The Sulman Prize Journey:

Are we there yet?

No.

Are we there yet?

No.

Are we there yet?

No.

Are we there yet?

No.

Are we there yet?

Look, settle down, you kids...

Are we there yet?

Don't make me come back there...

Are we there yet?

WILL YOU BE QUI... oh wait, we're done.

Pet, oil on board, nine panels, 25 x 20cm each.

Seriously, how many times was that text run through Babelfish? Lift your game, spammers.

I’ve been able to get into the studio a bit over the last week, so I’m working on my entries for the Wynne and Sulman.

This is the first time I’m doing something specific for the Sulman. Last year I thought I’d have a stab at it and entered Alaska is For Dreamers. Unfortunately what I – and all the other entrants – didn’t realise is that last year’s judge had a novel method of curating and winner-picking. The majority of the paintings chosen for hanging had animals in them because…Animals! Yay! The winner was decided by coin toss. So I would have fared a lot better if instead of submitting this…

… I had submitted this.

Well, I’ve learnt my lesson. This year’s Sulman entry is chock full of dolphins.

As I may have mentioned at the old blog, I started collecting vintage view folders a couple of years ago. Lately I’ve been looking at them to see if some sort of narrative is suggested by the sequence of images in these folders. One way of teasing out a story is to extract the figures from their environment and set them out almost like a comic book. I’m hoping that the images are ambiguous enough that viewers will come up with their own stories for these figures.

I spent some time before Christmas playing around with composition.

Hopefully what I’ve settled on won’t project too much of a Brady Bunch vibe.

Side note – after I came up with what I thought was a throw away title for this post, I Googled it and discovered that this was in fact the title of a 1970s political thriller about dolphin assassins! Sweet!

Best. Tagline. Ever.

It’s Australia Day, and despite the torrents of rain that have been an ongoing feature of this summer, I’m going to a barbeque later on today. But before venturing out, I’m patriotically savouring my latest postcard acquisition.

It’s a photo album that a nice lady put together in 1955, full of postcards she purchased during a trip through North Queensland. The cards are quite breathtaking in their eye-watering hyper-saturation. It’s going to be a long-term project carefully scanning each individual card, but here’s a quick taste of some true-blue, dinky-die, vintage Australiana. You can click on each pic to embiggen…

To add to your appreciation of the vibe of 50’s-60’s Australia, here’s a classic from the era. Savour the hospitality, the nostalgia, and the slightly awkward cameo…

I normally don’t bother with new year’s resolutions, but this year I decided to make a couple in relation to my art life. Resolution #1 was to spend this year relaxing a little in the studio and playing around with new ideas. Resolution #2 was to tidy up my online presence.

I’ve spent most of the first few weeks of the year at the day job, covering for people on holidays, so Resolution #1 went hasn’t panned out so far.

Resolution #2 is going a little better. I decided to amalgamate my website and blog into one big extravaganza of art, writing and vintage postcard appreciation. I’m a little sad to be leaving Flocking101 http://flocking101.blogspot.com/ behind, but some of the semi-regular features of the blog (such as Destinations) will still be seen here.

I haven’t quite got the place looking exactly how I want it just yet, so there’ll be some tweaking over the next week or so. In the meantime… Carmen Miranda.