Finished

This painting is scaring me. Some pieces just take on a life of their own and when I finish I'm left wondering what the fuck it is?? What the fuck is it? It's not a great image...it's a difficult piece to photograph...

two thirds finished

I'm really excited about this piece. I'll be finishing it this afternoon. It almost painted out but it needs more words added and a lot more ink word like the ink work on the left hand side. I love the newspaper words, it give it kind of a stalking edge. The I am wreckage hear me roar and wild pieces of art. I'm so happy with this piece. I've been trying to choose a piece for an upcoming group show in Melbourne, I think this is the one that's going in...It the best piece of created this year, although it is only March.

Muse and Mess

I've started a new art piece... i wasn't expecting to work on this series...I am wreckage hear me roar series...I had planned to do some other pieces but this piece just forced itself on me...and now I'm realising why...it's so instinctual and it's fucking great...and when I paint like this I feel so out of control..I love it and hate it at the same time as it's intense creativity....I'm half way through and I forced myself to stop because I was too tired to complete without compromising it's standard...honestly, it has taken this series to a new level...I'm really pleased with it...it's the result of my muse leaving town, he should do it more often...but the downside is the art is making me feel so restless and I'm full of this inexplicable inner pressure which is the second part of the paintng I expect...I want to finish it but I'm not going to...I need to rest before I do...this is the nasty part of creativity...restlessness and pressure form the inside... I jus want to sleep...wine will help me do that

flickr

Muse

Love palms
peace-d-
peace-d-
Left still it will fall back
back to you
it can fall backwards
it will always reverse
-in hand-
-in hand-
-in hand-
to fall backwards just look into the pool
of the other world
you stilled and silent
in the cradle of my white bleached bones
my dead palm
silent
death it holds
love death
I will my painted love palms to your sweet face
love

I want to live in St Kilda

Day job work has gone ballistic...it just too busy at the moment...I'm so very tired. I'm off work tomorrow and I'm staying close to home, there's a possible fire threat coming from Daylesford, which not far away.
With all this fire threat and traveling to Melbourne every day I think I'll move back to Melb in next six months or so. I want to live in St Kilda, I can run on the beach and dodge the syringes, and it would take 20 mins to get to work. It beats the shit out of boring Ballarat. I'm really over the place.
Even though it's heating up again, I'm planning to work on art for the next three days. I've got Repetitions to finish and some exhibition proposals to get in. And a group exhibition to do a piece for... I'm only ever really myself and truely confortable when I creating work. The rest of it's a sham.

Words for collage pieces

I'm working on the blue and yellow collage pieces this weekend. I aiming to finished three blue and three yellow. I've done a yellow and blue piece each so far this morning. I really like doing these pieces.

I'm really into the new assemblages I've been doing, so I'm going to take 3 yellow, 3 blue & 3 red and do some more. (See above)

I've been so fucking busy at my day job, s0 I'm drawing these on my bed , I'm too tired to move much today

Words for Red Collage Pieces (see above image)


The Beginning

Dark creative passion

Day One

Wrong Body



Day Two

Black Reflection

Day Three

Alone we can do this together


Day Four

Growing reflection

Day Five

Is your heart working?



Day Six

Dreaming the same dream



Day Seven
Smile while it’s melting



Day Eight

Belief without fear


Words for Blue Collage Pieces

Week One
Take me how you find me, I’m nothing you’ve known before. I’m so much more than you expected, well, can something unseen and inexplicable be expected? Perhaps anticipated? It’s complex and deep and not really dumb enough to fit in comfortably to the everyday. Is there too much to explain? Is there too much to forget?

Week Two
We live in the place where nonsense becomes reason and we smile as the changing irrationality fill ours minds then falls heavily at our feet. It is all too hard to explain, this world is not for the faint hearted. Brave.


Week Three

Inside your breath there lies a sweetly concentrated power which only reveals itself inside your slow pain-filled grin. But it’s grip overtakes you and then we are no longer alone. You don’t know where you are but you are safe.

Week Four
When you look through this window lost parts are found. when you smash through the window the sharp jagged glass will open your veins. Bloody essences will flow slowly entangling our creative finger tips. The door will always remain ajar for you.

Week Five
Inside the panting breaths lies soul rhythms which lock firm into the patterns of our lives. These must change. Like a kaleidoscope, shake the fuck, shake it good, keep trying all the patterns till you find one which works.

Week Six
The heart is fuzzy and warm on the inside, sweetly beating in time with yours. Slowly as the bloody essences flowing across my palm, entangle my fingertips I will my painted love palms to your sweet face.

Week Seven
Gurgling as you lie still on your back, you have not lost this game, you are still and hopeless because your just not seeing it correctly. to find the correct pattern look backwards and straight down inside. Hate really does blind you.


Week Eight
Backwards, into mud and confusion, you will tumble down the lost path. Nose sniffing for love’s slight breath. Tumbling, eyes squeezed shut, hands feeling your way you have traveled, you crawl. It’s not behind you. It’s not behind you.

