This is exciting, managing to add a video to my blog.. well what is this? As i paint I often revise the original work and often end up with a totally different image to what I started with. In this case I was motivated to paint a work in response to an essay I wrote around sustainability of remote Aboriginal communities that rely on the production of artwork as their main means of financial input. I thought about how through artwork, Aboriginal people have been able to communicate and transcend so many of the barriers to engage on a dynamic and equal footing with the larger Australian community, well at least the ones that look and buy their art. I have been very much inspired and moved by Aboriginal art and the final work that I arrived at is an acknowledgment of how this way of seeing and interpreting the world has been communicated to me and changed my perception. And this to me is what great art does, challenge and change ones perceptions. The lines that radiate behind the 'white' head are reminiscent of the artwork that some Aboriginal artists use and it gradually metamorphoses to represent the sound waves or energy waves that we understand is ho energy moves through space and into the cosmos.

Absence makes the heart grow dimmer

it has been a drought. Attention spent in other places, gathering new ideas and feelings about the way the world is turning for me. I have been attempting to gain acceptance into galleries and it has been a fraught one. I had hoped by now the passage into a place of fairness, good business practice and positive endeavour would be on my cards but still no, the paintings languish in my overcrowded studio, wishfully dreaming for the opportunity to hang on a different wall in a new space with new eyes feasting upon them for a change. I have been studying a difficult course in a field so far removed from my usual preoccupations, one of International Urban and Environmental Management. It has opened my eyes to a myriad of real life concerns and dealings as we try to come to terms with the rising overcrowded populations of cities, the threat of peak oil on our whole livelihoods and the best practice way to engage communities in addressing their concerns in the way they see fit. How does this work with being a painter I ask, well my painting is about what I see in the world, what I know and what I understand. I try and unravel the complexities of being, as it affects me and others, who are we really? How does where we live and what we have to contend with, affect how we interpret and react to the world around us. Whilst reading about the struggle of millions to survive on the fringes of burgeoning cities and seeing how complicated and complex the problems are at trying to sort out the 'mess' of the mass habitat, I felt that no one really knew what to do and how to get there and in the end it was jsut a case of The Blind leading the Blind.  Hence the painting below was my response. 

The Blind Leading the Blind
100 x 76cm
oil on canvas
SDobkins 2012

Invitation to the Studio Show 2011

I am mounting this show to present several works both recent and past. Some smaller works which are fresh and poignant. My white cat seems to have become an incidental muse on this quiet journey that I am currently undertaking. Lots of boats, red of course on a vast blue ocean which suggest a feeling of being adrift, searching for connections.

Invite to Studio Show

White Cat in a Midnight Garden

Adrift

Sweet Hearted Chook

Comfort

The Struggle to Make Sense of it All

Well I'm not doing too well at making sense of it all this past few weeks. Hence the dearth of blogging, talking, diary entries, the whole shebang really. Pity really coz sometimes I think I've managed to get it to a point where I'm going to take off, jettison into a different kind of stratosphere, as far as thought process, opportunities and generally a different scene when one wakes up in the morning is concerned, and then flat liner.... Its the eternal sameness, relentless going round in tiny circles that's so frustrating. So it comes down to creating one's own reality, and as I paint my realities into existence it seems fairly obvious that I have to shift the content of my study, the approach to the work. Therein lies the catch 22, because my work reflects me at any one stage, so for the work to shift I've had to shift, but if I can't manage to get my perception to change then everything stays as it is and I go no where. I take full responsibility although I do crave the odd helping hand. Lethargy, ennui, the spiral of pointlessness. Does one scratch up the disappointments or only acknowledge the successes. Doesn't the effort of putting ones self out into the world determine a positive acknowledgment, or is it only valid after another opens the gate and lets you through that particular door which you summoned the courage to knock on.

Waiting for Seamail

The Anonymous Astrologer

Well folks, it's another chilly day in Wintery Melbourne. But there is just next to me 'The Anonymous Astrologer', recently painted and so fresh, one is in danger of having red paint leap onto any decent piece of clothing. It has a quiet contemplative feel about it. I believe the source of this imagery is two fold. I recently saw a magnificent, dark and brooding painting by Molly Pwerle and I was struck by her colours in this work. It made me connect to a part of myself I hadn't in a long while. I wanted to explore these feelings, these dark. stellar places. Meanwhile I have been watching a program by Stephen Hawking about deep space, infinity, black holes, the unimaginable space that we float within. So here I have it. It's different but I am enjoying its contemplative state. The ladder has appeared again, a recurring theme it seems. The frailty of the ladder, its simple geometry yet it so efficiently elevates one to places one cannot normally reach. The simplification of the head, the flatness of it yet graphically conveys humanity.