I have had to put in a new water pump this morning. All of a sudden yesterday there was no water. Luckily I wasn't in the shower at the time. As I live out of town the house water all comes from my two tanks. Bore water is used to water the garden but is too high in calcium to use in the house. We have had such a lot of rain that the tanks are full. This is so different to a few years ago when I had to buy a couple of truckloads of water. Then it was a case of choosing which plants to keep alive by watering with buckets. Now it is raining every few days and last Wednesday we had 60ml overnight and the causeway at the bottom of my road was too full to drive through. I have lived here for about eight years now and have never seen our road cut. La Nina? I have a tin roof on my house and at the moment I am listening to the rain on it and looking out to the range of hills across the valley. My house has a wide veranday looking towards the hills and I seem to spend a lot of time out there and have painted it a number of times. I have moved all my potplants to the corner of the verandah to catch the rain. I have some herbs, some Jasmine, an ornamental grape vines and pots of native plants. The birds are loving the rain too. Three of my potplants are in coconute-fibre lined hanging baskets. The birds have used this to build their nests. I have made it very easy for them. We have finches, cockatoos, galahs and sometimes King Parrots. Every evening about four to five kangaroos come down beside the house. We also have magpies - two of them are on the verandah railing looking at me now. The young squark constantly for food.These are some images of paintings I did from my verandah a few years ago.
The paintings here were done when we were in a drought period "the worst draught in 100 years" it was said.

Glen Helen Gorge, Northern Territory
Oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm
This is one of the paintings that came from my trip to the outback. I have started a series of these. I have completed a couple of small canvases and am now working on some larger works on paper

Friday 5 November.
It was announced today at the Art Gallery of New South Wales that Suzanne Archer is the winner of the 2010 Dobell Prize for Drawing for her work Derangement.
Suzanne Archer was awarded $25,000 for winning Australia’s most important prize for drawing. This year there were 635 entries, of which 45 are included in the exhibition.

The subject of the winning drawing is a self-portrait of the artist in her studio. At either side of the central form of her face are some of the objects she has gathered there: a desiccated kangaroo and a sculpture of a horse’s head the artist made from wood found in the nearby bush. It is part of a larger body of work that has arisen from drawings Archer made of animals at the Veterinary Science laboratories at Sydney University in 2004, as well as of skulls and bones collected near her bush studio, and from a developing awareness arising out of her relationship with these animal remains, of her own mortality.

Suzanne Archer is a senior painter, sculptor, printmaker and teacher who has lived and worked at Wedderburn in the south-west Sydney region since the late 1980s. Born in 1945 in Surrey, England, she studied at Sutton School of Art prior to migrating to Australia in 1965. She has exhibited widely since the mid ’60s, was granted residencies in New York and Paris in 1978-79 and has won numerous awards, including a fellowship from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council in 1993 and the Wynne Prize in 1994. She has been a Dobell Prize finalist three times (in 2000, 2002 and 2009).

The Dobell Prize for Drawing, initiated by the Trustees of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, is an acquisitive prize, first awarded in 1993.

This year’s judge was Alun Leach-Jones. Alun is a Sydney painter, draughtsman, sculptor and printmaker.

Alun Leach-Jones comments: the work is expressive, darkly poetic and full of drama. There is an ambiguous narrative, alive with vivid and sinister images that are depictive, symbolic and metaphoric. The subject of drawing is drawing itself. Suzanne Archer’s winning work clearly shows her awareness of this profound aspect of the art of drawing – regardless of its apparent subject matter.

I went down to Sydney to see the Paths to Abstraction exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This consisted of "140-plus works by some of the most influential artists of the modern era, including Whistler, Cézanne, Monet, Seurat, Vuillard, Bonnard, Gauguin, Matisse, Derain, Picasso, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Klee, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Hans Arp and Sophie Taüber-Arp" http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/paths-abstraction/. It was exciting to see such a collection of well-known artists work.

I went down for the weekend. On the Sunday I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art and the S.H. Ervin Gallery. Primavera was showing at the MCA which is an exhibition of artists under the age of 35 years.

The exhibition at the S. H. Ervin Gallery was of Australian women artists. "Slow Burn- A century of Australian women artists from a private collection. Slow Burn traces the history of women artists in Australia and the development of a remarkable private collection over a 15 year period. The evolution of the collection was guided by the late art dealer, Eva Breuer. This exhibition presents ninety three Australian women artists ranging from the delicate pastels of Janet Cumbrae Stewart to the modernist prints of Margaret Preston through to the bio-techno sculptures of Patricia Piccinini. The works in the exhibition demonstrate the skill and versatility of women artists over the past hundred years."
http://www.nationaltrust.com.au/properties/gallery/exhibitions/Slow%20Burn/Slow%20Burn_default.asp

Spring is here at last. Today we have clear blue skies, the birds are singing and the view goes for miles. We have had rain every few days so everywhere is green and lush. The trees are in blossom and the flowers are out. It is a beautiful time to be alive. Work has been demanding but today is one of my precious days doing nothing but painting. I am enjoying using oil paints. I also am thinking of doing a large drawing based on the West MacDonnell Ranges using charcoal and inks.

This is a quick basic sketch from my trip.

Glen Helen Gorge. Gouache on paperI have taken down my paintings from the exhibition in Armidale. I am really enjoying not having the pressure of working towards an exhibition. After a fair break I am starting back this weekend into my painting. I will do some works from the Northern Territory and go up the hill at the back of my home and do some en plein air paint sketches. This is a small gouache from my trip away.

I am looking forward to going to Sydney in a couple of weeks to see the Abstraction exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW. I am going to see work in private galleries as well.
Art Gallery of NSW: "Discover the work of the most influential artists of the modern era and how they changed the course of art forever.
Experimenting with colour and form, these artists explored exciting new ways of seeing and imagining.
This major exhibition of over 150 paintings, drawings and prints reveals how abstract art emerged around the world.
On loan from 59 of the most prestigious art collections in the world including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museu Picasso Barcelona, Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Tate Modern and National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Art Gallery of NSW "

A lovely gallery in the pretty town of Walcha. The current exhibition is of Barbara Mackay's paintings. Adjoining the gallery is a beautiful guest house. Walcha is a town where a number of prominent artists live and is on the Northern Tablelands adjacent to Apsley Gorge and National Park.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3_mHJzxtgI
The view from here. John Olsen. On Youtube

After a break to gather my thoughts and get ready to work again things are starting to flow again. My exhibition is up at the moment at the New England Regional Art museum and I am happy with how it has gone. I am happy with the way it looks hung and so far have sold enough to cover my costs. There is a week to go before I take it down. I will then place some works in a couple of galleries. It has been very relaxing not having the pressure of exhibitions in the offing. Hopefully the next year can be spent painting, exploring and "playing".

From my trip to the outback I have brought back many inspirations and ideas of new work. These will be based on the importance of the rock structures as the "bones of the land" (Heysen). The sketches I did while in the MacDonnell Ranges were realistic in the shapes and colours of the fault lines and pitted red sandstone but the resulting paintings may be abstract. The shapes outback are stark, beautifully coloured and awe-inspiring. The problem would be to paint a painting that is not a cliche, that is not a "been there done that". Some images showing the abstract nauture of the landscape