About four or five oil glazes have been worked into the painting since the last post. 110 x 60 cm oil and acrylic on canvas.

photograph
2006

I recently wrote a thesis entitled The Spiritual and the Material in Art. It explores ideas of spirituality and materiality in relation to the abstract and the non-abstract. I will soon be posting the entire thesis but for now I wanted to include a small section that explores the definition of abstraction. It helps tie together the concepts I am currently exploring in my recent paintings, photographs and video works.

Extract of The Spiritual and the Material in Art
This brings us to the question of abstraction. What exactly is the abstract; how is something defined as abstract when something else is not? The Oxford dictionary states that abstract art is “art that does not attempt to represent external, recognisable reality”. This seems like a simple enough definition, except when one questions the definition of “recognisable reality”. Our definition and experience of reality seems entirely concrete and certain. Yet what is it that absolutely signifies a tree as a tree. Is it the fact that it is of a certain colour and shape, or is it because it is a certain molecular structure? Or perhaps, it is because as a child we saw a tree and our parents told us “that is a tree”. What if we had been told “that is a rock”, would it be a tree or a rock? What perchance, if we were a fish and came upon a tree for the first time. What would it be? This is to illustrate the shifting nature of our definition of reality. It isn’t as finite as we may at first think.

Following on with my exploration of abstraction and nature I have begun photographing lots of different skies. The sky really is incredible when you pay attention to it. Always varying; always shifting; always beautiful.

First layer of acrylic on a 110 x 60 cm canvas. Ready to switch to oils and start bringing the composition together with some glazes.

This one has been going for over a year. I come back to it every few months and add another layer. This actually started as an excercise where I was going to copy a photograph of a lighthouse in the ocean. The photograph went missing so I decided to make up the rest of the scene. It is 60 x 40 cm oil on canvas. I'm planning to experiment with creating some haze around the horizon as well as glazes over the sky and the bottom of the composition. We'll see what happens...

A little 25 x 20 cm experiment with acrylic and oil on canvas. I'm currently exploring abstraction within nature and am particularly interested in the movement and form of water and the sky.

64 cm x 50 cm
acrylic on canvas
2006

Some photographs taken on a walk at Cedar Falls, near Airlie Beach, Queensland.