Thursday, January 24, 2008


Drawing day nineteen

For some reason, every day my fingers type "drawying" :)

Today I've been reading "Not Just A Suburban Boy", a biography (of sorts) of the artist Howard Arkley. Arkley was a local artist, local not just in the Melbourne sense but also in that he spent the last few years of his life living in Oakleigh, which is where I live. He also taught for a while in the late '80s at Moorabbin, where I attend classes. I knew of him before I began studying last year, but in a peripheral way. Early in the year we went to a major exhibition of his at the National Gallery of Victoria as a class, and seeing his paintings and furniture en masse - I don't know how to describe it except to say that I was blown away. The colours, the patterns, the flat surfaces, the airbrushed black lines: made me go "ooooohhh!". There was a (very expensive) book associated with the exhibition that I plan to look for in the library - if they don't have it, they should, simply for the local association and I'll request they buy it - and an earlier one, "Spray", I think, on his art, too. Reading the biography has reminded me to go look for the other two books - meant to last year but got caught up in homework, classwork and eking a living off ebay :)

Here's a couple of links to the Arkley exhibition I went to:

1 comment:

Caroline M said...

This one doesn't call to me so much, I think it's because there's less interplay between the typeface and the design. It was a cracking idea that you had, will you display them altogether?