UP TOWN / DEAD BIKES

Posted on by
7

Uptown New York is where all the pointy bits are. One of the tallest buildings is the Rockefeller Center and for a few bucks you can rocket the 70 odd floors to the top and take in an amazing view of the city in all directions.

Another uptown attraction is time square. It has to be the most animated architecture in the world. Every facade facing the square is covered by massive screens. They pump a barrage of advertising images at, what seems to be, the entire 8 million inhabitants of the city packed into the pedestrian plaza.

There are some weird things in New York – here is a Policeman writing out a ticket for a horse.


Time Square movie shoot.

Occasionally you get a glimpse  of something that reminds you that America really is the Land of Milk and Honey.

Uptown window chef 2 (cake decorator).

Uptown window chef 1 (pretzel maker)

Scattered around the City of New York are hundreds of dead bicycles. You come across one on just about every street, and wonder why they have ended their lives chained to a city pole with rusting paint, flat tires and missing parts. Here are a few of the sadly neglected skeletons.

Leaving the uptown area and heading towards the Brooklyn Bridge there is some interesting graffiti. The elevated ramps give a great view of the surrounding roof tops  which, over the years, have accumulated an amazing coating of graffiti.

NEW YORK

Posted on by
25

New York is a bit of a shock after twenty four hours in transit. Everyone seemed to be on full throttle and we were barely idling. We caught a cab from JFK Airport to our apartment in the city.

We were lucky enough to be a couple of doors from an amazing bar called Mono Mono, where they play analogue music 24 hours a day from a collection of over 30,000 jazz LP’s. What a great place to get over a long flight.

Mono Mono – the left hand wall is 12 shelves high, stacked with LP’s. A conveyor system circulates near 50 records at a time, around the ceiling and through the DJ’s booth, where an awesome sound is delivered through old valve amplifiers.

New York architecture is fantastic. Old brownstone buildings with external fire escapes and no elevators – no wonder there are a lot of skinny people in New York! Up and down six floors every time you want to go out would be hard work.

East Village,  has some mighty bars. We haven’t had a chance to visit this one yet, but it looks pretty interesting.

McSorleys Old Ale House is just around the corner from us. It is the longest continuously  running license in New York and inside looks as if it hasn’t changed since it was opened – sawdust covered floor, old wooden refrigerator and a collection of dust covered photographs and junk accumulated over the past 150 years. All they sell is their own ale – dark or light, and for some reason when you order one they give you two. No wonder they have been operating for 150 years.

Tucked down some of the side streets are some interesting shops. Trash and Vaudeville sold some bizarre fashions,  or they would be bizarre in any other city, but in New York nothing really seems bizarre.

Casual Sneakers

Comfortable walking shoes

In New York there is not a lot of car parking space so they stack them neatly,  one on top of the other.

Even the police cars are down sized so they can fit more on the streets.

When I was a kid, there was a story going around school, that if you dropped a penny from the top of the Empire State Building, it would embed itself inches into the concrete below. We walked right around the Empire State Building and, sadly, there were no embedded pennies.

The huge orange billboard in the center of the photo above (detail below) gives a constant readout of the number of tons of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Its a pretty scary number especially when most people see it across the hood of a V8.

Maybe the billboard will change that? New York has a large fleet of hybrid Ford taxis.

If you dont want to drive, New York has to be one of the easiest cities to get around. The subway system is great, public transport is cheap, the streets are laid out in a logical grid and there are taxis everywhere.

The F train

It’s also flat and networked with bike paths, so riding a bike is a popular mode of transport.

We stopped to listen to this band in Penn Station. They were great, so I bought two of their CD’s. When we got back to our apartment I discovered one of the CD’s was made in 1998 – back when the guy playing guitar was just a little kid! Just shows, you shouldn’t get caught up in the excitement of the moment when you are visiting New York.

The cavernous, air conditioned Staten Island Ferry Terminal, providing free public transport to the people of New York. A pleasant contrast to the money making business the remains of  Australia’s  Public Government transport system has become.


Statue of Liberty and Helicopter


New York from the Staten Island Ferry


Brooklyn Bridge


Wall Street

GLEN DAVIS

Posted on by
3

A couple of weeks ago I joined large format photographer, Tony Lewis, for a few days painting and photographing up over the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Our subject was the ruins of  an old oil shale works tucked under the escarpment at Glen Davis. It’s a spectacular location and Tony and I plan to base an exhibition on these and other abandoned ruins in the area.

The dominating structure at the old shale works is the abandoned retort building. Its interesting brick work, steel strapping and monumental scale give it a unique and menacing presence.

The contrast between the hard, geometric ruins and the soft, organic landscape make stark and beautiful subjects as the sun goes down.

Tony waits for a shot through the early morning fog. Large format photography is a time consuming business – calculating exposure, loading film, framing shots and then waiting for the perfect light.

We were lucky to have atmospheric foggy mornings and mostly clear days while we were there. The fog soaked everything, saturating the colors and stretching the tonal contrast – ideal conditions for taking photographs.

We started and finished each day in the dark. My intention was to do a few watercolor sketches, but there was so much interesting stuff to record , I only managed one painting of the old retorts.

I’m looking forward to getting back down to the area with Tony and exploring some more of these old ruins he has discovered.

