Exhibition open 24/7 Tweet

'The Window' is a space reserved for artists local to the Art Gallery of Ballarat. As the name suggests, it is a window (actually two of them) at the front of the gallery, on the street. Anyone walking past can see the exhibitions for free 24/7. I have a selection of my paintings hung there now, until January 2.

Get thee along & have a peek.

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A production line of painting panels Tweet

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Creative Cauldron - Fred Williams Tweet

Iron Ore Hill Mount Turner

 

Hillside

There are some hills just outside Bacchus Marsh as I drive to Melbourne from Ballan that look like the quintessential Fred Williams landscape. High horizon, sparse squiggly-dot trees, textured, muted tones. I love driving past it. It's like seeing the essence of what he achieved in his painting reflected back on a grand scale in life. A giant living version of how he saw the views.

 

Iron Ore Landscape

Red Landscape

‘In Australia there is no focal point. Obviously it was too good a thing for me to pass up.’ Rather than adopting conventional perspective, space is flattened and tilted towards the viewer, implying the microcosm within the macrocosm and an aerial viewpoint. From his retrospective at the NGA.

Upwey Landscape

Burning Tree Stump

Wikipedia:

His interest in finding an aesthetic 'language' with which to express the very un-European Australian landscape. This was grounded in establishing a pictorial equivalent to the overwhelmingly vast, primarily flat landscape, in which the traditional European relationship of foreground to background breaks down, necessitating a complete re-imagining of compositional space. In this, Williams looked to the approach taken by Australian Aboriginal artists.

You Yangs Landscape

Dry Creek Bed Werribee Gorge I

He managed to achieve the completely new way of representing the landscape (no small accomplishment) that he aimed for and his paintings are instantly recognisable from across a room because of it. 

 

Circle Landscape Upwey

Claypans

The influence of Aboriginal art is always apparent in the dots and pattern, the earthy muted tones, the aerial like view.

Silver And Grey

Yellow Landscape

His artwork has a texture and life that is breathtaking in real life. These small reproductions do his paintings no justice whatsoever. Even his abstracted versions of landscapes capture a distinct feeling of what it's like to stand in a vast Australian landscape and feel the spaciousness.

 

Hardy River Mount Turner Syncline

Upwey Landscape II

 Fred Williams official website: http://www.fredwilliams.me.com.au/index.html

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Recovery week Tweet

Still on go-slow and recovery after the intensity of the art fair of last weekend. The veggie patch is looking mighty fine with the extra tinkering and pottering it's been receiving in my extra downtime. Loads of rain and sunshine has helped everything grow.

At least we are getting more than just grass.

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Ballarat Artisan Fair 2011 Tweet

It was an exhausting and successful weekend of art fair goodness, from which it has taken me three full days to recover. Bugger being an introvert - I can meet and greet and chat all day with people as well as anyone else, but when it's all over a recharge is not enough - I need a brand new battery!

Despite the tiringness, it was wonderful to meet so many people, to see people's reactions to the artwork and the cookbook concept (overwhelmingly postive) and to meet a bunch of likeminded local creatives.

Below are my photos from the event, previously published on FB.

Another roundup, including loads more photos of the event (and not written by me!) over at the Ballarat Independent: http://theballaratindependent.com.au/news/article/nanna-technology-and-artisan-craft-a-fine-mix 

"Ballarat's talented artists and artisans were once again a feature over the weekend at the second Ballarat Artisan Festival. A wonderfully diverse array of work was on show with contemporary and traditional artworks, shoemaking, glass works, sculpture, cartooning, textiles and several other crafts... "

All set up and in the swing of the fair.

A little bit of live painting is more interesting for everyone.

Early in the setup before the framed paintings started walking off the walls.

The crafty goodness of Grace By the Lake.

Jenny and Caron, of Grace By the Lake - very friendly faces.

Linda of South Street Art Studio with her meditation inspired works.

Linda runs both art and meditation classes at South Street Art Studio. She's a very supportive personality.

Christine Hickson, whom I was introduced to by several sets of people. Obviously we were meant to meet!

The exquisite watercolours of Christine Hickson. She needs an Etsy store as her work is gorgeous & people were loving it.

Pauline O'Shannessy-dowling with her intricate and wonderful works.

One of these large intruiging abstractish pieces is a prizewinner.

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Setting Up an Art Fair or Market Stall Tweet

Set up of my stall in progress for the Ballarat Artisan Fair

Ballarat Artisan Fair. This Friday, Saturday and Sunday 4th, 5th & 6th November 2011. The Mining Exchange, 8 Lydiard St, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia (just a few doors down from the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery). 10am - 4pm each day. Some forty or so regional artists will be displaying and selling their creations, along with music, coffee, nibbles, artists talks and demonstrations. Come along if you can.

Today has been consumed with the set up of my stall at the Ballarat Artisan Fair. This is the first time I've prepared for an art fair. It's taken several weeks to get everything together, from varnishing all the (70+) paintings, to sourcing gift bags (that never arrived!) to printing promotional material. Below is a list of everything I've been able to think of to take along or have prepared. I'll append it afterwards as there are bound to be new insights gained from participating in the event.

