Today is probably the first seriously cold day we’ve had this year. This makes me sad, because I will now have to drag out the many, many layers of clothes that form my Winter Studio Wardrobe. As my studio is in a large warehouse space, heaters are a touch ineffectual. So out come the studio beanie, the studio fleecy tops, the studio fleecy tights that go under the studio jeans…

Painting scantily clad Queenslanders only adds to the torture.

Holiday Attractions #7

Holiday Attractions #8

Soon-to-be Holiday Attractions #9

Holiday Attractions #7 and #8 will be making their way to Platform72 this week. The lorikeet swarm will be spending the next couple of days drying out. Unlike most of the subjects in this series so far, I have had an actual encounter with the lorikeets at Currumbin Sanctuary. If you were a child in the late 70s and early 80s, having a photo of yourself struggling under the weight of a frenzied storm of sugar-jacked parrots was de rigueur.

After all the excitement last week, I’ve jumped straight back into the studio to continue with the small Holiday Attractions paintings I’ve been playing with for the last few months. I’ll be putting them up on this page as they progress, and they’ll be making regular appearances at Platform72.

I think that this half-finished painting is a good example of what happens when postcard figures slip from their moorings. These ladies are a pair of friendly Surfers Paradise Meter Maids. Extracted from the beachside streets of the late 60s, their stance almost looks a little threatening.

Nice parking meter you’ve got there. Be a shame if something happened to it…

It’s been an exciting time around here, what with relatives visiting from overseas and a quick trip to Melbourne and our oven attempting to commit suicide and take the flat with it (foiled by the local fire dept.). And the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes.

The last couple of days are a bit of a blur. Artist lunch at AGNSW, prize announcement at AGNSW, preview at AGNSW, opening night at AGNSW… Lots of vino and canapés and chats with other Sulman finalists (Sulmanites? Sulmanistas?).

Where in the World is Tim Storrier?

I wasn’t terribly disappointed at not winning – mostly because I didn’t expect to, and partly because the first time I’ve seen this work on the wall, as opposed to my studio floor. It doesn’t look too bad!

Pet By Maz Dixon - 2012 Sulman Prize

As of last night they hadn’t put up artist statements for the Sulman. Here’s mine:

As a child much of my view of the world was filtered through souvenir ephemera such as postcards. I now collect postcards, particularly Australian ones from the 50s, 60s and 70s. My art practice is an exploration of how mass-produced souvenirs affect how we see the world. The subject matter for Pet comes from a 1960s postcard folder of a dolphin pool at Tweed Heads. I have plucked figures from the folder and placed them on a series of blank panels, suggesting a narrative in the form of a comic book or storyboard. Liberated from the strictures of a pre-determined experience, viewers are free to construct whatever narrative they like around these images.

I’ve only started playing around with this concept in the last few months, but so far the response has been quite positive, with selection for the Sulman and the three panels that were in the Linden Postcard show being snapped up. If you’re in Sydney you can also check out a couple of these pieces in Platform72 in Darlinghurst.

Yesterday, I got a call I wasn’t expecting. It appears that I am a finalist in the Sulman Prize, and my work will be hanging in the Art Gallery of NSW.

I’m still a little stunned by the news, but I think one of the panels of my Sulman-aspiring work adequately expresses my reaction:

Woo!

When Joseph Seagram and Sons commissioned Rothko to produce paintings for the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York, the artist was consumed by conflicting emotions. Reconfiguring his usual format to conform with the restaurant’s design, Rothko laboured for months before travelling to Europe, finding further inspiration for paintings that would “ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room”. Upon returning to NYC and viewing the shiny new space that was to house the paintings, Rothko finally spat the dummy, returned the cash advance and refused to finish the commission. The paintings were kept in storage for the next decade.

When I heard that one of my collages had been purchased to hang in chef Bill Granger’s new restaurant in Tokyo, I thought “Sweet!” and had a couple of wines to celebrate.

"Decline and Fall", 2010

Life as an artist is so much less dramatic when you’re not an internationally renowned abstract expressionist.

The sale came about through the opening of Platform72, a new retail space for artists and designers in Darlinghurst. The space is the brainchild of Sam Mitchell-Fin and Juliet Rosser, and is part of the City of Sydney’s efforts to revitalise Oxford Street. The official opening on Friday was packed out.

Window sculpture by Kirsten Fredricks

Sculpture by Freya Jobbins

Sam, Juliet and their team have put together a really great space with some fabulous artists, and I’m looking forward to having my work there for the next couple of months.

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.