Blog

Recently Malinda-Ro and I pitched a tent near the lovely Hindmarsh River, which winds through Victor Harbor to the sea. There are some beautiful tea trees there with gnarled, flaky-bark trunks arching over the water. I couldn’t resist doing a sketch or two.

I have drawn this onto black paper with white gel pen. I am also contemplating the composition of a painting with acrylics in landscape format..

I’ve been sitting around in courts for the last 23 years, much of the time doing nothing more interesting than twiddling my thumbs. Recently I have been killing time by looking at other peoples thumbs…and hands.

In a previous blog I mentioned I will be doing a series of paintings on hands in the courts. I really need to learn hands and all their features and moods if I am going to achieve this goal. That’s why I have been staring at hands a lot. I have also been busy sketching them. Below is one tit bit to whet your...

Finally I have completed my paintings for the 2010 Victor Harbor Art Show.

end of the drain 1: the regulator

end of the drain 2: engineering solutions

end of the drain 3: toxicity

The exhibition runs from Friday 15th to Saturday 23rd January. It’s open from 6:45 pm to 9 pm on 15th January, and thereafter from 10 am to 8:30 pm daily. It’s a huge exhibition and many works are very reasonably priced, including mine!

Still feeling moved by my weekend at Camp Coorong in October I have been working on a series of acrylic paintings called “The end of the drain”, about the tragic plight of the once beautiful Coorong.

Here’s one I have been working on:

It’s about the government’s obsession with engineering solutions to the Coorong’s problems. I’m happy with the colours and the general idea, but my perspectives are a bit askew. Pencilled in you’ll see the outline of a pelican. This, if my memory serves me correctly, is the totem, or “nagatji” of one of the...

I have been kept busy for the last year with various commissioned caricatures. Some of them appear in the Caricatures and Cartoons page of my gallery. They are lots of fun and always produce mirth. Here are a couple I have finished recently.

I hope the unfortunate subjects dont mind me displaying their accentuated features on the WORLD WIDE WEB!

You can tell a lot about a person from their hands. The shape, size and texture of hands can reveal a person’s age, gender and occupation. The way hands are held, or the things they are holding, can disclose something of what their owner is doing, and can even indicate their emotional state.

I am currently doing drawings of the hands of various players in the drama of the criminal court, a place where the tensions at the seams of our society are put under the microscope, where events occurring at the snapping point are scrutinised...

A recent weekend at Camp Coorong, on South Australia’s south-east coast, opened my eyes to the beautiful simplicity of the ancient Narrindjeri world, a simplicity yearned for by many, particularly those who struggle to fit in to the fast paced and competitive western world. It also revealed to me in starker detail than ever before the devastation brought upon the Ngarrindjeri peoples and their land by European settlement. Through a guided tour of Bonney reserve, a delightful little patch of coastal mallee scrub, and over a round-the-fire dicussion, Tom and Ellen Trevorrow shared their stories, interweaving the wonder of the...

Recently I have been working on a series of self-portraits showing me as I appear Monday to Friday in my work clobber. I am attempting to match appropriate facial expressions with common adversarial cliches. “I object!” is perhaps the most well-known legal exclamation. Few can deny having at some point practiced this in front of a mirror, releasing their fury at some injustice, defiantly raising one of their fists while clutching a toothbrush with the other.

….and I’m already preparing for my next exhibition, a smaller one in Ecco Espresso Bar, Central Market Arcade, Adelaide. The cafe, which can be accessed from Victoria Square, is between the Hilton International Hotel and the Sir Samuel Way Building (District and Supreme Courts). Illustrating the contrast between the grandeur and functionality of Adelaide’s edifices of Justice and the dysfunction that brings people through their revolving doors, the Order in the Court exhibition will run from 14th August to 14th September 2009 (click on Coming events for more information).

The Elizabeth Magistrates Court

Who is this “Malinda-Ro Koehn”, with whom I am exhibiting in June?
Not only is she my closest companion and my gentle manager-in-art, but she is a budding photographer with a keen eye and a love of the slightly odd. Stimulating in the viewer deep contemplations and wistful imaginings, her studies on windows and doors is a good example of her style. Here are a few to whet your appetite:

See you at the exhibition!