Diary Of An Artist In A New World

Go Mobile With Gatherr

Gatherr.com is my new multimedia online site. It is intended to be a fluid stream of cultural consciousness. Because of its radically simplified structure it has proved easily adaptible to a mobile version that can be browsed on your mobile phone.

The URL you will need is   http://gatherr.com/mobile

It will work well on any WAP enabled phone, but full video functionality may not be available (YouTube videos may not play). Those fortunate enough to have an Apple iPhone will be able to see full video functioning by using Safari to browse the normal site directly at  http://gatherr.com

The image shows the scaled down mobile page ready for browsing with today's posts.

Kylie Fagan's Bohemian Hens Party

It is difficult to imagine a more beautiful group than Kylie Fagan and her friends. They were fun, elegant, enthusiastic, and gorgeous, all in the right measure. The pictures tell the story.

Online Multimedia Scrapbook

I have started a new tumble style web site. It is a zappy format full of embedded videos from YouTube, photos from Flickr and other fun and interesting snippets that I find on the Internet here and there. There are already posts on the computer generated dynamic art of Canadian San Base that is the talk of the cybersphere, and an animated video of the paintings of Vincent van Gogh set to music.

The site is called Gatherr.com At first glance it looks like "gather" with an extra "r", but really it is pronounced "gatherer", but being web 2.0 the last "e" is dropped. It is a great domain for a great new idea. Bookmark Gatherr.com for interesting tidbits.

Ryde Secondary College Life Drawing Excursion

A group of HSC students from Ryde Secondary College came to draw the model last Friday morning. They approached the task with passion and looked very much at home in the studio.

Life drawing has been practiced since ancient Greek times, and despite changing fashions in art and evolving expectations of the role of the artist, it is always fascinating seeing the intensity of new artists as they struggle to express on paper their inner vision of the human form. The difficulty of drawing the human figure remains one of the most challenging tasks for any artist and perhaps that is why life drawing continues to fascinate. There is also the practical issue that learning to draw and paint the figure teaches the skills necessary for creating all other kinds of art.

I enjoy seeing those who are just starting on this long road. It is a road that stretches far into the past and into a distant and unknowable future. I wish them well on their journey.

Eclipse Of The Moon

Tonight art class went downstairs into William Street to watch the moon entering totality. It was Simon, our model who reminded us that it was time. Thank you, Simon. Even here in the center of the city where so much city light washes out the color it still looked magnificent as the last small sliver of sunlight left the moon's surface. Ashlea pointed out how everyone else in the street seemed oblivious to the marvel in the sky. They were missing the most gorgeous sight. This is the sort of thing to make me glad to be alive.

Graeme Putt Gave Me My First Job

A terrible thing happened to me when I was 16. Graeme Putt and his wife Yvonne were the only good part of it. My father did not want me to study poetry, writing, and art at University as I dreamed of. One day he gave me an "opportunity" to be "sensible". He told me I could only stay at school if I would choose a "real job" to work towards. I don't think he cared if it was law, or architecture, or accounting, so long as it was something he understood as being "a job". Art was not a job to him, it was a hobby, to be practiced on Sundays and upon retirement at age 65. I tried to reason with him. I said I wanted to  do a BA and study literature, and then see where that would take me, maybe teaching.

It was not good enough. My father distrusts people with university degrees, and I don't think he has ever seen the need for one. He left school very young, and was making money from his own small business when he was 12. He became a millionaire without an education and he knew lots of poor people with degrees. The only value he could imagine for art was as a commodity to be sold, but in his world, people want houses and food. It is his experience in the country that nobody buys art to put in houses except the people he distrusted.

It causes me great pain even now as I write this to say that 3 days after that discussion with my father he had taken me out of high school and found me a job with Graeme Putt. My dreams were shattered, I have never completely recovered from that first great tragedy.

Graeme Putt owned a dairy farm near Ravenshoe. Years later I bought 20 acres that shared a boundary with Graeme's old farm, but I could not know that then. He had Frisian cows, and a big bull that liked to threaten me. It put me up a tree once. I hated that bull. Graeme thought it was a quiet bull, but he eventually got rid of it when it attacked his wife I heard later.

My job was milking cows and general farm work. I liked Graeme and Yvonne a great deal but I was poorly suited to farm work. I was too inexperienced. There were too many things that frightened me like working the tractor on steep hillsides, and there was an ancient diesel pump that had to be started by hand with a crank that had a habit of kicking back and threatening to break an arm in the process.

As I worked the farm my mind and soul were a long way away in the clouds imagining music and poetry and meaningful discussions about existentialism in city cafes. A friend, Rick Anderson was studying poetry at university. I thought he was the luckiest person on the planet at the time.

A few weeks ago my father said that Graeme had contacted him after all these years. He gave me Graeme's phone number and I called him. Graeme said he would visit when next in Sydney.

