Xantharea at the Piccolo

 

Xanthe O'Driscoll singing some songs and playing guitar outside the Piccolo as she led the regular Wednesday night jam. Made and Christina watch on, and Nathan got kind of tangled up in the guitar.

I shot some video of Xantharea performing. When we edit a few clips from it I'll post them somewhere and stick a link here

 

A mural of Marilyn with some bins in the back lane around the corner 

Xanthe's version of "I put a Spell on You", complete with Kings X ambient noise

She's about to upload this and a bunch of other songs from the night - I'll post a link when she does

The Trial of Dr Pot

Dr Andrew Katelaris faces trial in the District Court(transposed from the Downing Centre to Paterson in the Hunter Valley), and wins, establishing a defense of medical necessity against charges of cannabis supply.

Below are images of the work in progress

 

A few things to finish, in particular the forest at the right and the planter box, and retouch maybe like the water and the swans.

And a few things to fix, like the faerie prison guards with the hemp leaf, all shiny now , and Andrew's pants, which I had a go at this morning, as well as his armpit and shirt! So that's a couple of things ticked off. I want to have this done in the next few days so the paint is hard when we parade it into the Art Gallery os NSW on April 1 - my Facebook birthday

 

the shiny crest with a couple of lines out of place - I might just put them down to a clutzy jeweller, and leave them alone

 

The plant impeisoned by faerie creatures

 

more greens in the hills

 

Back to work after a hiatus while I helped put on There's No Place Like Home an exhibition with Martin Walsh, Sandy Parfitt and Sean Buckland and me (catalogue) at Chrissie Cotter Gallery in Camperdown. I;ve now done skin tones on Andrew and just a big pile of detailing and the odd repair remains, so I'm hoping to have it just about done over the next day or 2 to give ample time to dry before I have to take it in to the AGNSW

 

The plant imprisoned by Faerie Creatures

 

Veggies and herbs in garden trays

 

in front of the prosecutor

 

 The painting at the start of today(8 March 2019)

 

Swans in the dam

 

Andrew came around to the studio today to check out the work in progress

 

Legs, with an old pumphouse and swans

 

The prosecutor, slightly out of his element

 

There's not much more to add to the composition, and the colours are kind of like there now except the figures which still have a reasonable amount to do.  A lot of finishing and detailing remains - so I'll start adding more closeups, there's a couple just below

 

The Dope Legal Crest , with Lion and Unicorn, and Andrew and Maria's rooster

The Judge observes proceedings

 

The first bit of green, I;ve done more this afternoon but it will have to wait for daylight tomorrow to photograph

 

I've started moving on to what NASA lovingly terms TrueColor(TM). (The sky is blue now!)

 

Paint on most of the canvas now so I'll start moving on to more like 'real' colours

 

This portrait of Andrew Katelaris defending himself in the District court is starting to be a bit of a likeness - More images and info below

 

 

Dr Andrew Katelaris

Andrew studies and treats severe childhood epilepsies with cannabis, preferably home grown. And advocates for the use of hemp, in medicine, but also as a foodstuff (hemp-seed smoothie - yum!) and fibre.

He recently faced, and defeated serious criminal charges in the NSW district court using a defense of medical necessity.

 I tried to get some hemp canvas to stretch for this painting but Parkers factory and the other art shops didn't have any or know how to source it. Andrew had some hemp fabric the right sort of weight but it was something like a denim weave, so didn't stretch evenly or shed water, letting the size soak through when I made a couple of smaller test canvases.  I had to fall back to using cotton canvas.

