LIFE DRAWING and DRAWING ON LIFE

When I started blogging last year I wanted to write about love, so I pulled out my old diaries and poetry and bared my soul. Basically I wanted to write, another medium of expression without barriers that I don't earn my living off or need to pretty up for public consumption. The stars blog didn't earn me a lot of appreciation for my writing, rather it earned me a couple of cyber stalkers, and inappropriate comments.

This blog has taken me on an interesting journey too. Every couple of days people write to me who read the blog.A journalist from Queensland Homes after featuring my work in her magazine recommended that people follow my blog. This has given me encouragement to keep going.
Thanks everyone for reading so far.

Meanwhile in the studio:

Last week I delivered a commission to it's new beachside home. It looked great out of paint streaked studio, and in it's fresh new environment.
The sale of 2 drawing/collages to a Melbourne collector (the last of the series) has me working on a whole bunch of fresh  ones. I'm really excited about these new collages, such beautiful colours, and textures.I'll also be doing a new size……..little mini masterpieces priced at $350 and they will be available in my online shop.

I've finished my piece for the Mosman Art prize, a girl with a giant bird inspired by my trip to Bali. Had a life drawing session with my beautiful and talented artist friend Stephanie Tetu, which these blog drawings are from, begun to do prints, and a printing business, and received my first  review from a critic………A strange experience, as it's very different from all the press releases that you send out, that get taken up by enthusiastic magazine stylists, editors, and journos. This is something that you have no control over whatsover.

The critic sasha Grishin made an unfavourable remarke about my portrait of Jasper Knight recently hung in the Salon Des Refuses, in an article that he wrote commenting on the Archibald, Doug Moran, and Salon Des Refuses. The excitement of getting in to a prize like this is really the next step in an artistic career. Next steps as I was to find out also leave you open to public critism.....At first it was a shock, but now I can I only really take it as a compliment that he included me in article with the most successful and innovative artists of this country.

MIA OATLEY limited Edition Prints available in my online SHOP

Since November I have been researching the best way to produce Giclee prints. Would I do it offshore? Would I do it with a print company here, etc etc. Very recently My partner and I decided to buy our own printer. A top of the line and the largest in stock Epson 9900 printer. Yes it's mammoth!

We've created a shop section on my website where the very first of these prints are available for sale. Coming in purrfect A2 size  60cm x 42cm in limited editions of 50 these sweet little prints are retailing for the very nice price of $120US unframed.  A gift for someone special, or just for yourself, they are all collectors editions and signed personally by me.

As painters creating another flow of income  separate to your main flow generated by large sales from big paintings is important. Being able to tap into the affordable art market....or more affordable as your painting prices continue to reach skyward is valuable.  You are also stimulating the enthusiasm of younger collectors unable to afford a more expensive work of yours right now........but who knows what will happen in the future!

This leads me onto the next thing that my partner David Mendes and I have been working on. We have created a company called Renegade Print, where artists, and photographers,  can create limited editions giclee prints on 310 gsm Canson photorag paper, which is just beautiful. We are also able to turn special family photos into one off archival quality prints.

David's background is in production, graphic design, and  web design in the magazine world. He is an absolute perfectionist, and won't rest until the colours are perfectly aligned with those of your image.
For more information about Renegade Print email david@renegadeprint.com 

Inspiration

I've just been reminded by an old school friend of my wild and crazy hair circa 1993. " Oh dear that dreadful perm. That mouth filled with metal.That flat chested body that made boys yell out "hey surfboard" for nearly 2 years. High school! What a dreadful time.

Looking back on the photos I wasn't that bad looking, an ugly duckling, not quite, just a clumsy swan about to bloom, but gee blooming sure got me into a lot of trouble. I didn't really know what to do with the attention of boys once I started turning into a swan. I still wanted to be one of the boys, that is hanging around in the art room or scrap metal yard with my dad.

But after the boys, then came the men.
Oh dear! Some of my adult relationships!
Let's just say I'm not very good at picking up the warning signs of the first signs of trouble in paradise. An ambulance could come roaring through, bleating danger! And I think I would still miss it.

And now at 34 as a fully fledged swan, you'd think I could stay out of man trouble, but no man trouble seems to be one of those things that persist.  The secret of minimising it methinks is good communication. Nothing and I mean nothing feels better than when the standoff has ended and a set of manish whiskers and warm skin is nuzzled in close to you on a cold night.

No matter what is going on in my life I need to be inspired to make good work.
After a few flat days of staring out to sea, and looking for some inspiration in those giant waves,smashing against against the rocks, I found it again.

