Playing With A New Technique

This weekend I have been busy testing some new large artwork ideas. This image was made, or should I say is still being developed. From a very small image sketched from my imagination on a piece of scrap paper no bigger than a business card and then blown up at least 100 times. I have then transposed that image to a large composite paper and mixed media surface. So now I am slowly building up the image to create a colour work of an imaginary landscape.

What I want to achieve is the same simple style I am forced to create when making my images in recycled plastics. Like the two red silos image. I am also very much a fan of work by Shaun Tan and in this image attempting something similar. His haunting and moody use of light sets an almost wonderland existence in his artworks. Very much reminiscent of De Chirico's surrealist landscapes - another one of my favorite artists.

New Zealand Paintings

My trip to New Zealand took me to some very beautiful places. I wanted so much to paint everything I saw out the window of the car. Unfortunately wherever I saw a sight worth painting it was either inaccessible or we whizzed past it too quickly for me to say "stop the car". The places I did get to paint though were as wonderful as the ones I missed. We started our journey at New Plymouth were my wife and I lived some 3 years ago. I got in some time to paint the sugar loaf islands Motumahanga and Moturoa. Then I was lucky enough to find some time to paint Motuotau, one of Tauranga's beautiful islands. I have a couple more paintings of New Zealand on the go and I will post these as they are finished.

Whimsical Robot Artworks

My daughter and her partner have been fixing up their house and I went to visit them a few weeks back. I had given Ushie - my daughter, a designers guide to interior design and she had been saying how she'd like some larger artworks on her wall as recommended in the book. The kitchen was especially bare of art and she suggested I think of what she might do to brighten it up. I was planning to travel to New Zealand in the coming fortnight and was not in the frame of mind to do or find artworks for her straight away. But after returning refreshed from a wonderful time in the Taranaki in New Zealand. I felt like rejoicing my wonderful trip. I had also been playing with some ideas about how to create large works on paper that reflected the shapes and designs I am getting from my "Bots in a Box" found and recycled object artworks. So these two artworks were the labour of the following weekend.

The other image here is of my daughter and her partners hopes and dreams of a farmhouse set high above a river in the country. They already farm bees so it's a good start and their little family at the moment consist of a dog and a cat.