A few shots from last night’s opening. Thanks to everyone for making it a great night. If you’re in the Paddington area, please come and see the work for yourself.

iain dawson gallery
20 – 31 October 2009

72a Windsor Street
Paddington, Sydney
www.iaindawson.com/

Leonardo Cremonese Exhibition opening night

Leonardo Cremonese Exhibition opening night

Leonardo Cremonese Exhibition opening night

Leonardo Cremonese Exhibition opening night

Leonardo Cremonese

See the exhibition online: www.iaindawson.com/

I am really pleased to be showing with the Iain Dawson Gallery in Sydney for the first time this month. A big thanks to Iain for all his support and advice this year. I hope you can all make opening night or get along to the show at some point. I feel good about this body of work.

EXHIBITION DETAILS

When: October 20-30, 2009

Where: Iain Dawson Gallery – 72A Windsor St Paddington, Sydney

Opening night: October 20, 6pm.

To see all the works online click here.

Numphios: oil on linen, 66 x 76cm

Dionysian Joy: Oil on linen, 137 x 183cm

Orion's Dog: Oil on linen, 76 x 73cm

To see all the works online click here.

I was really pleased to be chosen as a finalist in the Blake Prize this year. If you can get along to the National Art School in Darlinghurst, come and have a look at the show. It runs until October 3 2009  (my painting is in the downstairs gallery on its own wall). Details below.

Blake Prize Invitation

Another year is well and truly upon us and after my usual summer hiatus I started my painting year this winter with a trip to Brazil where I kicked things off by making some works on paper.

In these works I was still interested in the properties inherent to the materials, as I was last year (see “my creative process unplugged” blog entry below), but with a greater focus on a more metaphysical kind of energy as well.

Since coming back to Australia – and back in the studio – I keep pursuing this direction, as well as using a wider range of materials than the usual oil on linen.

If there is any spiritual insight to be gained from this process I won’t know what it is until sometime after the work is completed… more about it when the time comes.

October 2009 Paddington Show Announced

On another note, I’m happy to announce that  I’m now being represented in Sydney by Iain Dawson Gallery ( www.iaindawson.com ), and have locked in dates for an exhibition there in October 20 to 31 2009.

This show Mainomenos Dionysos will consist of my first consciously Dionysian body of work, produced in 2007 but never previously exhibited. This should be my strongest show to date, since this work marks the consolidation of the new direction I embarked on in 2006 and which was exhibited with great success last year.

If you are on my mailing list you will be receiving an invitation to the opening drinks. If you are not but would like to be please sign up here. Hope to see you there.

It’s indeed been a busy winter and spring and I’ve hence finished another body of work. This work will be exhibited in November 2009 at Tin Sheds Gallery (Sydney) in a group show curated by Charlie Sheard and featuring himself, Floria Tosca and Tom Doherty, as well as myself. Until then you can check out reproductions of the work below. If you’re not on my exhibition mailing list and would like to be, please join here.

Various colours including yellow, green, blue and pink

Earth and charcoal with copper manganese

Burnt bone, iron oxide and earth with copper and manganese

Prussian blue with green and yellow

Lead, cadmium and alizarin plus light and darkness

My painting practice – since 2006 when I finally was able to stop thinking – has been simply the manifestation though me of the creative energy that is inherent in all of us. This energy is the primitive impulse behind every creative activity. It is the core of life itself as understood by the devotees of the Dionysian religion of ancient Greece.

This life/creative force when exited intensely can overflow into a frenzy of erotic madness – mainomenos Dionysos (mad Dionysos). It was this energy in its most phallic, demented state that I opened myself to whenever I worked during 2007 in order to be able  to switch off any rational thought so that the paintings could take their own shape; as autonomously as possible. This process resulted in the craziest, most powerful work I’d ever created – until last year.

Why 2008 was a different story

According to very old Dionysian rites, even before the height of Greek culture, the Dionysian calendar was split into two alternating years. On the first year (depending on how you look at it), Dionysos is absent. He is in the underworld. He is dead. On the following year he is pulsating and overflowing with the virile energy of life (and creativity) to the point of madness (and destruction). It is this second Dionysos – Dionysos Mainomenos – that possessed me during 2007 as mentioned above.

2008 was a different story. I wasn’t overcome by spontaneous creative/sexual madness and had to work in a more earthly way to try and get into the spirit of this more subterranean Dionysos called ‘Dionysos Chthonios’.

As legend has it, this period of Dionysian life is not about mourning his death. Instead there is a yearning for life. Dionysos wants, and indeed needs, to be awakened. Back in the day (as I nostalgically like to refer to antiquity), it was the women devotees of Dionysos, the Thyads, who then became the Meneads during the year of his presence, who awakened the god in the form of the phallus – one of his embodiments; which is also the life (and creative) force within us.

So, if you get my drift, it’s all about life/creativity. Dionysos tells us that life is energy. Modern science respects that and adds matter. So, in order to create paintings I have at my disposal, energy – in the form of my ‘dance’ in the studio, and matter – which are the materials I use.

The energy aspect is harder to fully understand – perhaps one day I might. As for the materials it is my duty as a serious painter to understand them as intimately as possible. They are, in this case, linen and oil paint – which is made of linseed oil plus pigments. Each of these pigments come from different substances, and – if not tampered with by paint manufactures –has its own characteristics which need to be respected and nurtured. It is these pigments that give the titles to these paintings.

The result of this synergy between the different colours (pigments) and the linen is somewhat beyond my control, or so I like to think. The result is in fact the paintings you can see in the images above and will be able to see in the flesh at Tin Sheds Gallery in November 2009.

I was really pleased to be featured in Radar magazine’s premier issue. Radar is a Sydney-based publication that is aiming to show off the best of Brasil to an Australian audience. I know the launch edition was a big project, so a huge thanks to Andrea Moitinho and her team for doing a great job (and including my work). 

Radar Magazine arts profile

 I’m pleased to say that since this last exhibition there has been a lot of interest and a lot of energy around my work.

Amongst other things my website will be featured on NY Arts Magazine’s catalogue of websites to be published in November and is already online on their site. See my profile here.

As soon as I get a chance I will also have a profile up on www.artreview.com which is an interesting site to visit or join, if you are into this web stuff. There is a good chance you are; you are reading this aren’t you?

As I was saying, there has been a lot of focus on my recently completed work; but I haven’t forgotten what is really important for an artist – the ongoing creation of work. Since May I’ve been deep in the throes of producing my next body of work, which – if my usual work rhythm is repeated this year, should be finished around December. 

This year I keep going with my investigations on working by taping into an earthly or Dionysian energy rather than using my conscious mind in the creative process. Early in August I was able to go on a quick trip to a secluded spot on the NSW coast where I completed a couple of important works in this respect.

It has been a cold but beautiful winter in Australia. Let’s see what spring will bring.

Painting at dusk in the bush

My assistant, Gabriel

Leaving Thought Behind

Well, it took a while to pull it off but my first public solo show in a couple of years went really well with many of the works going to new owners. A huge thanks to Feyona van Stom for providing a wonderful space and a great opening night. (I appreciate you washing those 150 wine glasses too!) Despite it being a cold winter’s night we pulled a big crowd and I was so happy to hear people talking about ART instead of politics, the weather or real estate.

The works, for those who missed it, represented a major turning point in my painting practice because they were created in the year in which I was able, for the first time, to truly avoid the influence of the mind on my painting.

This let me produce works of a creative purity that I could only glimpse – but never fully grasp previously. This work also paved the way for the next body of work – produced in 2007. In fact it may be the direction I will spend the rest of my life pursuing!

Anyway, better get back to the studio.