Let's Talk Art Blog

The 2023 Incognito Art Show is a not-for-profit, artists-supporting-artists initiative raising funds for artists with disabilities at Studio A and Little Orange Studio in Sydney. This year over 2000 works were donated by artist from across Australia. The Incognito Art Show isn’t an ordinary art sale. Every A5 sized artwork, regardless of artist, is sold for just $100.

I started this sketch thinking I'd have another go with violet and green - but as you'll see after much indecision I ended up making pink the dominant colour, hence the title. It took me a while to tune into this sketch and I had a little wrestle with details - too much too soon, so lots of covering up and some big collage pieces to the rescue! Some interesting new shapes and ideas did emerge by the end though which may carry forward into something bigger.

I needed to work with warm colours today, it's a bit chilly here in Queensland at the moment! I chose a range of analogous colours from yellow-orange-red to get me started. I also happened upon a little box of interesting collage snippings that I thought I'd incorporate - hence the bubbles. I'm not sure where the inner circles ended up but I love the little windows these 'leftovers' create.

As I've been working on my new paintings, one of them began to wander off into the land of pinks and greens, which isn't a colour combination I've really used before. So, I thought I'd have a quick play around with doing a sketch in muted colours to see what would happen and if I was struck by any kind of inspiration!

I’ve been meaning to try beginning with a black background to see what difference that makes to the final piece and I had a 30 x 30 cm board to experiment with, just lying around so I thought I’d give it a go whilst I still had the blues and ranges on my palette. The black underneath created unexpected little pockets of deep 'space' which were intriguing. I’m not sure I could have achieved these without the black under painting.

I think I must have been dreaming about a field trip to South Australia, as whilst I was working on this sketch, I felt a sudden urge to disappear into space….not literally, I’m not sure these rocket builders quite have their machines failsafe enough yet, but ‘space’ as in wide open space…..