Diary Of An Artist In A New World

I Love How The Rain Turns The City Into Visual Art

 

 The walk from the studio down William Street to the city CBD is one I love at any time, but I especially love it in the rain. Tonight the rain was teeming down. There was no wind, and the rain was the sort of warmish rain that is the best. The rain was streaming past the streetlights. That is a special delight seeing the rainwater turned into a stream of cascading jewels as if it is a sparkling carnival necklace draped around the lights. 

As I walked past the Cathedral the bells were peeling and that itself gained a surreal quality as deep chimes of the big bells danced it time with the rhythmic plittering and plattering of rain in the street. Even the cars join into the chorus as the normal car sounds are modified by the swishes and sloshes of the wheels in the river of water on the road surface.

 

 

 

Ultimately, however, the greatest joy is the colors and the lights reflected from the sidewalks and street surfaces that turn the normal street view into a work of impressionistic art. Everything looks so different. The night rain increases the contrasts so there are more darks and grays so that the colors of tail lights and traffic lights increase in intensity and then are doubled as reflections mirror an up world with a matching down world.

I hear people complain about the rain and I wonder why. Can they not see the mysterious poetry that envelops the skyscrapers in the rain, the change that overtakes them as their tops disappear into the low cloud and they become like trunks of trees in a gray forest holding the sky up. Do they not see the softening of the world that occurs like some giant Pissarro had taken his paint brush to the city.

I think it is beautiful and I love rain so much I wish it rained like this often enough to satisfy the poet in my heart. Where I grew up in North Queensland in the rainforest near Ravenshoe it rained on average 120 days a year. That is one day in three and I never tired of the misty beauty that would come into the mountains and valleys and all the inevitable results like all the waterfalls, and the emerald green color of the grass and the way everything always had a luxuriant feeling of growth. Rain in the city has a different feel to in the rainforest and is much more about light and colors. It is a creator of a different kind of magic, and I love it just as much or more. 

Dust Storm In Sydney

This morning the dawn didn't happen as usual instead the whole sky gained an eerie orange red glow. I went downstairs to dump garbage and it looked magnificent so I just pulled the iPhone out and started taking photographs. 173 photos and 2 hours later I am back at the studio needing sleep but also wanting to get a couple of the photographs on the web.

The cause is a dust storm. They are rare in Sydney but apparently high western winds that are starting to hit the city were very strong yesterday out west and we have the result. It is strong in the lungs - I wouldn't want to be an asthmatic out in this but it does make some beautiful visual effects in the city.

On Being A Digital Artist & The Lamborghini Miura

A lot of people seem to struggle with understanding what it means to be a digital artist. Sure they know that we work on the computer but apart from that they just don't understand. For people like that traditional media like paper and charcoal and oil paint and canvas are "real art" and everything else isn't quite the same. They are right you know - it isn't the same, and if anything, I look back at my time painting with paint as being a bit limited.

Summer Rain In Kings Cross

Yesterday was wet with strong winds. It was difficult trying to take these photos, keeping steady against the wind on the umbrella while shooting one handed and trying to keep the camera dry. As always I love the rain, it is a visual feast of altered tones and harmonies of Grey, and the reflections are always beautiful. These photographs were taken while going to the supermarket and returning to the studio in William Street.

This first photograph is of the walk up the hill to the supermarket. It is on 2 levels underground beneath the Coca Cola sign. It is about a 3 or 4 minute walk from the studio front door. These views are what I see almost every day, although, of course, with ever changing weather and moods.

Astra Howard

I bumped into Astra Howard in the street a few days ago. It was really good to see her. I have a very high regard for Astra, both as an artist, and as a human being. I first came across Astra when she was in the photograph. There was a little tobacconist's kiosk by the railway station that had been vacant for a while. I saw a crowd around the kiosk, all very animated, and obviously interested in something inside.

The center of their attention was a tall woman, very beautiful, dressed in white. Although I am sure Astra gets lots of attention for being tall and beautiful and well dressed, that was not what was causing the excitement. It was what she was doing.

The kiosk largely consisted of glass panels. Astra had locked herself inside the little compartment and was surprisingly rapidly writing messages on the glass with a black marking pen. The remarkable thing was that she was writing backwards, so that those outside could see the messages the right way round. She was writing backwards faster than many people can write forwards. And with every word the crowd would follow what she was writing. The words would be read aloud, and guesses taken as to what the complete sentence might turn out to say. The crowd was enchanted and it was obvious that they were puzzled as to why this would be happening.

