obsessions...

Many who know me know that I have certain rituals or routines that make up my day...

I love Vegemite on toast in the morning...

I love a flat white extra hot at about 3 in the afternoon...

And when it comes to my artwork I love a good boat or bird drawing...

Lately my artwork has been taken up with an old love - namely landscapes. Imagined or real, it doesn't matter; what I love is trying to capture the shapes, the light, the textures and most importantly colours of the land. I try to render and rediscover places that Ive been such as Broken Hill and the surrounding sites... and I look for the spirit and the feelings that make me dream about these trips that took place so many years ago.

For some artists, however, their themes and subject matters border on obsessions. Which is what I discovered when watching an Artscape doco last night on the Australian artist Lisa Roet.

Lisa is a Melbourne based artist that has an amazing career, spanning some 20 years. She is a photographer, a sculptor, a drawer, a video and installation artist...and with a deft hand at all these mediums she tries to continuously capture the heart and soul of one subject - namely The Ape. I was fascinated to watch Lisa describe her love of these magnificent primates and watch her magpie tendency to find every myth, story, experiment and history about these gorillas, monkeys, and chimpanzees...

Mugsy 2008

Her latest exhibition of work was exhibited as part of an exhibition at The Ian Potter Museum of Art at Federation square and it was called Re framing Darwin : Evolution and and Art in Australia . The work looked at a captive Gorilla that was brought up by the circus to perform. It was a sad story of a captive animal that had never known another life. Lisa's photographic series seen above, captured the sad story and true nature of this man and his 'son'.

The passion Lisa has for her subject matter is extraordinary and to see her now campaign for habitat rights in countries such as Borneo was fantastic. It really was a great doco and to see an artist and her beliefs and obsessions at their most passionate was truly inspiring....