Latest artist books

Here are the latest artist books being exhibited at Adore in Bird's Gallery.
More details are available on my website.

Invasion

Invasion, 2013

Details, Invasion, 2013

Snake forest

Snake forest, 2013

Details, Snake forest, 2013

Rachel book

Rachel book, 2013

Rachel book, 2013

These books are on display during the exhibition at Bird's Gallery until 11 May.

Bird's Gallery
236 High Street
Kew

I'll be making more books this year when I have the residency at Australian Tapestry Workshop from July to September this year. Can't wait!

Palette works

Surge, 2013

I made a watercolour drawing on palette called Surge made for Exquisite Palette Exhibition 2013 at St Luke Artist Colourmen.
I've decided to have rabbits running from the hole on the palette.
Too many rabbits are never enough.

detail, Surge

Here are other really exquisite palettes made by my friends.

Damon Kowarsky, 2013

Damon Kowarsky's palette is a etching and aquatint print of a view of Darb al Ahmar district in Cairo.

It feels as though I'm looking at an old photograph in a dark room...

Hyun Ju Kim, 2013

Hyun Ju Kim made a beautifully detailed mixed media drawing. It may be hard to see in the photo but all tones are made by layering different colours of fine lines. As always I can't keep my eyes off her drawing of wonderful world of colourful plants, monsters and birds.

St Luke's Exquisite Palette exhibition 2013 opens from 10 April - 8 May 2013

St Luke Artist Colourmen
32 Smith Street
Collingwood
VIC 3066
info@stluke.com
03 9486 9992

Bakeneko day and night

Bakeneko at 2am

Cat is one of the animals that often become yokai (supernatural monsters) in Japanese folklores, along with fox, Japanese raccoon dog, spider and snake.

Bakeneko is a yokai that an ordinary cat transforms into.
Once transformed, Bakeneko walks with hind legs, talks like human, dances with tenugui around head, controls dead people, curses, attacks human with a wolf pack and so on.
There are also stories where Bakeneko played sumo with human too.

Bakeneko

I've made two edition called Bakeneko and Bakeneko at 2am.

First I made Bakeneko, as part of Impression fund raising exhibition at Australian Print Workshop.
Then I wanted to put this cat in a different setting, so I turned the sky into night time for the second edition, Bakeneko at 2am.
2am points around the hour of Ox in zodiac - even plants and trees are asleep, that's when we consider suitable time for demons and monsters to lurk around..

Bakeneko will be exhibited at Australian Print Workshop from the end of this month along with over 160 artists.
It's a great opportunity to buy prints at an affordable cost ($100, $150 or $200).
I've already seen what my friends Bridget Farmer and Damon Kowarsky have done for this show. Looking really lovely!
All works are edition of 10, so be quick or they will be sold out!

Favorite things

detail, foxes

Favorite things is my new miniature artist book sitting at Artisan Books on 159 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Victoria.

detail, starry bird

It's a coptic binding book where papers are sewn through their folds, and attached to each other with chain stitch linkings across the spine.
The good thing about this binding is it opens flat, in fact without the covers, it can open 360 degrees.

Each page has collages and some drawings with colour pencils.

detail, two birds

As the title suggests, it's full of my favorite things and drawings.
I'm a little embarrassed to say this but a few people know that the title of this book comes from my on and off obsession from the movie Sound of music...

detail, roo

More images are on my website!

Battle of wolves

Battle of wolves is a new artist book.

I made this book at my ex-lecturer and printmaker Jazmina Cininas' studio who kindly offered me her space and a press while she was overseas. 

detail, cerberus

Jazmina Cininas is a Melbourne based printmaker who uses reduction linocut to create extremely labour intensive images of female werewolf characters in Eastern European mythology as well as more contemporary and pop culture context.

At her studio, animals and strange monsters are roaming around together with old and new images of women.

As I was surrounded by images of fascinating mix of werewolves, monsters, Red riding hood and other animals like foxes, dingos etc at her studio, it was very tempting to use these images as reference to make something.

I combined many of the images from her pin board and books with drawings from my sketchbooks and other monsters like Cerberus.

Thank you so much Jazmina!

detail, a girl and a wolf

This book can be viewed at Artisan Books at 159 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Victoria.

More images and info are on my website

Baku

My new print is of a Baku - a Japanese mythic creature that devours dreams and nightmares.
It has a long genealogy originating from Chinese folklore and has been around and familiar to us since 14th century.

It is said to have a body of a bear, an elephant trunk, tiger's paws, ox's tail and rhinoceros eyes.

Image of Baku was often used in shrine and temple architecture and netsuke carvings.
People also put images under the pillows so they wouldn't have nightmares.
There were even pillow boxes with Baku's image or pillows with a shape of Baku.

In recent years it often appears in anime and manga like Pokemon.
Baku also means "tapir" in Japanese so some interpretations of Baku look somewhat Tapir-like.

My Baku is walking around at night looking for dreams to eat..

Nue

Nue is a monster in Japanese legend and folklore. 
It appears in numbers of literatures and it is described as having the head of a monkey, the body of a racoon, the legs of a tiger and the tail of a snake.
Originally the word Nue was first referred to a bird called White's Thrush.
People thought those birds were bad omen because they only sang at night.
Nue that we know of today as the animal above was formed in one episode from a book about an epic account of a war (Tale of the Heike) in 1180-1185. It talks about how this monster appeared as a black cloud with strange sound and made the emperor have nightmares and fall ill.

