Documentary Drawing for Pop Up School

I’ll be teaching a drawing class at the beautiful Abbotsford Convent for Pop Up School – Documentary Drawing. It will focus on turning the mundane and everyday into art.
Details:
Date: Saturday 20 July 2-5pm

Venue: Antique Bookstore, Abbotsford Convent

Fee: $75 Full $68 Concession Materials will be supplied.

 

Working, thinking

I feel like I have been drawing this drawing forever. Which is utter nonsense because I only started it last week .. perhaps the week before.

But I’m at that point where even though I work and things get drawn and it’s evolving – I feel like it isn’t going anywhere.

Perhaps this is the danger of focusing all of my time on just one artwork. Maybe this is why I ( usually ) work on many artworks at once. Because if there is just one work then I think about that work. I think about it while I’m working on it, I think about it when I am packing up from working on it, I think about it at dinner time, I think about it while I’m showering, spending time with loved ones, changing a nappy. I think about it on trains and in cafés and I think about it while I am trying to sleep. Which is the worst because with no other outside influence I think about it in a hyper-realistic state. I note the textures, the way the ink takes hold of the paper, the layers – I feel myself drawing it.

So then I am doing all of this thinking and feeling and it’s taken up so much of me it almost feels like it is going to implode. There’s too much and when there’s so much information and feelings it’s almost like I’ve experienced this artwork completely and then I think, well, I don’t have to finish it. Because I’m kind of lost to it and what’s the point anyway.

So this is the point I photograph and upload it onto this blog to say look, I’m making things and something is happening – even if my tired brain, eyes and hands tell me otherwise.

 

 

New works in progress

I have set up a new space. It’s bright with natural light, completely the opposite of the painting cave I had in Berlin – though the cave did serve me well! I do have to paint in a sunhat though, the Australian sun is so strong and I sit underneath a skylight.

I’m working towards my exhibition mid year. We will be exhibiting a collection of drawings and paintings – I’ve made a lot of work that has never been exhibited in Australia so we will be choosing from them as well as some newer works.

I’m focusing more of hands and feet at the moment, as well as improving my drawing and painting techniques. Which means the work is more intense but I’m feeling pretty excited about what I’ve been making.

I’ll be working on a few portraits we well, but I’ve been working – collecting and sketching – for these hands and feet for so long I just HAD to start with them.

It’s good to be making works again.

Lily Mae

x

The Lifted Brow

I have drawings all throughout the latest issue of The Lifted Brow ( #15 ) it’s an nifty publication with loads of art, writing and commentary in it.I’m keeping pretty good company in this issue.

You can purchase a copy from here: LINK 

Thank you Sam & Ronnie for your interest and support in my work!

Lily Mae xx

That’s it!

Well this blog has been quite. It used to be where I wrote to share my thoughts, travels, anxieties and joy but since it was hacked mid year and now turned into something I still don’t know how to use, I’ve neglected it.

Sorry.

I really don’t know how to use it and I’m not actually sure anyone reads this anymore but hey. I’m still here, it’s still here. We’ll give it another crack, next year.

This year has been a big one. I’ve faced challenges that I didn’t expect, been in hospital more times than I care for and moved country ( again ), made HEAPS of new and amazing friends and I got gallery representation. I’m super happy, exhausted, perplexed and I’m home.

Mid next year I am to have a solo show alongside Matt. R. Martin at the Scott Livesey Galleries. Though my current situation means I have no where and no time to make work, I have been researching, looking, nutting out in my brain and collecting photographs for a new body of work. So it’s coming. They are coming! I’ll be documenting and sharing my progress here – not on facebook anymore. ( I will post links to the blog posts though. )

Facebook along side all the other social networking media giants keep changing their stance on things and it’s making me pretty nervous. I don’t have time to maintain changing contracts so I hope people will make the effort – which I am trying to do too! and just visit other websites.

