DOMINGO, EL SIETE DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ
I was looking through a Milan Kunc book I bought recently and spied a milk carton, similar to the ones I painted in 1997 (mentioned in this blog) and also in my 2008 painting 'Travelling May Induce Calcium Deficiency'. We both have used a 'milch' label, which I decided to use as when we were travelling around Germany in 2008, there was some conspiracy with dairy processing plants in Germany at the time - something to do with milk tampering of some sorts. I also included 'malk' which comes from a Simpsons episode where Springfield Elementary needed to make budget cuts so they supplied the students with 'malk'.
I've been looking at my 'Calcium Deficiency' painting recently because I've decided to do another version of it, up-scaled and with a few different techniques. I've specifically remodelled the figure's face, combining a three-quarter view of the Sphinx's head with a three-quarter view of Angelina Jolie's face. There's a few other aspects i'll be tweaking or roughing up, as the painting needs...

left: Milan Kunc, Easy Rider, 1992

SABATO, EL SEIS DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ

Two more plates I've recently finished. They're only at the under-glazed stage, so they're ready to be fired then clear-glazed which will create higher contrast with the blue tones.

VIERNES, EL CINCO DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ
I've started working on a large canvas, so I'll need big globules of paint to work with on my palette. I love this colour combination on the right.

JUEVES, EL CUATRO DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ
Another tooth reference, exactly a decade apart. The work on the left was painted in 1997 while I was at art-school and was part of an installation of paintings called '69 Ways To Make Me Look Stupid'. The text says 'wisdom doesn't come from your teeth' and depicts a lollypop skull looking at a mail box. The ex-voto on the right, again about teeth, ended up just being a sensitivity issue.

MIERCOLES, EL TRES DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ
A new painting, Culturally Baroque (oil on canvas, 400mm x 300mm, courtesy of PAULNACHE). The title of the painting is also the title for a ceramic sculpture that will be part of my exhibition, Malfunction Baroque at the Rayner Brothers Gallery in Whanganui, opening 1st of April, 2010. The exhibition includes seventeen new ceramic sculptures and plates.

MARTES, EL DOS DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ
Tonight I have three paintings (one new, two old) in a faculty exhibition at the Federal Gallery in Whanganui. The Federal is the institutional exhibition space of UCOL, Whanganui and is named after its original premises, the Federal Hotel located on the corner of Taupo Quay and Market Place. I believe the exhibition will include work by tutors from Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Fashion Design and CAD. The exhibition opens at 5pm, 2nd of March and finishes on the 13th of March, 2010.

from left to right: Mother Nature, 2009; Parochial Martyr Corazon, 2010; The Beginning of the End, 2009. All oil on metal, 360mm x 290mm each.

LUNES, EL UNO DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ

Matthew Summers had presented a small group of perfectly-formed paintings available for purchase on his blog/website. There are nine paintings presented in total and belong to a series of works that reference landscapes overseas that Matthew has visited and sketched.
Matthew was recently included in Warwick Brown's 'Seen This Century - 100 Contemporary New Zealand Artists'. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout New Zealand, including an exhibition my partner and I curated at the Sarjeant Gallery, called Prologue. You can see some examples of his work in the exhibition here. On the Prologue website, please click on the four paintings in a grid format on the lower photograph to view Matthew's paintings.

DOMINGO, EL VEINTIOCHO DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
I took an epic, yet uber-quick trip down to Wellington to see The 3ds play at San Francisco Bath House on Friday night. It was a stunning gig, with an almost identical setlist to what they played at the Laneways Festival about a month ago. I love the inclusion of The Young and The Restless from The Venus Trail, one of my favourite all-time songs (second on the setlist). A couple of strange events happened that evening too, for instance,I found out that it was David Mitchell's son Oscar who rescued myself and my friend Aaron from being crushed by a massive garden umbrella at Nikau Cafe by the City Gallery, just hours prior to the gig.
Below are a couple of terrible cell-phone pics of David Mitchell.

SABATO, EL VEINTISIETE DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
The two images on the left of the milk cartons were painted in my final year at art school in 1998, lamenting the fact that two of my paintings (one, a pink painting of a boxer dog called Morgan and the second, an oddly shaped canvas depicting an abstracted Martin Puryear sculpture) 'disappeared' from my studio the previous year. I'm not too cut up about it, despite the fact that I hope whoever took those paintings suffers an eye-gouging from the painting falling off the wall, or something similar and as effective.
Anyway, I just thought it interesting that almost exactly 10 years later, I painted two milk cartons on 'Travelling May Induce Calcium Deficiency', 2008, oil on canvas, 1000mm x 800mm.