This is my latest print from last week.
I love drawing animals, especially furry ones, more than anything else. (if it wasn't too obvious from all my other works...)
Second thing I love drawing is plants.
This print just satisfied my love of drawing animals and plants.
I got to draw 4 different animals and lots of plants in one plate!

It is a two plate etching with Sanguine / Warm red / Raw Amber and Black / Sanguine / Raw Amber

hello!

Gasha dokuro II

Damon and I made a new print, Gasha Dokuro II last week.

Gasha dokuro is a yokai / monster in Japan. 

It is a giant skeleton made up of bones and grudge of people who died in wars, starvation or who are unburied.
It is said that Gasha dokuro walks around with chattering sound at night and if it sees someone, it will crush and eat him/her.

Ukiyoe artist Kuniyoshi Utagawa (1798-1861) first made an image for a story where he made one giant skeleton to represent great numbers of life size skeletons.
His anatomically correct skeleton based on European medical books made a significant impact at the time, it's become one of his masterpieces.
The story wasn't about Gasha dokuro but his image created a strong direction for artists to create contemporary images of this yokai, including this version.

This print was made for La Calaca International Print Exchange.
Theme is Calacas, Day of the Dead! Our monster will travel to the US this week!

recent works

figure#1


fish girl

more info about these prints on my website

With big supports from Damon Kowarsky and Tim Lane in the studio, I managed to pull these 2 plate etchings..
Technique I had been avoiding for a long time!
Thank you for your help Damon and Tim!

Rat and strange tree

Rat with a tree whose fruits appear to be human head.
This strange tree was first illustrated in Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (Supplement to The Hundred Demons from the Present and the Past), published circa 1781
It's one of the books where he depicted supernatural bestiaries, collections of ghosts, spirits, spooks and monsters, many of which Toriyama based on literature, folklore, other artwork.
The fruits are often smiling or laughing, even when they are falling...
:) :) :) :)

more info on my website

hanging flamingo

One cat just leads to another - Ernest Hemingway

another edition pulled with Damon

cloud face and rat girl

cloud was inspired by an illustration in Illustrated One Hundred Demons from the Present and the Past by Toriyama Sekien in 1781, depicting Ōmagatoki, a japanese term for dusk when the sky grows dark.
it is the time of meeting yokai, ghost and dark creatures.

thank you always damon!

baby mothra

“the spirit which inhabits these places is bad, inhuman, hostile; it belongs to an exhausting, cruel and constantly accelerating machine. Deep down, everyone… desires its destruction" Michel Houellebecq, Approaches to Distress

Doodle time capsules

I have been drawing every day and night, even at my casual temp job at the reception. (job is priority though, really!)
I often like my drawings at work better than when I'm in my studio concentrating to make something nice.
Not always, but I seem to make things I like when I'm on the phone with someone I don't know about.


I figured that I can work better when I'm not trying and I'm not aware of what exactly I'm doing.
And then I'd come back to the studio after work and try to re-draw from what I got from daytime.
Quite often those little drawings end up being nothing but they always serve other purpose in my studio.


They work really well as my time capsules.
I will look at them in few years time and feel nostalgic / embarrassed / inspired etc...
I actually looked at my 6-years-old sketch books for ideas recently.
I thought I'd use bits and pieces of them as they were unexpectedly interesting.
They are my strictly secret books as they are too embarrassing.


I used to think there is some sort of divine power that descends on to genius artists with some inspirations and ideas.
That's a bit of an exaggeration but I did think I needed to be a super creative inventor of everything brand new.
So absurd!
I believe now that inspiration and creativity come from exploring, re-examining and transforming own experiences and existing ideas, re-thinking about memories or images that are archived in my head somewhere. I don't believe I can ever be a super inventor of original art that no one has ever seen before.
Everyone gets inspired from someone else's great works and ideas.
I guess important thing for me is to create something that people already know or seen but from a new or a different perspective.
So I will keep my daily drawing.... secretly.... at my reception in the office.

Rachel's Garden II

One suffocatingly hot night Rachel is awaken by the fragrance of catnip.



She follows the fragrance, it leads her to a place that seems familiar to her.
It looks like the garden she once visited in her dream.


She comes across some sort of procession.
It is a procession of supernatural beings and monsters that are unknown to her.





She wonders whether she is awake or merely dreaming. Or maybe she has stepped into someone else's dream.



After the procession has passed, she feels as though she has been left behind.
She feels as though she actually belongs to them.


The world around her turns completely silent.

Practice makes perfect...

first state, copper engraving

first proof, wood engraving


I've pulled few proofs for copper and wood engravings on the weekend.
The wood block made me realise how much I didn't practise, as the image didn't turn out to be as good as I hoped. I think I was a lot better when I was a student. My hands seem to have forgotten what they used to do before.
The copper engraving just showed how much more work I needed to complete this piece.
I think I was a lot better when I was student!
I felt a bit disappointed but I now feel very determined.
I'm so determined to practice everyday so my hands and head remember what they used to do everyday!!
It's just so too important to practise daily.............