lost at sea....

ooo had the exhibition opening...all was good. Chased my friends little baby around the gallery, on hands and knees. Much more stimulating than having to explain the complex process of mark making and buying and selling of art business!!!

If you wanna look go to: www.raftartspace.com.au
Is all there.
yay.
finis.

opening the door.

I have a friend with whom I share a book. We write in it and then send it across oceans, to read and muse over and send again.

It is a beautiful process of boomeranging.

Anyway, one day I had some people over and was sharing something I had written in the book with some strange folk from Tasmania. Low and behold, next day there was a word written lovingly inside the front cover that had not been there earlier.

Duende.

One word. It mystified me for at least a month, but was happy to let it mysitfy me, cos it felt familiarly familiar. So anyway, amazingly it gives a voice to the force which thus has been unexplainable. The strange concept which is not a concept but a space that leaves you somewhere else....that is where it, I, you possibly dwell.

There is no literal translation. English is so restrictive and limited.

Here is what someone said about it (though the Spanish poet Lorca wrote about it too):

[So, then, the duende is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation.]

Someone else said:

[The duende….Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child’s saliva, crushed grass, and medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things. ]

This is the house in which I live.

rough.

this one is from me latest peeps
a whole exhibition of recycled mailbag canvas paintings
has been fun
and messy
and lovely and rampantly chaotic
my friend said he felt sea sick
i hope you do to
cos thats really about it.

what do you draw on she asks????

well...where to start really....
i like drawing anywhere
sometimes it happens in the supermarket you know...
and you havn't got something
so you just have to put your head in the frozen peas.
so good in the hot climate.
ahhhh,
but here's a few things i draw on....

cross. again.

today is monday.

um....want to say something profound but it's all a bit confused.

Not very cohesive.

Lost at sea in a whirlwind really (as usual it seems....damn)

I am otherwise known as 'their mother'

and apparantly am lots of things

don't like it when people say things about me

what is truth anyway, we all see it from various angles

just like the way we see anything

some see just scribble

others see beauty

some see the struggle behind the layers

others see a story

it is all true, and i am 'their mother' and blow me down

i am cross.

the x.

damn it all into the black hole of calcutta......

imBinews:

... bought a washing machine!
Have been hand washing all year, loving the smell of me clothes
but decided amidst life bedlam that a machine might just let me paint more! Still not really into detergent, i like lavendular.

...am having exhibition at Raft ARt Gallery opening, October 9. Yay. HEck. Bloody Hell, shit, get painting sister.

Does anyone else have the problem that when they are about to have an exhibition life has a crazy way of turning on the amps and making it totally crazy and then you go into a frenzy, have show, drop then recover again to make more....

feel like the grass that is trying to grow out of concrete cracks, like n India's picture.

let it bleed

love it when the picnic table yields wonders
havn't been able to paint cos am in prison working
which is really painful
coa all i want to do is splash the syrup
scratch the brush
oil the rag
let it bleed.
so will have to just look at the travel tales
and dream of marks
and tracks

and look to streets for inspiration

darwin blah

sometimes in Darwin people go a bit nuts and drive off the edge of the harbour

other times they do silly things

even our politicians are nuts....

slightly edgy tales from the frontier town

that really is still weird

but lovely

we have a wave pool now...

but it seems so out of place

it needs a paint job and some scratching

some rust and mould to make it beautiful.

but i love paint. how it appears in all places.

even on the edge of the world....

bless the mangoes

which are rapidly getting fat.

lucky we have winds from everywhere

gotta paint big time, damn.

and jump off the harbour

into croc infested, stinger salty sea

damn twice. can't even swim there.

you must connect the dots...

very potato

today i make marks
very no good
keep talking wrong
sometimes black
sometimes grey
very no good
i very potato.

CLEANING OUT
VOLCANOES
IN MY HEART

it is lines

rain

tears

and leaving.

oh dear.

thankyou ginger for this heart country

oily rag philosophy

oily rags.....

I was thinking about something India posted; the discontented oily rag students.

When I remembered camping in the yurt by the river,

I made beautiful flags for my friend to put around the outside of his yurt. Then he ran away with the gypsys and i thought it was all over. Funny how tragedy pulls you together again, however, the point is all I have as a memory of this experience is a greasy, skanky piece of oily rag from the back of his car....which not long after he crashed and blood went every where.

So you see the oily rag is now, for me....way way more than a grease soaked grot cloth.

It tells a story.

As an object it doesn't really matter, becasue it is the process and experience behind it that makes this piece of seeming nothingness, to me very special. What is entwined in the fibres and being of this fabric goes beyond mere objectivity. It is not pretty or colourful, but full of the grit of struggle, pain, loss and leaving.

I'm not sure about the oily rag philosophy...yet I was out at Garma festival last week (another adeventure to catch up on...shizza), and artist Robyn Archer talked very powerfully about her thoery of artistic 'detritus'. Perhaps this is akin to the oily rag thinking; that as artists what we 'do' is essentially engage in a process; an unfolding of learning; a submergant experience. What we give to the world is therefore....the detritus of this process. What drives the art markets and auctions are the chucked out reamins, the oily rags of the artistic process.