I myself can recognize a performance at a hundred paces and stood back enjoying the total spectacle. I never did get to find out what she was writing, it didn't seem to matter compared to the way she was engaging her audience. I was at the time busy with organizing an upcoming art festival, and I wanted to talk to Astra. Of course I didn't know her name at that time, but I wrote the words "phone me" on a card and slipped it through a crack in the kiosk wall. She saw it looked at me and nodded and went on writing.

She called the next day, and eventually she became an important part of the festival with several performances.

When I saw her in the street last week she gave me her card. She is working. It seems like most of us she has to get on the treadmill for paying bills rather than devoting all her time to art. It is a cruel world.

It was a lovely surprise to see her. She is a very special woman.

Afternoon Light In Kings Cross

My love affair with the effects of light in the sky continues, but not too secretly. I cannot help it, the sublime beauty is something I can never ignore, my soul is tuned to appreciate the very special magic that inhabits my universe. Love is blind, they say, yet I cannot stop myself from opening my eyes, and every time I look, I fall in love just that little bit more. To live is to love. Here is my lover, the skies of Kings Cross that caress me with different colors every day.

Fire At Porky's "Brothel" In Kings Cross

I must be an innocent. I always thought of Porky's as just a low class sex toys and porno shop. A fire this morning showed it is quite a bit more than that and it has far more patrons than I would have expected. News reports say about a hundred patrons were evacuated due to a fire. Porky's is described variously as a night club, strip club, and a brothel. The fire was contained to just one room, although smoke damage was more extensive. The fire started at 4:25 am in a bedroom.

It appears there are suspicians that the fire might have been deliberately lit as the police are reported as saying it is "suspicious". I wonder if, in an age of smoking restrictions, a fire started by a cigarette in a bed would now fit the definition of a suspicious fire?

Two people are in hospital being treated for smoke inhalation.

Meet Violetta

Violetta has been doing my hair for most of the last 10 years. She is a very special human being whom I would regard as a friend rather than just the person who does my hair. She works her magic creating the sort of haircut that suits me. Others have done my hair, but I have never been entirely satisfied, but Violetta always manages to get it just right.

She comes from Bulgaria, which is a long way away. She often talks about her mum who is so far away yet so close to her heart. The last couple of years she has gone for long visits with her mum. I think she misses her.

I think too that while she enjoys styling hair, underneath it all she secretly wishes to be an artist and poet living the bohemian life. Perhaps that is why she works in Kings Cross, because here she finds the kindred spirits who help nourish her soul.

The Floating City

Today the USS Kitty Hawk returned to Sydney Harbor. Naturally she tied up at the Garden Island navy base which is a 5 minute walk down the road. We are fortunate that Woolloomooloo Bay has such deep water that the biggest ships in the world can dock just a few steps from our public streets. I took these photographs from Embarkation Park. It is part of why I love Kings Cross so much - that so much that is different and exciting is just a few minutes walk away.

I think aircraft carriers are very beautiful pieces of engineering where the beauty grows out of the pure efficiency of function. Like large bridges or large aircraft the laws of physics take precedence over compromise and the result is by default beautiful.

There is also the kind of impression of beauty that grows out of the human ability to be awed by immense structures whether they be mountains or huge ships. I love being in a big jet when it is taking off just for the sensation of the power of those engines to  create speed and then the physics of pressure differentials on the wings lifts that great weight into the sky. I get that same feeling from a great ship like this, its immensity, the power of its engines, and the  city-like functioning of its crew, 5,000 souls working together like a purposeful machine. That is just as much beauty as the lines in a hull.

Docked at the wharf great doors open that expose the hangars in the bowels of the ship. I have been inside there on an open day when the ship was in port a few years ago. The feeling in that immense space is of something from another world.

It is good to see so many sailors in the Cross tonight. 4 more ships were in port - cruisers and assault ships. It is a lot of sailors. Kings Cross has been hosting visiting sailors for 150 years. It always has a good feeling when a ship is in. Judging from the smiles on happy sailors it seems the feeling is mutual.

A Kings Cross Sunset

I had been busy writing about local Aboriginal history but I noticed it was getting late and I wanted to go see the visiting US aircraft carrier before my haircut appointment. As I walked up William Street and down Victoria mother nature decided to show me who is the best artist in existence. Always our pale interpretive efforts are just relections of a larger beauty that is the natural world in all its glory. Sure, some man made things can be beautiful, just look at that row of buildings across downtown Sydney. But mother nature is able to wrap it all in gorgeous mauves and salmony pinks and then throw the palette across the sky. All while changing every detail in the twinkling of an eye. Every day I am in awe of the beauty that I see. This is my small impression.