Sunday, March 15, 2009

15th March 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?

Australian Artist Guy Maestri has won the prestigious $50,000 Archibald Prize with his large portrait of blind Aboriginal singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunipingu. Do read the story about how Guy Maestri came to produce his portrait of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - it's inspiring.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
by Guy Maestri
oil on linen – 200cm x 168cm
Winner of the 2009 Archibald Prize

There were:

  • 708 entries for Archibald (in its 88th year) for the Best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics. These are the finalists
  • 712 entries for the $25,000 Wynne Prize for Best landscape painting of Australian scenery, or figure sculpture - won by Lionel Bawden The amorphous ones (the vast colony of our being)
  • 561 entries for the $20,000 Sulman Prize for Best subject painting, genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist won by Ivan Durrant Anzac Match, MCG
You can see the exhibition for the The Archibald, Wynne & Sulman Prizes
7 March - 24 May 2009 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. The exhibition usually draws huge crowds. I actually went to one when in Sidney in 1998.

Art Blogs


Drawing and sketching
Sissinghurst - Elizabethan Barn and Fields
copyright Katherine Tyrrell
  • I'm often found sketching at Sissinghurst - farm fields as well as garden - and today's the day they open for the 2009 season - yippee! Sissinghurst and the BBC4 documentary highlights how I've now included links to all the episodes of Sunday evening documentary programmes about Sissinghurst in my site about Sissinghurst - for iplayer viewers only I'm afraid!
Painting
  • Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) did a very good summary about the new portrait of Shakespeare which has turned up in Shakespeare's portrait?
  • I was amused by Carol Marine's comment - in eggplant demo and kids again - about her student 'kids' asking if her photograph of the workshop group was going on her blog. Looks like it's a new status symbol! I reckon you can always tell from a photo whether or not people have enjoyed their workshop.
  • Lindsay Olson in Illinois summarised all the tips and links she got in response to her recent painting with mud in More Mud Works on Watermarks
  • Marion Boddy Evans has a Knife Painting Tutorial on her blog About.com:Painting
Pastels
Print-making
Watercolour
  • I asked What is watercolour? on Friday - and demonstrated the rather wide variety of answers you get if you try to find out! Comments indicate surprise at the range of water based media that are included in the definitions of acceptable waterbased media for the open exhibitions to some art societies - even if they are NOT to those compiling the dictionaries!
  • I missed Belinda del Pesco's blog post about her workshop with Charles Reid. I am so envious - I have all his books!
  • Check out Tim Wootton Wildlife Art - which is naturally enough the blog of artist Tim Wootton who lives in Stromness in Orkney. Not a lot of posts so far - but some beautiful paintings of birds. Do encourage Tim to post more often!
Art Business & Marketing
Find more monoprints and monotypes in the Etsy Art Category.
Find more linocuts and woodblock prints on Etsy.
Find collographs in the Etsy Art Category.

Find more intaglio prints on Etsy.
Search for screenprints, gocco, silkscreen, and serigraph on Etsy
Artistic Endeavors: Art Buyers’ Guide to Printmaking
Art and the Economy in recession
“It’s fallen off a cliff,” Buffett said Monday during a live appearance on cable network CNBC. “Not only has the economy slowed down a lot, but people have really changed their habits like I haven’t seen.".....He predicted that unemployment will climb a lot higher before the recession is done, but he also reiterated his optimistic long-term view: “Everything will be all right. We do have the greatest economic machine that man has ever created.”
The situation is set to become even bleaker in the arts.
Art competitions and art exhibitions

Paintings in Museums
by Vivien Blackburn (left) and Sarah Wimperis (right)


Art History
Websites, webware and blogging
and finally......

I'm taking a break from blogging next week to work on a number of linked items on a 'to do' list which have been hanging around for far too long! I've come to the conclusion that I'll get them all sorted if I sit down and work on them all at the same time - so that's what I'm doing next week. You might find things popping up on this blog - and there again you might not - it all depends how it does!

I think you'll find it interesting when I've finished!

I'm now off to the Museums in South Kensington for the monthly sketch outing with the RWS Friends......

6 comments:

  1. I went to the Archibald on Monday. The art critics always criticise it, as they think it is for the uninitiated public. I still wish I could paint portraits like some of the artists (one or two I always wonder how they were hung). The one of Dame Elizabeth Murdoch was wonderful. Painterly. You can see it on this page http://www.thearchibaldprize.com.au/finalists/archibald. In the Wynne prize, Lucy Culliton had a wonderful landscape, though a sculpture made from coloured pencils won.
    http://www.thearchibaldprize.com.au/winners/wynne.

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  2. Enjoy your sketch outing Katherine! (I'm jealous!) Thank you for a great post, much to read here but I particularly enjoyed discovering Tim Wootton's blog - it ticks all the boxes for me - great art, great writing (hurray for long posts!) and large images!

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  3. Have a great break! I wish on your return you'd go back to how you blogged originally, about artistic fun and discoveries, short and sweet. It seems to have become all about work and not about creative fun. Many days I just scroll down to see how long it is, without reading.

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  4. Dear Anonymous

    I choose to write about what interests me, what I enjoy, what I create and about what I see about me - and that's what I share. It also goes through phases - just as most artists do. Sometimes it's about work and sometimes it's about fun.

    I really don't expect everybody to like what I do - but you might want to note that there are those that do like bloggers who write long posts (see the previous comment for example).

    If you really prefer short posts and other ways of blogging then there are lots and lots (and lots) of other great blogs out there to keep you entertained.

    I really and truly don't think you should waste your time scrolling through just to see how many words I've written this time. You could be using the time to read somebody else's blog. :)

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  5. Katherine,
    I hope you have a wonderful break!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks Cindy.

    I've just been looking again at that Wynne sculture - that's an awful lot of coloured pencils!

    ReplyDelete

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