LOVELOVE STUDIO - end of year exhibition

Formula for Resurrection OPENING NIGHT DECEMBER 3

Solo Exhibition by Nic Plowman

Anthea Polson Art

Marina Mirage, Gold Coast

December 3-17

www.nicplowman.com

www.antheapolsonart.com.au

and check out the video here

AMAZING work by an AMAZING being

xx

NEW WORKS

Have been having some much loved time in the studio! YAY!

As promised I have revisited some of my earliest themes and techniques. My earlier works (which you can see a few posts back in "Art from the Past") were with a less worked surface that relied more on how the canvas/calico itself reacted to my mark-making. I also used fabric collage to add contrasting detail to the loose, inky pools and drips and illustrative figures.

In more recent times I have been concerned with 'mimicking' the fabric detailing with paint, and worked up the surface myself, without relying on the mixed media, and the figures have developed into fleshy creatures with less of the pencil line aesthetics.

Here I draw on both old and new, so that it is a more worked up surface than those early times, but it still allows for a spontaneity that is brought about by the paint/surface relationship.

These works can also be viewed on the 19KAREN website here

Because after all, her whole life had been spent as if it had been raining

acrylic, gouache and watercolour on linen

120 x 180cm

He taught her not to be afraid

acrylic, gouache and watercolour on linen

60 x 85cm

LONDON CALLING

I am so excited to announce that the amazing people at 19 Karen have partnered up with the equally amazing people at Porter Contemporary in New York and ART AND ESCAPE in London.

GUESS WHAT ELSE ? ? ?

ART AND ESCAPE in London have kindly invited me onto their online gallery!

Have a looksie here... http://www.artandescape.com/artists.php

Looks pretty flash doesn't it? Who knows, all going well I might even get over there in the not to distant future for a proper look...

Only a couple of works online there at the moment, so I am busy busy busy in the studio working on some new ones. Wish me luck!

Art from the Past! Part Two

Whoaaa!!! This is going back a bit!! The annual Christmas show at Jugglers Art Space in the Fortitude Valley. This was my first time participating in this show... I'd say about 2007? The group pics are of the then Artists in Residence at Jugglers. Sam Eyles, Sue-Ching Lascelles, me, Timothy McLaughlin (RIPxox) Sandy Lister, Randal Breen and Nic Plowman

Art from the Past! Part One

'For love cannot fly without resting (and testing)'

acrylic, gouache, watercolour and collage on calico

120x180cm

'I wish I was a pirate because then you'd sail away'

acrylic, gouache, watercolour and collage on calico

85x80cm

'"Now is the time to make a wish" they said. I wished for love (and a house of flowers)..'

acrylic, gouache, watercolour and collage on calico

85x80cm

Ahh 'Gypsy', my first solo exhibition!! Seems a lifetime a go, and also like yesterday as I remember feeling like I was going to throw up as I walked through that door on opening night. What I didn't know then was that those bundle of nerves strike every opening night of every solo exhibition!

This work which we look back on now, still haunts me! Haunting in a good way, as the three works pictured here are among those that people still ask about and still covert even after so many other works have tried to take their place since! A close friend owns "I wish you were a pirate because then you'd sail away.." Bet she didn't know then that it would still be such a topic of interest a years later.

These works were part of the show 'Gypsy' in 2009, at 19 Karen Contemporary Art Space on the Gold Coast. They spoke of heartbreak and longing, and used textile collage, watercolour and gouache on calico to tell their stories. I am revisiting some of these techniques and themes in some current works, having worked without collage for the past couple of years. Will post the new works soon.

Homage to Frida

Frida Kahlo, Oh how I love her!

1. Yes, her strength

2. Her style! Amazing Mexican peasant clothing that was as fabulous as it was revolutionary.

3. Her work! Surrealism, portraiture, political and beautiful. Heartbreaking and self affirming, the illustrated a harrowing chain of events. Her autobiographical works told a captivating story of strength, as well as vulnerability.

4. Her legacy. Decades on, so many of us feel compelled to pay homage to Frida Kahlo. We feel an affinity with the themes she used in her work and the tragedies she overcame; subjects relevant to any time or place.

I was delighted to be invited to participate in this show, to have (more of) an excuse to immerse myself in her story, and apply it to my own work, my own legacy.

"Frida Kahlo was more like a broken Cleopatra, hiding her tortured body, her shrivelled leg, her broken foot, her orthopedic corsets, under the spectacular finery of the peasant women of Mexico, who for centuries jealously kept the ancient jewels hidden away, protected from poverty, to be displayed only at the great fiestas of the agrarian communities. The laces, the ribbons, the skirts, the rustling petticoats, the braids, the moonlike headdresses opening up her face like the wings of a dark butterfly: Frida Kahlo, showing us all that suffering could not wither, nor sickness stale, her infinite variety.

The body of Frida Kahlo, first of all. Seeing her there, once the clanging had stopped, once the silks and bracelets had rested, once the laws of gravity had imposed a stillness on the grand entrance, once the flares of the procession had died and the ceremonial halo, Aztec and Mediterranean, rabidly un-Anglo, that surrounded Kahlo had dimmed, one could only think: The body is the temple of the soul. The face is the temple of the body. And when the body breaks, the soul has no other shrine except the face.

…Kahlo portrays herself as this flayed skin, this bleeding, open skin, cut in half like a papaya fruit. For what she lives is what she paints.”

Carlos Fuentes from The Diary of Frida Kahlo

Homage to Frida Group Show 4th June - 2 July 2011

19 Karen Contemporary Art Space

Abigael Whittaker, Amanda Shelsher, Amaya Iturri, Anne Smerdon, Beck Wheeler, Ben Sheers, Dan Withey, Jeremy Piert, Jesse Dolman, Jessica Charlotte, JME Pool, Johnny Romeo, Joshua Smith, Juan Arata, Juliete Foxtrot, Kate McCarthy, Luke Yocum, Maria Rozalia Finna, Nolwenn Stephan, Rebecca Murphy, Richard Denny, Sarah Beetson, Simone Maynard, Sonya G. Peters, Will Duncan.