The Friday Report

Susan Buret. See All Without Looking.(Detail). 2006.© Acrylic, Shredded Visa Document

 and Ink on Canvas.75cm x 3755cm. 

The weeks gallop along. I don’t know if I imagine it, but does the western clock run faster in the 3 months before Christmas? I don’t hold any specific religious beliefs so it can only be from the comments of others and references in the media that I get this feeling of racing time. Here in the southern hemisphere the days are growing longer so it doesn’t make much sense at all. (I want to end this paragraph with a punctuation mark which expresses bewilderment, searching, question to the universe. At a time when new words and symbols appear in electronic communications I think there is a place in language for a new punctuation mark).

As the week whooshed by the builders finished up in my studio on Tuesday. I am still not in there as the painter and electrician can’t come until next week. I still have this nebulous vision of where everything will be in the space.

This week's nudge came from Anita Traverso, my gallery director in Melbourne, who asked how I was going with translating the works on paper I showed recently in Diary Notes from a New World into works on canvas for my exhibition next year. I have been experimenting with small scale works but still haven’t achieved the transcluency and luminosity that I getting with waterbased media on paper. Then one morning I woke with a new idea which involves more gessoing and using really diluted paint. I think it will work.

On Monday I wrote an artist's profile for a fellow artist. I love writing about other peoples work and have previously written catalogue essays for other artists. I would like to do more of this so I am considering marketing my services to other artists.

On Friday, I went to Sydney to visit Lyndal Hargrave and Jacinta Howard  who were shoeing their work at Geomancer Fine Art’s stall at Art Sydney 09. Jacinta’s paintings and Lyndal’s Sculptures and paintings along with the work at off the wall were the highlights of the show. It was sad to see that many of the galleries that were there last year had pulled out. I felt that the overall standard of work had fallen.

Next week I hope to start moving into my studio and continue working at my new techniques on canvas. My work has often developed from having a vision in my head and finding the technical means to transpose the vision onto canvas. This search led me to overlay paint with shredded documents and then stamp over that so, the search for the layered shifting image continues……