Tony’s large format images can be seen on his website “A Brief Vision of Time”

STUDIO WORKSHOP

Posted on by
23

In April we had two one week workshops in my studio. It was a lot of fun. We had students from all over the place – Cairns, Melbourne, Sydney, The Sunshine Coast, even Hamilton Island.

We worked hard and some great paintings were produced. It’s good to see students pick up momentum as the workshops progress. The first day or two are usually a little tentative, then, as every one relaxes and get to know one another, the paintings really start to improve. We all managed to do at least two 1/4 sheet paintings each day. I would demonstrate under a high definition camera hooked up to a large LCD screen, so everyone had a great view of what was happening. Being able to zoom right in on fine detail made it easy to pick up different techniques.

After the demo every one would work on their own paintings while I walked around giving advice and assistance where necessary.

We were spoiled with delicious cakes and slices courtesy of Dianne. I was just getting used to it then the workshop finished!

Hard at work


Landscape demo using French Ultramarine Blue, Phthalo Blue, Quinacridone Gold and Permanent Alizarin.

In this demo we took a complicated subject, simplified it then worked detail over the simplified shapes. The sky and awnings were painted with pale ultramarine gouache (mixed from white and ultramarine gouache).

A similar subject, this time we launched into it with a big 1/2 inch bristle brush to make the main Ultramarine shapes then built the rest of the painting around these marks.

Again, using a 1/2 inch bristle brush, we reduced this subject to a few simple shapes. A broad, direct approach delivers just enough information to tell the story without the clutter of unnecessary detail.

This demo was an experiment with negative shapes. The leaves were built up layer by layer, painting the successively darker backgrounds and leaving the leaf  shapes exposed.

.

.

The three images below were an experiment using a watercolor Gesso on aluminium composite panel. The watercolor behaves in a completely different way to working on a paper surface. Pigment sits on the surface rather than soaking in. It is easily washed back or lifted off. I love the way the gesso brush strokes are exaggerated by the settling paint, and I also like the hard, dead flat surface to work on.

STUDIO BREEDER

Posted on by
15

Towards the end of last year our youngest son, Tim, kicked of Studio Breeder, a post production/ film/animation company based in Brisbane. We are mighty proud of the amazing stuff they are producing. This is an add they have just finished for the Red Cross to help rebuild Japan.

http://www.vimeo.com/21651791

NEW ROLLING STUDIO

Posted on by
8

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. Over the past couple of months I have been flat out working on a new mobile studio that will take us into some remote communities in the Northern Territory and Western Australia over the next couple of years. Dianne and I are planning to run a number of workshops for kids in these communities.

We are grafting the small off road caravan, we traveled around Australia in in 2009, onto the back of a four wheel drive truck. It will give us more mobility and allow us to carry more supplies.

Rather than clog up this blog with the day to day activities of modifying a truck, I have started a separate blog to cover the work being done for those that are interested

_______________New Rolling Studio>>

NZ CRUISING WORKSHOP

Posted on by
24

On Feb. 7, Artists Greg Allan and Amanda Hyatt joined me on board the Sun Princess to take 60 painters on a cruising workshop around New Zealand.

I had never been on a cruise ship before and could not believe the scale and efficiency of this floating giant. With 2000 guests and 900 staff, I imagined long cues for everything , but I’d never seen anything run so smoothly!

We sailed from Sydney to the Bay of Islands then hopped our way down the East Coast of New Zealand, stopping at all the major ports.


Anchored in the Bay of Islands, we were ferried ashore by the ships tenders


Our first day painting ashore was in the small town of Russell in the Bay Of Islands. A sunny day under a shady tree with cafes and bakeries close by – what luxury!


Painting on board was in the large, plastic wrapped disco with panoramic ocean views.


On board demos took students through a number of techniques we would use once ashore.


On board Hawkesbury River demo, showing how to simplify a complex subject.


We found a busy boatyard on Auckland Harbor and spent a day painting there. They say Auckland has more boats per head of population than any other city in the world.


Napier was an interesting town – destroyed by earthquake in 1931 then completely rebuilt in the Art Deco style. It has been proudly maintained in that style ever since

We spent an afternoon painting in the central park, the interesting architecture and tall palms making great subjects

A warm sunny day greeted us in the beautiful city of Christchurch. This is the side door to Christchurch cathedral. It is hard to believe, just a week later the city was hit by a devastating earthquake. The cathedral spire crashing to the ground where we painted.


One of the few bad weather days on the workshop. Dunedin was overcast, cold and windy, but it somehow added to the character of this old tug and the jetty below.

Fiordland on the southern tip of New Zealand was spectacular in the early morning mist. Later in the day we sailed into Milford Sound. The clouds had lifted and the sun was shining. It looked amazing, but I cant help wondering what it would have looked like through mist and rain. Some things need lousy weather to look their best.

Milford Sound

For our final demo Greg, Amanda and I worked simultaneously on this large, three sheet painting. The finished work was auctioned for charity and the winning bidder kindly donated it to be hung on board the Sun Princess.

Life on board a cruise ship is pretty luxurious, good food, amazing service, lots of entertainment, bars and restaurants everywhere. Would I do another cruising workshop? You bet!