Week Nine
Forward, along the way, I have finished wandering, I'm done with the questions so I’m still and quiet. My heart bubbles with colour and beats red with love. Your essence is carved onto it. I will sit this way forever, I will bubble colour across your grey.

Words for Yellow Collage Pieces

Year One
Surrendered

Year Two
Surrendered

Year Three
Surrendered

Year Four
Surrendered

Year Five
Surrendered

Year Six
Surrendered

Year Seven
Surrendered

Year Eight
Surrendered

Year Nine

Surrendered

THE VISION CONFUSED #1

THE VISION CONFUSED #1

Sit sideways still
stealing
a sideways glance

Wildness mists round the shining white edges

If you could see far past what you believe what you could see no one would believe that inside your longing heart sat the vision confused

And if I glance
I will steal your soul
from it’s center

If you could see past what you believe then your deep dark heart could function beyond

Two pools that reach backwards
into that long gone
that you do not portray
that you will never show

What if you could see far past-with a piece of deep dark heart that has no center but still beats

You liberate
while all the time
you dismiss repulse destroy me

Wildness mist around the shining white edges
heart in your own hands

Within the single heart beat if you could see past
this vision confused



From the Vision poetry series
Virtue Fern

VCA

I did this piece on the weekend. I really like this assemblage, it's 4 really old landscapes in oil pastel, with another old abstract piece and two the the ghost paintings with the nine collage pieces I've been working with laid over the top. I started nine collages pieces in blue and yellow and I think I will probably put the landscapes, ghosts etc together again with the new blue and yellow pieces. anyway...we'll see what happens.

Semester started for me again today, and even though I'm study at Graduate level, we had lecture & tutorial. First one I've done for a while. But it was still just as I was hard to stay awake, art history lectures are always held in a dark hall with lots of art slides to look at...how are we supposed to stay awake. I was very dozy towards the end.

Best comment in the lecture was a description of the majority of art works in modern art museums as being"wallpaper for the rich and famous"...very funny and very true. And the best art work was always found in non commerical artist run spaces...this is also very true. Last time I did the round of commerical art galleries in Melbourne I was bored to death and really pissed they had nothing to offer but convention, dull, safe pieces of work. I'm assuming most rich people must like safe pieces?? maybe they should buy from the artist run sapce instead.

I really would rather work a day job for cash than create pieces of art that are lacking so much. Rarely do you find an artist who can cross that commercial barrier and still do art that says something...good art should always push you out of your comfort zone, it's not much good if it doesn't. Experimentation & straying from the known is scary but it's where my best work comes from.
So enough ranting...I've been working in the office since 7.30am, it's been a long day and I'm tired

Assemblage

Assemblage is a recent development. I think it goes well with the repetitious elements of my recent work.
I used to really so into original art and it's uniqueness, now I like to take this original state and repeat it. I think it a bit of a post modern direction, its destroying the unique elements of the original piece but almost industrializing it. Turning it into something machine like. Anyway, it's really doing it for me. I'll do some more assembing today. I think I try and find some really old pieces and justaposition these with some more recents pieces.

Train Journeys

I'm trapped on a train coming home from Melbourne. I'm listening to the desperate needy 20 year olds, conversing at the top of there voices and hoping the entire train thinks they are cool. Unfortunately they are not cool, nor hot, but they are twats. They say like every second word, soooo every third, and they are driving me insane. I cant stand their unimaginative, crap. I'm putting the head phones on.

THE VISION CONFUSED #5

You sit- inside
and I fall ever towards you

In time and deep down within your heart feels such a fast loss
I never really knew this was mine
-Did you?

I will not suffer
and I will take myself- freed
but I'll fall ever towards you

Lost yet still looking in lasting intensity
builds right through this lost way and far beyond what others see to be fit and true-
Still looking can you see?

I’ve gone- inside
To fall ever towards you
I still cannot see
and I never do hear
I just fall ever towards you

In your last lost darkened
in deep time you pledged your very heart
promising never to leave your lighted soul
to stay within your straying mind
- do you always?

I fight – inside
Fall ever towards you
Leaving it all behind

and promising me the new
all
I fall ever towards you- still

Virtue Fern
14th June 2003

Black Paintings

This new black painting is killing me. Ive realised why I felt like utter crap all day , it's this paintings. It's got to all my hidden nasty insides.
If this is new window, then it's lost its colour and it's patterns and turned into a black nightmare. It has just occured to me that this can only be because it's coming from my crappy childhood and background, the one i escaped many years ago. This painting has put me back into what I call survival paintings. It's the type of paintings which clears out your soul and get down into all the painful bits. It's 5pm and I just starting to feel like myself again.
Yet it's a great painting. I haven't painted from this foul depth for a while. It's certainly suffering for your art but it is also very honest. Anyway, that's what I do. I express this sort of stuff. If I go on with these black paintings, it will hurt and i will feel like shit but they will be great pieces. better out than in.

