I’ve been painting Allison Browning who is an Australian writer. You can see her work here: LINK!

I met Allison on my brief trip to Australia earlier this year – her house was full of beautiful things and she was really lovely to speak to and work with. I originally wanted to use this as a drawing but with the colours of her skin, dress and the other objects in this image made me change my mind – I felt it best to explore this image with paint.

I found this little photo at the markets on Bergmann Straße on Saturday mornings:

Here are a few drawings I have been working on lately. I have been exploring new textures and backgrounds as I usually just work with solitary figures. These drawings are a part of an extremely large and daunting project I have taken upon – I will write more about it later.

All drawings from this project are on 30 x 30cm pieces of water colour paper and all are drawn in fine liner pen.

“BlueCrib”

“Crawling”

“Marks”

It’s less than a month to Christmas!

It’s getting cold cold cold in Berlin and the sun is setting about 4PM. We have moved house again – this new place is a treasure. It’s in a very old building, I have eight flights of stairs to carry a baby up but we get allllllll of the light that this city has to offer at this time of the year.

Here are some photos I have taken of late:

Mitte.

PHIA in Hasen Heide on an Autumn afternoon.

Outside my front door I can check out my neighbors shoes.

Today Anja goes for a walk with her Daddy & Sam.

Will art write soon.

Here is the warm up poster for the Melodica festival – I went to a few and got to see people like Phia, Owls of the Swamp, Susanna Berivan and Ray Mann perform. Click on their names to listen to their tunes – all amazing and all very different .

Here is the poster for the actual festival.. Featuring a dancing fox, badge playing ukulele, a squirrel and a glockenspiel and a bunny playing tambourine:

They also printed the bunny on a bag:

Nat Grant, AKA Mellow Kitty, has released a new 6-track album featuring one of my little squirrels on it.

And last but not least, here’s a new little guy I did the other night. I’d write more but the internet has crashed so many times while trying to do this that I am fed up!

Bye!

An Hour Old
Oil on Canvas
80 x 60 cm

I finished this painting a while ago but just let it sit on my wall in my studio before photographing it. I think I took so long as I wasn’t sure if it was finished but also this is a very personal piece.

This is from a few photos that we first took of Anja after her birth. It’s also based on my faded memory of that event.

She was so purple.

My poem ‘His Hand’ has been shown on the scrolling text at Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia, as a part of the Overload Poetry Festival.
I don’t really know more details and had no idea it was accepted, but the lovely Michael Reynolds took the photograph for me.

Saturday evening was our studio’s opening – It was the first art event of mine that I have been to since July 2009! So many people showed up and though they had to climb through the window, it got packed and just kept going.

My studio with work in progress & a beer.

Me, in a hat.

‘Avin’ a laff.

Here a few progress shots of my latest painting ‘Cinnamon’:

I didn’t expect this painting to take form so quickly, but I have been working on my painting technique for the
last few months and I have found working hard on the undercoat is very important. I used to just coat the canvas in burnt sienna, do a quick pencil sketch of what I wanted to paint and try and build it up from that. But I find actually painting the painting all in burnt sienna, mixing in some raw umbra for the darker parts like eyes, nostrils, bone structure; really helps to shape the whole painting.
Once the undercoat is touch dry I begin with the flesh tones and marking out the highlights. It’s important for me to get the face and flesh elements well underway before worrying about other elements of the painting such as cloth. Because if you fuck the face and flesh up, you better stop there.

Then I begin to work on the background, the hat and top; they don’t usually need as much work. I also start to add more highlights and shade to the flesh.
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Then it is just a matter of adding and subtracting highlights and shades.. Often at this point I begin to feel I am getting nowhere as this ‘tweaking’ can take weeks and/or months with some paintings.

I am chuffed with the outcome of this painting and think I have made some pretty important steps technically. I am already starting another painting to join this one and hope to turn it into a series of work.
I haven’t actually got any plans as such for this painting, except that it will be on show for the studio I work in’s opening on Saturday the 17th of September. Which is at the Kreuzberg Bethanien- Mariannenplatz 2
10997 Berlin, U-bahn Kottbusser Tor. 18:
00 to 21:00.
Feel free to come down, and literally, as we are in the basement.