Illustration Friday - Silence

An artist a dancer makes

It is a while since I have been here, splitting myself between BIG things and creating a new body of work for a show with Lisa Rodden I have opening next week at Art2muse. Splitting is not quite the right word though, it's more of a swinging back and forth, never quite leaving one for the other, always informed by where I have been and where I am attempting to get to. Since beginning a collaboration with dancer Jo Pollitt over a year ago I have come to see lines on a page as more of a silent visual choreography. A floor pattern tracking longings and failures; map like; incomplete; absolute. My hand responding to a personal lineage of marks and shapes; histories and broken bones. Working this time to a dissonant soundtrack, Prokofievesque, storytelling the heartbreaks, hopes and missed opportunities of love and partnership. Investigating the losses that come from holding each other too tight, or not enough. 

 In this new body of work I explore the nature of relationships and the landscapes that sprawl distances between people. Graphite landing on unspoken conversations, making them visible (like rubbings on autumn leaves), even in their emptiness. The little red stitches holding it all together. Corrections like red crosses on a primary school page. A path; a fence; the fabric of our discontent like spiders webs or fishing nets. The unsaid stories that connect us and betray our need for distance, otherness and solitude. 

Interestingly, despite the obvious disappointment in some of my images (no doubt a delayed response to my own heart break)  I am now involved in the most intense, supportive, challenging and creative relationship I have encountered. The collaborative work I do with Jo feeds, frames and fuels much else in my life. There is something significant about connecting across a great distance with another human being that defies life's hopelessness and disappointments. In my work I search for marks that are relevant, and scribble stories that might change the way we relate to the world in small ways. I worry about the state of the planet, and especially the plight of children living without fresh water, sunlight and laughter. I am not sure how much of a difference my pages of ink can make, but I am convinced that truly connecting with another human being, and then making something together, is a defiant act with unmetered potential to catalyze change.  This new body of work is called Infinite Proximity and with enormous gratitude I dedicate it to my creative partner Jo Pollitt for restoring my hope, distilling my fears, and making me far more brave. Thank you x

You are welcome to join Lisa Rodden and I for launch drinks at 6.30pm Thursday November 10th at Art2muse Gallery 475A New South Head Rd cnr Bellevue rd Double Bay. 

perpetuity

held

listen

Illustration Friday - Swell

he held a puddle full of ocean
and the swell
in his arms.

Absence

I have been absent. Far away from Little Boat Tree inhabiting fully the world of BIG where a rigorous collaboration between Jo Pollitt and I continues daily.  It feels strange to return here without her, having worked in such close partnership for 10 months now. I arrive carrying small suitcases filled with the treasures of a responsive, warm and challenging conversation. To see more of what I am talking about pop over to BIG Kids Magazine and jump on the ship as we get ready to sail. It is an exciting time to begin following our journey as we are set to launch the first Issue in Spring. You can subscribe to the BIG Newsletter or like us on Facebook.

So much is happening at once that it feels impossible to hold it all separately. Arms length lessened to fit hundreds of ideas into the same small pockets. Hybrids and amalgamations bearing mysterious fruit. New ways of seeing old loves.


My work in the late night crosses deserts and spans imaginary continents as the boats and birds of BIG land in my personal sketch book. Flocks and flotilla's amidst new cartography's. I have an editorial feature in the latest issue of Paper Runway. If you like beautiful papery things and stories about the people that make them you can read the magazine here, subscribe to it here or find it on facebook. 


The galleries that represent me wonder where I have disappeared to. I am brewing and will be ready with a new body and work set to fly for my solo show at Art2muse in November.


Something BIG is being born, 
and I have homes on more than one island. 
I am here x

Illustration Friday - Asleep

Morning Poem

Every morning

the world

is created. 

Under the orange 

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again 

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---

and the ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands 

of summer lilies. 

If it is your nature

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails 

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere. 

And if your spirit

carries within it 

the thorn

that is heavier than lead ---

if it's all you can do

to keep on trudging --- 

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted --- 

each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly, 

every morning, 

whether or not

you have ever dared to be happy, 

whether or not

you have ever dared to pray. 

from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver 

© Mary Oliver

Illustration Friday - Soaked

Fury of Rain

Thunder beings dance the flooding streets

of this city, stripped naked to their electric skeletons.

I stand inside their wild and sacred ritual

on these streets of greasy rainbows

and see my own furious longing

erupt from the broken mask of change

to stone, to bear, to lightening.

Gut memory shakes the earth like a rattle,

knocking my teeth with heroic thunder.

I could have lied

and not seen my own death

dancing in the streets, the main shady

character forcing me to live.

What can I do but celebrate after

guarding the wreck for thirty-five years, in

this ceremony larger than a damp, suspicious city?

We are all in the belly of a laughing god

swimming the heavens, in this whirling circle.

What we haven't imagined will one day

spit us out

magnificent and simple
                                   by Joy Harjo

illustration Friday - Journey

The ocean was her map,
undulating and mysterious.

Illustration Friday - Bottled

keep it on the inside

safe

preserved

pickled

protected

unseen

or let it be free

released

revealed

exposed

wild

shared

Illustration Friday - Duet

They sang together.

He walked barefoot and gently.

Only slightly broken.

Mostly free,

they made their way home.

Drawing faces

All of the sudden, 

without any warning what so ever, 

and hardly a blink from her big brown eyes, 

she is drawing faces!!!