Hemp seed oil is a drying oil like linseed (and sunflower, safflower, poppy seed etc oils as well). To sort of infuse the painting I've added a little hemp oil into the simple gumturps media(plain turps, and turps with 5-10%stand oil )I mix out my paint with. And I got some raw umber pigment, a colour I use a fair bit, and which, being basically dirt, is nontoxic and not too fluffy. So most of the umber in the painting so far is hemp paint(and all the rest will be,

Making oil paint is a bit like mixing cement or pastry on a board, and like cement, it should be 'bony', use the absolute minimum amount of oil possible to create a thick paste(to add turps and media to as you use it later). Use a respirator especially with anything toxic, and wash your hands and clean work area afterwards. Do it somewhere the air is still so the dust isn't stirred up

Set up a glazed tile or sheet of glass on a flat stone slab. get a metal spatula or old school butter knife(you can get a flat pestle if youre doing this often). Pour or scoop a little mound of pigment onto the tile and make a little 'dam' in the middle and pour a bit of oil into it. Some pigments shrink heaps(eg pthalo green, which is incredibly light and powdery -eek, horrible stuff) so be sparing with anything unfamiliar. Raw umber doesnt shrink so much . Start folding in the pigment with the spatula, and grinding it against the tile to create a putty-like paste. If its way too dry remake the dam and add more oil. Putty, BTW is chalk in linseed oil.

Scrape up the blob and put it in a jar and cover it with water, to stop it from drying, get a bit out as you need.

Outside the Piccolo

 

I went in the the Cross to see Vashti Hughes perform with Vitorio, and Aaron Manhattan but I went too late and missed the show(apologies!) - this is some of crowd outside afterwards

Winged Table

 

One of the stripy floorboard table I'm making on a goofy 4 footed base I found, which suits it really well, (and is much more stable than I suspected it would be - we used it as the food and drink table at our very lively party without any hint of a mishap. )I haven't cleaned and it refinished yet - someone mutilated it a bit by chopping off the end of its feet at the back(maybe to make it fit by a wall), so maybe I'll add a few toes to compensate

There's some photos of this piece being put together here and a whole lot more tables and furniture on the Junkyard Studio Woodwork page

The Junkyard Bash

 

We had a mad party at the studio the other night(saturday). Thanks to Made Press for setting the stage for an amazing jam and for everyone who came along and played, and enjoyed the show. 

I was enjoying myself too much to remember the names by the time I drew this sketch of a guitar and bass player. If anyone reading this knows who they are please let me  know (you could add it as a comment here or message me on facebook or twitter)

Sometime soon I'll add this to my band and performance artwork page when I bring it up to date

 

James also did some drawing in my pad. Here's someone playing a fender bass

 

And Charlotte playing guitar

 

Hits from the Bong

 

Too Drunk

4tHis

Bronwyn Aether band at the Townie

 

Last night in Newtown at the Town Hall hotel. 

Bronwyn Aether with Paul Vassallo, at right on slide, with Professor John Pye on bass and Stan Kadio on drums hidden in the middle

Johns from Larkin St

I've been painting this view of Sydney Uni's (in)famous St Johns college for a while, you can check out earlier versions here

 

Finished now. I'm not sure if you can tell this photo fromtheprevious but needless to say I added some more highlights to the tree and hedge, as well as adding another car in the far distance(far right, half way up)

This is nearly done, just a bit more sandstone and green

George St and the QVB

This is a painting I've been working on for a month or 2 - there are earlier versions here

 

 nearly there

 

I'll go back at least one more time to keep sketching in detail in the foreground - workers and their vehicles as well as pedestrians - the scene keeps changing so its like working on a collage

Andrew Katelaris near Paterson

 

I was up in Paterson getting a few photos so I could start my portrait of "Dr Pot" - Andrew Katelaris -  fresh from victory in the District court over serious charges for his prescription of cannabinoids for conditions including severe childhood epilepsies. He's a campaigner and polemicist, who went on TV cooking down kiloas of a particular strain while setting up self-production for one of his patients, to try to shake things up, and move things forward that had dragged on way too long.

This is a view from his and Maria's house there, you can see a glimpse of Andrew playing with his grandson Mason

 

With Paul from the church of Ubuntu discussing court cases with FACS helping (or attempting to) those who have lost their children to the machine

 

Swans in the dam - aka le Club Duck.

A black swan event? The white ones are more unusual in this part of the world.

If there was an island in the dam Andrew thought they might nest here. The weed floating on the water isn't algae, its a nutritious fern, you can rake it up and dry it and feed it to the chooks