VIERNES, EL VEINTISEIS DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
Our friend Kendra has recently headed back to the USA. I painted this ex-voto for her departure, mostly because I was supposed to make Kendra a mug to swap the one she made for me. I'll post images of Kendra's mug soon. You can visit Kendra's blog here.

JUEVES, EL VEINTICINCO DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
I'd been talking with a friend about where the chain is going in a recent painting I'm half-way through. (the She-Wolf with apt Romulus and Remus replacements) I like the mystery of ambiguity and like to open possibilities of 'reading' rather than hammer down the idea. Roy Dunningham summed it up pretty well in a statement from this article,

"...This diversity of sources creates a guessing game for viewers. When are the sometimes strange combinations of images truly impulsive as in pure surrealism, and when is there a deliberate agenda to be deciphered by the viewer? Sometimes it may be the sheer fun of creating visual puns and conundrums or some serious social comment to which the text gives a clue..."

I recently remembered a work that I had seen while over in Washington DC, a Martin Puryear sculpture that uses the same ambiguity or multiple reading - Le Prix (2005, below right) I think, is a fantastic allegory and analogy for being an artist. What is the ring of the chain being suspended by? What is pulling it? Where is it trying to get to? The title Le Prix, in translation can either mean the prize or the price - to me, commenting on the so-called muse of art-making, the sacrifice of the artist and the rewards of making art.

MIERCOLES, EL VEINTICUATRO DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ

Here's a link to Tony Fitzpatrick's Blog, called No.9. Tony is one of my favourite contemporary American artists and we got to meet him when we were travelling around USA in 2008. He has a studio in Buckstown in Chicago, where I couldn't resist buying a small etching from him. He also very kindly gave us copies of his three-volume set, The Wonder. He's an amazing guy - an artistic polyglot, as he's a poet, writer (his blog posts are amazing reads), artist, social commentator and, in the past, hes been a boxer. I'll put a link to his blog on my side panel to the right under ephemera.

Tony Fitzpatrick, The Dog of Winter (for 10 Bears), collage, mixed media.

MARTES, EL VEINTITRES DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ

I received this image (an elaboration on my post from last Wednesday) in my email box the other day, anonymous to me, my website proxy server showed that the person comes from Sydney, Australia. It's good to have people looking and seeing. This person has picked up on a few other similarities (very neatly compared using colour-coded boxes - if only I was that diligent!) that I didn't compare as I wanted to just point out the obviously appropriated forms and symbols.

LUNES, EL VEINTIDOS DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
REVERSING THE EFFECTS OF MELANCHOLY.
This is the way that Durer would have seen the image.

UN CRUZ PARA DOMINGO, EL VEINTE DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
A new Orthodox-style crucifix, featuring two aminas figures with a blue border

SABATO, EL VEINTE DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
A new ex-voto that I've recently 'antiqued', scanned, colour-corrected and all that other guff (dated 1st of December, 2009). I had to break a rule with this one. Usually, if I'm planning on painting an ex-voto, I'll only give myself a couple of days from the event to complete it, otherwise its intensity and time of possibly existing passes, so it should disappear into the ether with all the other events in my life that I decide not to document. I had a back-log of important ex-votos to complete and since we've been travelling around NZ a lot, I felt I could let this one pass as the whole 'teeth' issue comes up a lot in this ongoing series.
I completed another tooth ex-voto once got back from Wellington last week, in regards to the recent filling I received. It's the first filling I've had since I was 17.

VIERNES, EL DIECINUEVE DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
An invitation to Paul Maseyk's latest exhibition at Avid, opening this Friday.

JUEVES, EL DIECIOCHO DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
Another comparison, this time between an untitled Max Ernst hand-coloured collages and one of Hammond's Zoomorphic Lounge studies.

MIERCOLES, EL DIECISIETE DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
Another comparison, this time to Giorgio Ghisi's 1561 multi-titled engraving The Allegory of Life or The Dream of Raphael or The Melancholy of Michelangelo. The Hammond paintings are The Green Room II, 2009 and Perfect Pitch, 2007. The Ghisi print is obviously a strong lodestone for Hammond, as he's used both symbols from the print (the enlarging horizontal swirl and the pose of the Diana-type figure, who is probably an allegory for an adventurer) and the composition.

MARTES, EL DIECISEIS DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
A comparison of a painting by WD Hammond called Snare and Decoy, 1995 and a hand-coloured etching by Thomas Rowlandson called Ague and Fever, 1788.
In the Rowlandson etching, ague, wrapped around the patient, is commonly referred to as a snake, although its similarity to Hammond's birds is uncanny, especially with its huia-like beak.