My creativity is flowing like a fast water rapid, paintings that have dwindled for a while pull together in a few easy strokes. Wild colour schemes that belong to hot sensuous days pour out of me. Everything is forgotten as I work.

KEEP GOING

Growing up in a affluent northern Sydney suburb our family always seemed a little out of place. The neighbours drove shiny black BMW's,  had cleaners and tennis courts. The women had beauty naps
in the day while their doctor, lawyer, accountant husbands brought home the bread.

Our car a brown torana which got into a smash at the airport was a wild assortment of pinks, purples and  bright blue down one whole side, because it couldn't afford to be fixed.

The house had extensions on it for years while gaping holes were covered with plastic, and the wild life found it's way in. We once found a baby possum at the bottom of the laundry basket!


Our house was filled with paintings and abstract sculptures, my artist father also had a substantial collection of Papua New Guinean masks. The  rich Lebanese neighbors from across the road came for dinner once, but left before the first course was served as they believed that the masks housed EVIL spirits!

All the while my mother and father worked and worked, they built their house, they did all the jobs that others were hired to do in the wealthier houses, with my father working a good 60 hour work on top of that as well. I remember them up and down ladders every weekend, my mother covered in paint,
 while other mother's went to the salon to get their nails done.

As we grew older, all the hard work began to pay off, and their life became more comfortable, and a little softer around the edges. Now they live in beautiful home by the sea. But the ethic's are still there.
They have brought my sister and I up, who also owns her own business  to believe that with talent, a dream, and a lot of hard work anything is possible.

As I look around the galleries, and speak with other artists I know that people are being more cautious with their money, that is why I'm delighted to be selling work in a quieter time. I'm grateful to those working just as hard as I am on making that happen, and most of all to my parents who are the foundation of belief that I have in myself. It's through them that I know if you never give up
you will succeed.

The 5 Million Dollar Painting

When I was 28 I had a nanny job in Paris 10 hours of the week to suppliment the income I made from selling my art. The kid was a brat, but the job was easy. I just dropped him to and from school on the bus, and for this I was paid 200 Euros plus I was given my own tiny apartment 18msq including kitchen, bathroom, and lounge room. The bed rolled up into a couch during the day, and practically took up the whole room when I rolled it out at night, but it more than suited my purposes. I had a painting studio else where so I had all that I needed.

The child was unlike other Australian children that I had cared for at home who were usually well mannered, kind and sweet. The kid gave me silent stares, told me that I was stupid, and on the whole ignored me, but I put up with the job to be an artist in Paris.

I wasn't so hard until I was taken on a skiing trip in the French alps, although there was no skiing for me for the first week at least as my days were free and I was allowed to bring my paintings there and paint in my free time.My employer even boasted that I was an artist to his friends, as if in some way it added to his own prestige.

As soon as we arrived my job status changed wildly to French maid. I was ordered to lug huge garbage bags up snowy hills, keep the apartment spotless......not exactly my strength and look after the kid inbetween his bouts of skiing, and do the shopping.

The other really terrible part of the whole scheme was being ordered to sleep in the same room as the Kid and his little friend!
They threw pillows at me, and giggled all night, with the kid making up stories about me to turn the other kid against me in a language that I barely understood.

In the morning the father screamed at me that I should know where his cup was!

It was the beginning of the end. A compulsive neat freak, he found a single strand of my hair in the bathtub, and a tiny piece of paper that I had been using for collage under the cupboard. As punishment for these misdemeaners he locked me out of the main part of the apartment.

I told him that I wanted to quit, and his kind friend who he had been holidaying with slipped me 50 Euros to stay in a hotel over night before I went back to Paris. Like all other people with more essential needs I pocketed it.

I lugged my luggage plus 2 finished paintings through 2 kilomentres of fresh and falling snow, and a very chilly  -7 degree temperature.

I boarded the first train headed back to Paris. I stayed awake through the night with a bunch of gypsies, listening to the rythmic pulses  of  their fast flying fingers urging us closer to the capital city.

It was 5am when I swung into the first open old man's pub in Belleville. I drank 4 glasses of wine that tasted liked piss in quick succession and celebrated my new found liberty with the road workers skulling their first beers.

This was one of the last jobs I had before becoming a full time artist. I knew I had to make it happen, or be trapped in a cycle of working for someone and making someone else's life more comfortable instead of my own.

When I got home James Cockington from the Financial review wrote a story on that very portrait, and asked the question" will this $5000 portrait be worth 5 million in 2050"
I laughed, If there's any that should be worth the price tag it's that one.

Today it hangs in the home of a friend and collector over looking Tamarama's spectacular coastline in Australia. A fitting final resting place, for a painting that has traveled so far.