The new year has begun. 2025. Feels like I'm living in a science fiction movie, with a number like that.
Seen some good films, the latest one was called A Real Pain written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, starring himself and Kieran Culkin. A gentle yet very sensitive and moving story told in a quiet way, with moments of real passion and vulnerability. A timely story I feel.
The adventure abroad to Africa is bookended with the sedentary and rather unexciting pace of the world on this side of the globe. It does however, give me time and space to untangle multiple strands that had led to the journey to begin with. Where to now? I definitely want to dispatch with the old way of thinking about my art practice. Since this has been a trajectory of over 35 years, it will take a bit of introspection and practice to steer into a new way of viewing what I do, what kind of work I really want to make and how to connect with an audience that responds to the new ideas. I do have many strings to my bow, many different streams of knowledge have been added to over the years and they are all useful, no regrets there. However, i think there has to be a different way of being a painter now. The landscape has changed. I want to participate in a way that i find interesting and fulfilling. I don't know exactly what that is, but i will be walking in that direction now.
Eclectica Art Prize at the Cooroy Butter Factory Art Centre is showing for a few more days, as it ends on the 12th Jan 2024. It is hanging in the Portrait/ Figurative section of the exhibition upstairs. This was an unusual choice to enter, as it really isn't a portrait, but I have yet to understand how to select the best work to enter prizes, rather than the work that I feel is the more interesting one at the time. I was inspired by the idea that we can be oblivious to the 'container' we limit ourselves to being in, as reality appears in front of us as true. However, we are looking from inside a glass bottle, contained and unable to escape unless we 'break' out of the illusion. The nature of us, is where we find the freedom, looking with open heart at what is truly there.
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