( Gosh darn I’ve gotten lazy with checking out new work, events, articles and even news because it’s all of the FB. )

Anyway, 2013 is shaping up to be a big year in terms of work. It’ll be a new adventure working with the gallery and exhibiting alongside Matt so I’m very excited. I’m mostly excited because all I have to do is make amazing work, and I can’t wait for that – now just to find the time and space.

See you in 2013,

Lily Mae

xo

No time for anything but sketching

My partner is still interstate working on Baz Luhrmann’s new film ( I hope Baz is thankful! ) The Great Gatsby and I’m finding it very hard to find time to work. Almost impossible in fact. I was trying to paint out in the shed but it’s not resistant to weather and the heat. So I decided that since I have pushed myself so much for the last two years, it’s time to just scale it right back and wait for the new year.

I am still writing, photographing people and sketching. The sketches are mainly for Berlin Domestic.

Part of me thinks that this is good though. This forced time away from painting and drawing large works is making me do research, sketches – the ground work. I just miss my other half and I never get a sleep in – it’s so fucking hard!

But you just do it.

Next year, it’s going to happen. I’ve also been super blessed with having some of the most incredible people sit for me.

 

News!

This blog has been a bit quite, my apologies. I have been very busy with installing an exhibition, meetings as well as looking after my beautiful daughter while my husband has been working and living interstate.

I have an exhibition up at the Art Gallery of Ballarat – it is in the windows of the gallery. I was interviewed for Tinderbox radio by Amy T who will post an audio link to it soon, so I will post that with some photos from the hilarious day of installing the show.

And it was hilarious.

Thank you Amy T and Julian for the help and Nathan Curnow for the game of pooh sticks.

Also, I am very pleased to announce that I am now a represented artist of the Scott Livesey Galleries! There is an exhibition on at the moment with a few of my works, information here: LINK. It’s on until the 15th of December.

This is Matt.R.Martin and I at the book launch of The Art of James Davis by Ashley Crawford.

If you see a lady struggling with a pram & stupidly large canvases in Brunswick, it’s me.

Today I got in my nanny so I could go to Brunswick, pick up three canvases newly stretched, go to my framers and pick up two paintings freshly framed, throw it all in a cab and get back here within two hours.

I did this because the first place offered to deliver my works at such an obscene price that it actually worked out to be cheaper to hire a nanny and do it myself.

But transport didn’t show up, I forgot where I was and went one too many stops far on the train, I had to stop for coffee ( take away ) and then the canvases turned out to be really heavy. Really, really heavy. It took me all of my strength to carry three large canvases from one end of Brunswick to the other and my framer wasn’t in when I arrived. Sweating and flustered, I tried very hard not to cry. A lovely lady had opened the door, she was really nice and attempting conversation and I was freaking out because I had no more money for the cab nor the nanny..

The lady said I looked too young to have a baby! ( Believe me, I do not. )

The works framed look amazing, I am so impressed with this framer behind the obscure red door. Everyone who has seen my work has had a lot to say – a lot of encouraging, nice and generous things.

I managed to catch a cab with eftpos home – with a man who told me it was lucky we were people who did not have money because if we were, people would be after us. They’d find out about our children and then kidnap them only to call us and tell us of all the horrible things they will do to said children unless we paid them ten million dollars ….

I got home in time, the nanny left for her appointment and then I had to cook for five people, change a pooey nappy, facilitate a phone conversation between Anja and her father and then blog here and there.

I haven’t drawn this evening and I feel slightly guilty.

Only slightly.

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Of late

I unpacked a whole lot of vintage cameras and pieces last week. Some of them still work and I really want to use them, but alas – I have not the time! For now, I will just slowly clean them.

My precious.

I drew at my old haunt, A Minor Place, last week. It was super nice to be there. It’s an amazing thing to be retracing my steps.

I am working on a few pieces but will talk about them in future posts.

And finally, I found this painting which I started and destroyed a long time ago:

 

 

Until soon,

Lily Mae