage. However I have a joy of sharing, and giving inspiration to others and if we all share random acts of kindness and assist one other person in need in 2012, we will have made a difference. To the lovely young woman who assisted me across the muddy patch I encountered outside the Bizarre tent at Woodford, you made a difference. It was not that I would have suffered greatly without your help, it was just because you wanted to help and did, that gave me such pleasure.

My first  published book Gleaner or Gladiator: The Struggle to Create will soon be out of print. It is still available, along with Invisible Realities : Finding the Hidden Dimensions in Art at  around 70 venues in Australia and N.Z. I will need to make a decision soon on its future. Should it become an e-book?  The next book in the series is still forming in my mind and my biggest resolution in 2012 it to draw it, or should I say write it, to completion.  I wish everyone a peaceful, prosperous and creative New Year.

Gleaner or Gladiator: The struggle to create

Continuing an education well into late age is something that has been scientifically proven to keep us young in mind and stop the cobwebs forming. In the past I may have wondered why someone would want to complete a PHD in advanced years but I have discovered one visionary can change the world a little at a time. Their effect may persist for decades or centuries. Each of us has something to contribute to the progression of mankind.

Many, who have a passion and vision, have followed a focus that in turn answers the questions for rest of us. Recently I attended a one-day workshop on Colour Interval and Linkage. It was given by 74 year old artist Merv Moriarity, who founded Flying Arts forty years ago. Merv’s comment, re his Flying Arts association, was that taking art to remote places had found him, rather than he had found it. Doesn’t creativity at its best always seem to work that way?

With 20 odds years of art education behind me now, and working mostly intuitively, I was amazed to realise that I had never had an actual lesson in colour.  At university level it was determined we knew how to mix the primaries, and had a colour wheel, but nothing above that level was pursued.  The descriptions Merv gives for colour components makes more sense to me than all the books I had read on the subject. He gave us an insight into the spiritual connections of colour, along with the practical and mathematic equations in he had studied for around 10 years.

Recently I found myself in a Ginko workshop with Graham Nunn, a well-respected Brisbane poet and follower of Haiku.  The two workshops topics resonated as both revealed sides of nature that excite and inspire my arts practice. Both of these workshops filled in gaps in my knowledge base and will add fuel to my own workshops on creative direction. I intend to keep renewing and refilling my brain until I die and therefor keep the facilities in my brain active so there is a great chance that I will always accomplish new things. If you have gaps in your understanding, especially in the creative arts, then I recommend setting out and finding the answers. Often they aren’t immediate but once there is a focus they will come from everywhere.

Below is a recent painting inspired by a visit in September to Drip Gorge in NSW. Painting the long canvas format was a fun challenge and the shapes in the four paintings that eventuated came from a dream I had prior to beginning work in the studio.

Alchemy -Along the Coast 152 x 51 cm acrylic on canvas

Storm Country

The beginning of a new body of work emerging after some frustration as to a clear direction for future work. I have been going back to basics, experimenting and exploring techniques, something I haven’t done for some time. Currently I am finishing four panels 150 cm x 50cm wide. This is an interesting format and quite a challenge to use for landscapes which is my focus.

Before time intervenes and my impressions became too fuzzy I wanted to put down my thoughts on the current Fred Williams exhibition at the National Gallery in Canberra. Williams is one of our greatest Australian landscape painters and from the crowds of appreciate viewers who recount an amazing viewing experience, he is even more firmly fixed in our art history. The beauty of the exhibition is that you can enter the designated space as often as you like in one day, and I took full advantage of that.

These were layered atmospheric paintings which grew on you more as you advanced through the exhibition, which I did a number of times. In all there were seven galleries.  Right from the first gallery where the early landscapes were fledgling, showing the artists search for direction, there was an inherent strength, particularly in the portraits. Fred Williams was quoted as saying he had a fierce desire to paint colour.

As I progressed the work transpired from darker moody paintings to more sensuous use of line and space. I wasn’t attracted to the shaped or diagonal canvases in gallery three but on entering gallery four I suddenly found myself in a floating world of atmosphere. The minimal approach to composition was enhanced by William’s use of mark making, and small joyful dots of colour. Coming back several times had its advantages. In the end I had the whole gallery to myself. What joy!

This exhibition takes time to absorb. Stepping up close is like falling into a chasm of brush marks but as you step back the paintings come together in the most perfect way. My early favorite was Fire Burning on the Ridge, but then there were so many. If I had been allowed to keep one I wouldn’t have been able to choose. Fred Williams had a masterly use of paint. He was a prolific painter who had a focus and you didn’t sense him floundering.  The paintings were spontaneous and rapid because he believed in what he was doing and there was one wall in the second last gallery I found mesmerizing. I think it was simply the way the lines moved me across the canvas.

I bought the exhibition catalogue and the DVD and loved the way the artist described how he often painted turning his canvas upside down and that it was the experience he was recreating. Fred Williams had an original vision that saw him became part of the landscape as he worked, making it all look so easy. Any painter will tell you that what looks easy comes at a price, with years and years of practice and dedication that will test the limits of artistic ability. I feel this painter did all of that but with peace, patience, resilience and perseverance, and a good dose of spirituality. The exhibition will finish on the 6^th November and whatever you don’t miss it.

I am not able to add a Fred Williams painting here so I have added my own from the Hidden Dimensions exhibition at Toowoomba Regional Gallery showing from the  12^th October – 6^th November 2011.  This painting reflects my memories of  growing up on an island and the passage of sea that separated me from the mainland. More information on my exhibition on  Art Clique

Passages 2, 122 x 122cm acrylic on canvas