February 2024 Mailbag
We open up our February 2024 Mailbag to find that H Steve Cook from the beautiful seaside town of Victor Harbor in South Australia has been busy with his watercolour sketches as he terms his creative images.
And as a former postmaster I am sure Steve will enjoy seeing the image of the stamps above which I believe are close to being put on the endangered species list!!
And while we are in Victor Harbor let's drop in on Rowdy Wylie and see what he has been up to....
We know that Rowdy has been very busy preparing a painting to commemorate ANZAC DAY on 25 April 2024. It has been Rowdy's practice for several years now to recreate, in paint on board, an image which gives due recognition to the sacrifices which have been made by men and women to protect the free world. Rowdy donates his ANZAC and REMEMBRANCE DAY paintings to an RSL (Returned and Services League of Australia) museum so that others can learn more about the history of Australia's involvement in war.
Of late, Rowdy has also been inspired by the travels of blog team member Jane and painted a scene from one of the "STAN" countries she travelled through in 2023. If you missed this post click here.
And for today I thought you would enjoy seeing Rowdy's latest painting in his Outback Opal Series - the details of which will feature in tomorrow's post.
Colin Morris has also been out and about and discovered a new photographer -
Christine Goerner who had an exhibition at the end of 2023 titled: Outback and Beyond - Dreamscapes of the desert and Faraway places. This was a solo exhibition of abstract Australian landscapes.
We will be doing a post on Christine's work in the near future but if you would like a preview please follow the bookmark link below.
From our Roving Report D in Central Victoria - the Stone Sisters by Anthony Foutch.
And the amazing Willie Takatosi Cox has just made another incredible movable figure from paper! Check out Steph Curry in the video below.
And let us conclude this month's mailbag with correspondence from our very favourite subscribers - Monica in Tanzania.
Monica has sent in a link to a very interesting book which has been published on African Art. As a teaser here is the opening paragraph...
Today's encore selection -- from African Artists: From 1882 to Now by Chika Okeke-Agulu. The diversity of contemporary African art:
"Just as political independence provided the grounds for the emergence of modern art, contemporary art, a post-1960s phenomenon, came in the wake of a reassessment by artists and citizens of Africa's realities after the euphoric period of political independence. Also, where modern art, for the most part, participated in the collective imagining of a new culture and society, contemporary art tended to be critical or sceptical of such concerns, largely because of widespread disappointments with -- and failures of -- post-independence nation-building. As such, contemporary art, as a distinct artistic phenomenon in Africa, covers diverse practices that question the political, cultural and ideological certainties of colonial and postcolonial modernity and artistic modernism. It resists being coopted by cultural nationalism, goes beyond painting, sculpture and documentary photography, and embraces various forms of installation, performance, new media and conceptual art. Moreover, contemporary artists, distanced as they are from the experience of colonialism, adopt a diverse range of critical positions on tradition and heritage, socio-economic formations and structures, and political and ideological affiliations. Whereas affirmative theories and ideas such as Negritude, Pan-Africanism and, to a lesser extent, Pan-Arabism informed modern artists' search for formal language and subject matter expressive of supposedly true Black and African subjectivity, contemporary art bypasses or establishes a critical attitude to them.
Please follow the link above to read more about this fascinating topic
And what a wonderful way to sign off today with Monica's comment. We have had a wonderful start to 2024 with several new subscribers joining us. Your support is overwhelming and a huge thanks to those of you who have been following us through subscription or on X and Facebook. And thank you also to my wonderful team mates, Jane and Julie who kept an eye on the behind the scenes blog work while I recovered from a bout of Covid.