MIERCOLES, EL VIENTIUNO DE MARZO, VENINTE-DOCE
Yesterday at my talk, I mentioned Bosch's painting in the Prado, 'Lubbert Das/Extracting the Stone of Madness' and how it related to my retablo '1994' (see below). Click on the link above to see the alternative translation of Lubbert Das that influenced my painting.

VIERNES, EL TRES DE JUNIO, VEINTE-ONCE
A short video of my ceramic 'Golgotha Wine Decanter' fresh out of the kiln. This work will be in an upcoming group exhibition at the Rayner Brothers Gallery in Whanganui, New Zealand in the latter half of the year.

MIERCOLES, EL TRECE DE ABRIL, VEINTE-ONCE

DOMINGO, EL DIEZ DE ABRIL, VEINTE-ONCE

SABATO, EL DIECINUEVE DE MARZO, VEINTI-ONCE
The photo, top-left, is a corpus-arm of a Crucified Christ statue that used to hang in the east chapel of the San Xavier Mission in Tucson, AZ. This is all that is left. It interested me as the rough wood skeleton is covered in canvas, then gessoed and polychromed. I knew that this was part of the process of making santos, but it's hard to see on complete forms. The saggy, torn canvas brought back memories of the skin surface of one of those bodies found in the bogs in a museum in the the UK. I also remembered a sketchbook drawing and a failed sculpture that I had made in preparation for my show at the Sarjeant in Whanganui in 2007. I had tried to recreate an arm out of cardboard and hot glue, nailed to wood with an ex-voto hanging off it. It didn't work, so I moved to casting in plaster, and the bottom left photo was the outcome. With molds, you can cast and recast, so I did a few variations on the dissected hand, looking at galvanisation, the power of the symbol of the hand. All these pics besides the San Xavier arm can be seen on the MOIV website here:
http://moiv.mattcouper.com/graveyore.html

LUNES, EL VEINTIUNO DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-ONCE
Our latest acquisition, a ceramic crucifix by Seattle artist, Charles Krafft. The vertical text reads 'No Spitting On The Swans'.

EL CRUZ DE LA DIA, DOMINGO, EL TRIENTE Y UNO DE OCTUBRE, VIENTE-DIEZ

Today we visited the huge Swap Meet in North Las Vegas. We'd been there in 2004 and 2008, so this was our first visit back there since moving. I picked up a lovely, almost complete crucifix with wooden inlay. It's had a new halo and skull and bones added.

DOMINGO, EL DIECINUEVE DE SEPTIEMBRE, VIENTE-DIEZ
Jo founds this crucifix while rummaging through some frames at the local thrift store. It's one of the more odd modern crucifixes I seen - the cross is cut in perspective and the corpus is made out of cut out pieces of aluminium. It's missing a couple of pieces, but that just adds to its quirkiness. I see it as my modern 'St John of the Cross' crucifix, because of the strangely-angled crucifix.

JUEVES, EL VEINTINUEVE DE JULIO, VENITE-DIEZ

Missed a post yesterday, sorry. Tuesday - I looked around Downtown Oakland and attempted to get out to St. Elizabeth parish in Fruitvale, but it was closed in the afternoon. More luck yesterday and got some 'raw material' photos (see below). More info on El Cristo Negro here. Yesterday was also clean-up-the-house-and-wash-O day, before M, D, X and F get back from Spain.

JUEVES, EL QUINCE DE JULIO, VEINTE-DIEZ
Before leaving New Zealand, I got one of Paul Rayner's 'Jesus Saves' money-box crucifixes. It's an excellent to my crucifix collection, now numbering just over one-hundred.
The current Rayner Brothers exhibition, Cheesy Moulds is an exceptionally good show with a mix of mould works, teapots, photographs and money-boxes. A must-see if you're in Whanganui, New Zealand.

SABATO, EL DIEZ DE JULIO, VEINTE-DIEZ
Below are the final three works I'll finish in New Zealand. They are intended as a triptych and read as a narrative. From left to right they are titled Creator, Nurturer and Lifegiver. The are all oil on metal and framed in a Mexican Colonial style. The photo was taken at Paul Maseyk's studio in Putiki, Whanganui.

MIERCOLES, EL SIETE DE JULIO, VEINTE-DIEZ
I've just finished a couple of new scrimshaw (which I'll post here soon) and while I was looking through my archives, I found images of a scrimshaw object in the North Otago Museum in Oamaru (bottom, right).
After returning from a trip around the South Island in 2005, I made the Oamaru Altar (top and bottom, left; 2006, 380 x 300 x 310mm, oil on found wooden bowls, scrimshaw, wire and thirty New Zealand five-cent coins). I wanted to add something in the centre of the scrimshaw as they look like an archway so I painted a small wooden bowl that was kicking around.
The photograph of Christ I took at St. Patrick's basilica in Oamaru. I was pretty close to deleting this image, until I uploaded it onto my computer was stuck by its Cubist or Futurist-type aura or penumbra.

This work is part of a private collection in Petone.

MARTES, EL QUINCE DE JUNIO, VEINTE-DIEZ
A new retablo, just completed. It's a monochrome and reversed version of this retablo I completed late last year. In the fashion of my last few posts, I guess the Christ figure should be called 'El Cristo del Gran Sello de los Estados Unidos de América', as the Christ figure is crucified on the partial remains of the obverse of the Great Seal. I've used the symbol on the reverse of The Great Seal many times, so I thought it would be good to tackle the more known symbol on the front. You can see past versions I tried here and here.
This painting is very much about moving overseas, as have been the last several works I've completed over the past month. Also, I've just about completed a work titled 'Checks and Balances'.

LUNES, EL CATORCE DE JUNIO, VEINTE-DIEZ
I've just discovered that there's a copy of El Cristo Negro de Esquipulas at St Elizabeth Parish in Oakland, California; about a half an hour BART ride from where we'll be living when we arrive in the USA. It will be great to see this copy until we get to travel to Guatemala to see El Cristo Negro in the Basilica de Esquipulas.

BELOW: Parishioners reverently lift the Black Christ, shrouded in
incense, into its permanent setting at St. Elizabeth Church
(photo by Jose Luis Aguirre)

VIERNES, EL DOS DE ABRIL, VEINTE-DIEZ
Happy Easter

DOMINGO, EL VEINTIUNO DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ
Although I really like this example, I'd love to find a slightly larger one with the skull and bones symbol at the base of the crucifix.

DOMINGO, EL CATORCE DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ
A large resin crucifix with Joseph of Aramathea (I'm sure it's not St John) and Mary.

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

CRUZ DE DOMINGO, EL CATORCE DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
A feeble attempt at a crucifixion woodcarving. from about 2004-2005. I was doing ok until the arms broke off as the grain was going the wrong way and I was carving it out on an exposed balcony in Coromandel Street in Newtown, so I could only set up and get to it when it wasn't raining, which was hardly ever. I got bored and painted the figure with undercoat primer and then attemped to sand it off.

MARTES, EL NUEVE DE FEBRERO, VIENTE-DIEZ
Tuesday night (tonight) my work features on the NZ-made arts programme, The Gravy.
The half-hour episode focuses on Whanganui artists and features myself, Carmen Simmons and Ben Cauchi.
It's screening Tuesday night, TV 7 at 9.35pm. There is more information on the programme here.
If you miss the programme, you can watch it 'on demand' by clicking on the 'watch episodes' button above the episode guide (link above).