Detritus : oily rag. Slave and pay over it. Artists have already moved on.

Thus, if you wanna make a pretty picture, a lovely 'thing', remember that it is all rubbish anyway and maybe you should be thinking more about how you got there, what is your story, what has infused itself into when you made it, what dirt is in your hands, did your bones quiver in that moment where pink blended into darkness????????

If you want a pretty picture, a perfect anything, you are boring, very very boring. If you can't see the incredible journey in the oily rag or broken spirit, the joy of doing....then go bloody sit with crack pot ronald in his plastic castle of fake reality, down some gherkin and pretend some more!!!

We artists will enjoy the planting, cooking, the taste of everything....and use are oily rags in the process!!!!

So there.

swine flu hill

apologies...i have a backlog of adventures to catch up on
still processing the nz flight
told you
here's some more pics.

andre....

sunlight winter on the hill

the walk up the hill

the great and illustrious frabb-u-lator

mad props

the boys don the masks and mirror

swine flu tattoo

told you they were hairy...

handy

me, sister starrlite and other hairy whanae had fun
we partied for a few days
and made our hands pretty (amongst other things)
midwinter matariki business
holed up on the hill
in Island Bay
more to follow
stay tuned.
the memories lasted at least two weeks.

(oh yeah we did some glam shots for starrlite's cuz - gypsym, who told us all we were a bunch of sad c--ts because we wanted to go to sleep and he just wanted to listen to hard core rap music at 5 am....this photo is our way of expressing thanks!!!)

button faeries and footfalls

well...let's start in wellington....
street installations and bits
was a bit tipsy and discovered in a hazy
beatles infused time warp these lovely panels
was all about love
i felt it
hard out
then there were wild horses...

and birds of freedom in homeless shelters

the wonders of wellington town

oh yeah and the random knit business

was founded everywhere

even in trees eh bro

oh then i went to the snow
and had fun fun cold fun

but amazed at that crunchy stuff

oh my first ice thing....

couldn't do a cheesy snowman

sorry kids!!!

mountain lightblinged out thermies with ants

this wild top end mustang goes into the deep snow...w for wicked

but before all of that was the button faerie of course.....

aka: meastro knuckles mama knuckles and the button faerie

we met a phoenix and her collection of paua and old rusty pirate knife

the colours were astounding....

the sentinals watch over it all

waiting by the sea

watching the light rise and fall

waiting to see if she will ever come back

calling

out from the long place

with moutains high

bless

aotearoa

p.s. didn't get to see colin.

blah bits & fear-less

i had my mobile phone around the other day
to take crap pictures of some works in progress
i thought i might be getting lighter
oh well...
they have all changed a bit since this

have been pondering
about lines and tracks
actually havn't been pondering anything
cos try to be mindless really
and fearless about trying to care
fearless about fucking up
fearless about anything or mistakes

just like moments in paint time
that fall onto surfaces

not careless
but fearless

(these photos don't do no justice to real stuff...

you'll just have to come over for a cuppa tea if you wanna see real bizz)

why are these lines here?

meandering

recently i travelled to aotearoa
it began with some vague sensibility about something and nothing
thinking nothing really, but some lines and fuzzy black cloud castles
i felt hanging
i felt like i had holes to fix
and darkness to face

then i entered the web of me own mind
it was a bit chaotic in there
oredered and churned
mixed on mountains, fused in whanae
blessed and cursed all at once

it's always a bit messy
the poetry was profound
the speaking even more painful

then i left
and sat in the bris-bane sub way
as the trains burned i waited and wiated
fixated by commuters in their underground
a world of no sunlight
i was patchy and delirious

reality seemed orderd to me really

then i flew home

lines, triangles, webs and icicles later

i realise that i am far more at home

when the ferns unfold

when the sun shines

and fire burns

but i like drawing

i like giants

i like X

and being silly

so there

yes you can drink it

the contents of spilt drink

way better than Adelaide drinking water for sure

less lumpy

less green

mmmmmmmm

lazy lion lizard brain

havn'tgot much to say lately really
been bumming around
enjoying
sunlight and sunsets
friends, love, company
been playing my guitar
and singing a lot

ready to be a bit more productive
been like a lazy lion lizard
sleeping and chilling
so good so good

is all radiant

and calm

choice bro

greetings from wellington
am on a hill in a house...just had fun party
hanging with beautiful friends, who are all ace.
Feel so blessed and warm, even in the middle of winter
in this great green southern windy land.
once again feels like i been here forever
but new times new stories
keep on keep on

latest artist

http://www.georgeraftopoulos.com

check out this link if you want....

beach bits

while we are talking about trips to the beach and stuff

this is me local...

i go there often to pretend i am a rock

or to pretend that i am the sky

then i find treasure

or light or soemthing lovely
have found lots of rusty stuff

but ususally just like looking

at how it all fits together

and the reddy reds of red

you know about red

some people like green

but i think i am a red person

y'all have to come to darwin cos its warm and lovely and we have pawpaw

and can camp in back yard

but no wool sorry.....

when the light shines

this is an old WWII bunker
the light falls
and captures
life on concrete
this town has treasure
just need to know where
and how
to look

blogging blahaha