Steve The Pirate

After working for the past week I've finally succeeded.  After many incarnations  my entry for this years Portia Geach portrait prize is  finished.  If selected, as I have previously the work will be exhibited at the SHIRVIN GALLERY National trust, If not I've done a fab painting of Steve as a pirate, and he can take a guess at what will be in his Christmas stocking this year!

Quite seriously I'm happy with it, and it also got Steve's nod of approval this morning, so fingers crossed, cause it's always great fun to get in and go to these things...............and there's always the prize money which is so wildly tempting. $18,000...........mmmmm I could mentally spend that in 2 seconds flat, but back to the earthly dimension, and back to why I painted the painting. This is my artists statement about Steve the Pirate

STEVE THE PIRATE

My father Steve Oatley introduced me to art. He took me to East Sydney Tech as it was known then (N.A.S now) when I was 2 to babysit me when my mother was giving birth to my sister in the hospital. I looked up adoringly at him like most of his students. Enthusiastic, fun and passionate about art, it wasn't only his students that were being inspired by him.

He took me to Canberra to see the impressionists, to all of the galleries, and museums, and taught me to draw by copying pictures out of his endless supply of art books.  He brought a great love of art and creation into my life. These early lessons are the reason I became an artist, and this is the reason I wanted to do something I never have before in tribute, paint a portrait of my father.

His own creative practice is so extensive and creative, from sculpture to painting to magnificent water features to one off designer furniture that's been copied in places as far off as London. There's truly nothing that he can't do, and no place of creativity that he won't let him self run away with.

He's the life of the party and in another lifetime I could easily imagine him
as a pirate, out there on the seven seas, swashbuckling around, living it up at the foreign ports.
I just added a wonderful tropical bird on his shoulder for company, and he became Steve the Pirate.