Monday

I’m struggling to get my brain back into day job mode. I’m finding it so hard this morning. I so very annoyed with everything. I’m in such a bad mood, I really need a day to reflect on what I created this weekend, they were only a few small pieces but they have opened two new directions. The black piece is a new style of window, which is really significant; it’s a window with most of its colour removed. It’s a big leap for that series. Huge.
Doing art on that level makes me work on an intensely powerful creative level and I’m having trouble turning it off. I had bizarre dreams all night and slept really badly because of it. Normally, artists get to take it easy after these sorts of creative sessions, really, having work a day job straight after sucks. I need time to process and turn off that level of creativity, not be a desk dealing with all the stuff I have to do. It’s really hard and it hurts…

My weekend's work

What's on the studio floor, a heap of digital prints I finished processing ready for Repetition No 5 Red, I just have to glue it all together. There are 3 new paintings and photo pieces. A preliminary painting for a new series of paintings, I guess.

I've been fighting the urge to 'tattoo' or draw and paint on skin for while so I though I'd try some photos, I think these turned out far better than I thought, I was worried they would look really tacky & cheap but they don't, instead they look great. I like the way these 'tattoos" blend into the paintings. I finished one piece and I'll finish the other two next weekend.

The black painting is very weird. I haven't done pieces with black backgrounds for while. This one has black collage words: "Insert name here". They has painted in thick acrylic and scratched back to there paper base. I'm not sure what this will turn into, I think it will become series, my work usually does. They had a really strong creative push to paint them, usually pieces like have this strength are much bigger, nearly always oil, so this ones very strange as it's on 6 x 14 in. Guess I'll do some more in this direction and see what happens.

it's just too hot

Melbourne is in heat wave conditions...again. It is horrible, high winds and mid 40's, ( about 115 F for all you Americans). I stayed in the studio for as long as I could take it. I've been doing this experimental work drawing "tattoos" on photos. It turned out so much better than I thought it would. It looks so freaky but great.
Anyway, I was beginning to melt so I had to stop and escape to the local bar, it has the best air conditioning. This bar is only block away and, under normal conditions, I would never set foot in the place. It full of really straight well dressed people. They seem nice enough but I feel like an alien. I just came out of the studio, I guess I'm a bit disheveled. There's one other woman here who has a full sleeve of tattoos, seems to be a bit of a theme today, who is looking just as uncomfortable as I feel.
Nevertheless, I'm staying, it's far too hot out there. I'm just going to sit here in the corner and keep my head in my Mac.
They all get pissed (drunk not angry) soon and forget I'm here.
I'll post some of these new images tomorrow...I need more wine now

Poetry

3. ALL OF THIS STARTS WITH THE GEM OF AN IDEA THAT WAS PASSED ON TO ME BY YOU.
Could all this spin then cease by tomorrow?

I.
Can this the circle begin above your head?You look upward. Your fine throat stretching to accommodate, this your very curious need. Me?I’m looking at my feet. Fidget.See it now?
II.
Stale. Such a thing in my frenzy. I rotate over your very life. I’m dizzy and lost. Notaware. This red lump causes hurt. Arms of my faithsore. Leaving all I ever knew. Leaving it to spin.See it now?

III.Whereas now you are talking to those you thinkmay know. Secrets but you’re still unwise. Inside
this. That is the spin. Still eyes are glancing and trying. Waiting to understand. With you.See it now?

VI.Look at what you are fucking doingto me. Look at it. You did this. You did
This to me. Longing. I’m dizzy
Around your head. Wrapped around your headSee me now?

V.Taking aside what you did and have knownbefore. Eyes graduating upwards. Your stock.Still. You wait. Fucking only to get it your way. Nowit’s more. Here and look at how it rotates. So
Quickly from above. It is as above.See it now?

VI.Rough but I’m ready. Not scared. Nolies. Just the normal tickling of fear. InsideMy shield’s in decay. I am sure and I amlooking down. Too dizzy to see straightCan you see you now?Look harder.

Virtue Fern 2004 ( 1st June 11.19pm)

From the Marching poetry series
I don't know I've been thinking about this poem. Maybe I should paint it

Emptiness

I want to draw this ink image on someone's arm like a henna tattoo. I probably do it on a photo first to see what it looks like...the painting on this jo0uranla page is three muses no 2 red. It's a triptych and you can see it on http://www.flickr.com/photos/virtue_fern

Outcomes

These are words for the repetitions. They are repetitions of the Window and they has collage pieces added to the. Each piece has different words I write. There are 9 repetitions and nine collage pieces. These are how they start, I write the words in my paper journal. I'm not sure what repetition these will be put on...yet.

Journal Pages

I woke up with the blue image in my head and developed the yellow, red image later in my paper journal. Funny thing is though , when I painted and drew these within the windows series style they did not work and I eventually abandoned these pieces. I don't dream pieces for no reason so I'm thinking it was just the wrong series, they will work the right way when they are ready. My art has such a mind of its own.

does this hate images

let me upload an imag eyou pile of shit useless pile of crap upload an image