Table

• Trestle table or two
• Many markets require a white table cover, so get a white sheet or two, or something nicer such as velvet (not velveteen as it looks cheap) or satin or canvas
• Large butterfly clips for clipping tablecloth to table, and gaffa tape the same colour as the table cover for hiding the clips
• Clamps for backup clipping tablecloth to table
• A bucket or box as a bin for under your table is rather handy

Promotional material

• Business name banner with rope and gaffa tape for hanging options
• Business cards
• Email list signup sheet on clipboard
• Pens for signup sheet, attached by string
• Postcards of artwork
• Photo books of artwork - show off more than you can bring on the day as interested people may ask for a commission based on what they see you are capable of
• Photo board of artwork - lots of artwork to choose from on the day but too many paintings to display at once? Show photo samples of your full range. Individual artworks can be shown on request.
• Artist statement for display, possibly laminated
• Price tags, ready and blank (who knows what will happen on the day and how many you will need)
• Nice paper to print out price tags and artist statement and any other small signage

Displaying artwork

• Figure out the stall design and layout first
• Builders level for getting frames hung straight (so good)
• Wire/hooks/picture hooks
• Framing wire (make sure it's rated to cope with more than double the weight your work weighs)
• Fishing wire to make a washing line artwork display
• Sinkers to weight down display wire to make it stay taught
• Small bulldog clips x 24 for hanging unframed artwork washing line style (these are super handy)
• Cotton gloves for handling artwork
• Frames, ready to hang
• Pliers - fat and thin
• Hammer
• Wirecutters
• Screwdrivers - an assortment
• Masking tape
• Scissors
• Gaffa tape / cloth tape in colours to match your display elements
• Blu-tack 
• Double sided tape
• Backboard/screen on which to hang artwork
• Window cleaner and paper towels for cleaning the glass & frames - essential

Storing artwork

• Portable box storage system
• Glassine paper for unframed artwork

Looking after me

1. Portable music
2. Lunch - no heating required, not messy
3. Snacks - nuts, fruit, quick, not messy
4. Water - have two litres
5. Coffee, tea, hot drink in thermos or hot water plus bags/containers, milk
6. Camping chair or something to sit on, plus a cover to make this presentable

Selling artwork

• Change from bank for cash sales
• Cash storage - bumbag or tin or wallet
• Credit card payment facilities - if not provided, take a laptop with easy access to the Paypal site, laptop power supply, powerboard and extension cord
• Certificates of authenticity - ready to print (take printer, extension cord and spare ink) or already printed out in doubles and take carbon paper
• Clip board with attached pen for filling out the COA's - very handy
• Packaging for sold artwork - precut cardboard sleeves / boxes or gift bags and bubble wrap
• Phone, charged up
• Red dot stickers
• Paintings, varnished and framed
• Pencils
• Pens
• Notepads
• Packing tape 
• Regular stickytape / sellotape

If you're an artist and have useful notes to add from your experiences of art fairs, please enlighten the rest of us in the comments.

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Corn Patties or Fritters Tweet

Chunky. Versatile. Homely. Easy.

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Food painting artwork

is 30 x 30cm acrylic with oil transfer drawing on Saunders Waterford 100% cotton archival paper. Exploring the decorative, flourish filled style of Alfonse Mucha, the much loved and celebrated artist of the Art Nouveau era. Many of his pictures make a show of long swirling hair, and repeated circular patterns. I could 'see' that the wispy tendrils of the sweetcorn husk and the circular corn kernals would fit right in to a wistful Mucha-like design.


Did you know you can download images of the paintings for your own personal (not commercial) use? Computer wallpaper, Facebook profile picture, yes you can. Find your favourite painting on Flickr, go to actions, view all sizes, download the size you want to your device, set it as your wallpaper or profile. And tell your friends where it came from :)


Original artwork can be purchased in the Official Art Store. This particular piece is currently drying and will be available shortly. To find out exactly when that is, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.

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The meatless meals recipe

I have a bit more than tinkered with the family recipe I had for corn patties. Now there is much more corn flavour and the tinge of glue has been banished. These are light and fluffy and simple to make. I find they are awesome as a satisfying and light summer meal with roast tomatoes, lettuce and onion jam (recipe coming soon) or salsa (recipe coming soon), or as part of a veggie breakfast fryup. They can be used as a vege burger too. Yes, they are versatile.


1/2 cup plain flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarb soda (this makes the patties rise. Leave it out if you want corn doorstops. Add extra in if you like the taste of bleurgh.)
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/2 cups corn kernals (about 3 large cobs of corn)
2 spring onions, chopped
optional 1/2 medium red capsicum diced into pieces 1cm or smaller so they cook through
butter for frying

Mix flour, salt and bicarb.
Add the eggs and mix until smooth.
Add the corn, spring onion (and capsicum).
Mix thoroughly. It will be quite thick and there will seem to be very little to hold it all together. That's ok.
Fry in butter like pancakes on a medium to high heat. I find 2 dessertspoons makes a good sized pattie. This amount of mix makes 8-10 patties of this size. Try to only turn these once. Like pancakes, watch for the bubbles appearing on the surface before attempting to flip them as this turn can be a bit delicate. Be patient.

Gobble down on 8-10 patties. I find 2 or 3 patties per person (depending on their starvation level) works well when served with salad and condiments as suggested above. So that means this serves 3-4 people.

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More vegetarian cookbook goodies

Need help with cooking conversions? Download this handy dandy pdf of cooking conversion charts for every cooking measuring system I could find. It should make your life easier.

Where are the rest of the vegetarian dinner recipes? They're all in the Table of Contents.

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