P.S. HAPPY NEW YEAR
(left: At Sanson Cemetery. Photo by JK Russ; Right: Melancolia (After Durer) 2009, oil on metal, 360mm x 290mm)

JUEVES, EL TRIENTA Y UNO E DICIEMBRE, EL DIA PASADO DE DOS MIL NUEVE.
Some ex-votos with Malevich references in them, mostly of his Suprematist Painting: Eight Red Rectangles, 1915 in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
This painting was shown in Wellington as part of a Stedelijk touring exhibition called Exhibition Of The Century at the City Gallery, Wellington in 1998. It was my last year at art school and although having been over to the UK the previous year, seeing a selection of international artworks on home soil was a buzz, especially the Malevich. It's rough, paint-crazed surface and visible aesthetic decision-making of the scale and placement of the shapes was an eye opener. Its scale impacted on me too, especially compared to say, Sean Scully's painting (I'm not putting down Scully- I'm a huge fan, but just commenting on scale after seeing a large survey show of his work in Manchester in 1997). It really brought home the fact that its probably harder to paint a small painting with impact than it is to use the bombasity of a heroic scale.