Last Wednesday he phoned me, said he was at the airport, so I invited him to the studio and I made him lunch. He has had an interesting life. He is now a professional poker player, has been the Australasian poker champion. Won, or been placed highly in tournaments here and in Europe and in the Caribbean. The photo is of him playing poker at a tournament.

It was good to see Graeme. He may be part of a terrible time in my life, but he was the good part of that time and I have always remembered him fondly. He is a good man with a good heart. Thank you Graeme for the good you did for me all that time ago.

Brushing Up In Art Class

This week my little camera phone was recording the painterly qualities in art classes. Paint is the glory of the artist. Human eyes, after all, have the most sophisticated color vision of all mammals. Only Chimpanzees and Gorillas share our ability to see the full range of color, and only humans, so far as we can tell, can appreciate and celebrate the richness of color in poetic and artistic ways. Humans are the only animals to visualize the world as line and tone. Art is one of the few things that is totally unique to human beings. Color, even just a couple of colors transforms artwork into exciting temptations for the eye and brushwork gives rich variety and strength to line and tone. We can't help ourselves. Humans love color and contrast. Humans love pictures, especially drawings and paintings. We have been doing it for so many tens of thousands of years that it is in our bones and blood. And our favorite subject is the human body.

Yuk! Pink's A Girls Color

It's official, girls really do have a preference for pink, and boys? - they've been proved to have a case of the blues.

For years we've been told that gender color differences are cultural, that it is learned behavior, that gender neutral toys and time would rid society of this pernicious inequality. Girls don't really like pink, they are taught to like it by a paternalistic society, despite the evidence every parent sees, that their children seem to be born with inbuilt personalities and preferences. In the same family there can be two girls with the same education and influences yet one can be a tomboy who hates pink, the other can love her Barbie doll and only want to dress in pink.

And boys are pretty consistent in thinking three things are Yuk! Girls, the color pink, and kissing girls. All except for that small portion who seem to prefer feminine things. But any number of screwed up adult trans-gender people will tell you that while their boyhood preference for feminine things including colors was frowned on, and strongly discouraged, it could never be extinguished.

Researchers Anya Hurlbert and colleagues at the University of Newcastle in the UK appeared to be sympathetic to the nurture rather than nature theory at the beginning of their testing as they admitted they were looking for cultural differences in color preferences by studying two culturally diverse groups. One consisted of exclusively British adults and the other were Han Chinese.

They were surprised to find that there was little differences between the groups, but marked differences between genders in both groups.

The study showed that both males and females have a strong liking for blue. It has been suggested that human prehistory may account for this. The color blue is associated with clear skies and clean water, both important components in the survival of early humans.

The study also revealed that only the females had a strong preference for another color - red, and particularly light reds and pinks. This could possibly be explained if early human females became gatherers of fruits, red being a very common indicator of ripening fruit.

This color preference was also found in the types of blue that females preferred to the males. Men seemed to choose pure blues when given a choice, but the women chose reddish blues such as lilac before the pure blues.

Evolutionary pressures in early humans due to behavior is highly likely to be a major factor for the reason for these color preferences. Few mammals have sophisticated color vision. Most mammals have only two receptors in their eye for two different wavelengths. This means that most mammals confuse many colors, much like a colorblind person does. Only the highest primates like humans and gorillas have a third wavelength receptor. That means that we and other apes can distinguish a full range of colors. Evolution selects for traits that offer a survival advantage. That includes the ability to better distinguish between ripe and unripe fruits as primates need to. Flowers too are an indicator of maturing plants of all kinds. It seems no coincidence that reds, pinks and lilacs are very common colors for flowers.

So, as you choose your colors for a painting pause for a minute and consider the colors you are using. Some of the choices may well be due to the needs of the moment, but some of them may well be rooted in the activities of your ancestors in an African Savannah a quarter of a million years ago.

There is another aspect to this. Knowing the deep psychological connection between color and the human psyche enables an artist to create a heightened emotional effect from their artwork. Knowledge of the differences in gender responses to color enables an even more finely tuned use of color to evoke response.

Belly Dancing Hens Arty Party For Angela Hennessy

Kathleen did a marvellous job of organizing Angela's Hens night. She chose a late night time for the Arty Party and then asked for our wonderful Belly Dancers to follow the art class. It all seemed rather mysterious as the chairs disapeared and the lights went out. Eastern music started, very loud, and then the dancers were there, the clapping started, and then everyone had belly dancing skirts that appeared out of nowhere and everyone was dancing, even the model.

Hayley Mettam And Ken Meet At Hens Art Class

There is sure a vey lucky guy out there, any man lucky enough to marry Hayley is blessed indeed. But first he has to wait his turn... Ken showed up at Hayley's Hens Party, and while he may be only only about 60cm tall and made of plastic, I am certain that his smile grew wider every time Hayley held him.