OUTPUT
I didn’t have any clinical supervision while going through my grad year as a mental health nurse. I knew it was going to be rough and I needed something for self reflection that I could form a habit around so I wrote a haiku after each shift about something that stood out. I think it walks a fine line between comedy and tragedy. I’ve turned them all into a collection with illustrations, check it out.
This illustrated poetry anthology is a collection of haiku summarising every shift of a graduate year in the mental health nursing pathway.
Here’s some behind the scenes, in the last year I’ve also pretty much dropped any form of digital art, so it’s all ink and permanent marker drawings.
I did another couple of nursing based artworks recently one of which is in an exhibition until September 5 at The Laneway Gallery in Coffs. Here’s one depicting one of the harder parts of the job a “controlled restraint” where an injection needs to be given as a last resort to stop people getting hurt. It seems to happen on shift changeover way too often.
I’ve been painting over or updating older works that I haven’t quite been happy with. Through switching back to primarily traditional art, I feel like the work has much more value (even if only to me) due to its ephemeral nature. Here today painted over tomorrow.
I’ve been really enjoying adding elements of collage to my paintings, similar to what was done in Synthetic Cubism. I really went crazy with the motorbike piece above, incorporating vintage maps and dwelling illustrations. I’ve also been experimenting with thick twine and newspaper.
INPUT
Here’s 3 movies I’ve watched recently:
I can’t imagine being Sean Connery wanting to break away from his James Bond roles and then being told he’d be wearing a red bikini the whole film. Zardoz begins with a flying stone head the size of a house telling worshipers in underwear "THE GUN IS GOOD. THE PENIS IS EVIL" then vomiting shotguns. This is an absurd, impressionistic, futuristic sci fi.
Imperium really surprised me. I was sucked in by Radcliffe’s portrayal of an undercover neo-Nazi. I liked some of the commentary on domestic versus international terrorism and how the film laid bare the ways disenfranchised people can become radicalised. This movie is a decade old now, yet it feels more relevant than ever.
Arcadian felt like a pretty stock standard post apocalyptic thriller initially. Until I saw what they’d done with the creature designs, are you kidding me?! These things were fucking horrifying and they gave zero explanations for what I was seeing. I loved it. I was expecting Nick Cage to go a bit harder unfortunately but it does have the most realistic haircuts in the post apocalypse.
Click Image to listen to a track. This is the swedish band Carnosus’s debut album and hot damn it slaps. they mix technical and progressive death metal with a hint of thrash and some truly brutal vocals. I like this even more than there more recent two albums but Visions of Infinihility is a close second.
Click Image to listen to a track. Boundaries have a blend of metalcore / hardcore that’s infectious and “Yearning: The Unbeautiful After” feels like a crushing 50 minute beatdown. The contrast between the guttural vocals and clean singing used sparingly I actually feel is a strength rather than my usual opinion that clean vocals don’t belong in heavy music. I think the strength of this record is how they shift between sections in each song, it doesn’t get too same-y.
Click Image to listen to a track. Vale Oliver Tree. Love you madly hate you badly felt like a return to ugly is beautiful and I’m very happy about that.
Here’s some books I’ve read in the last couple of months:
The Witcher # 1 : The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Black Trillium by Marion Zimmer Bradley
A Rising of the Lights by Steve Toltz
The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold
Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey by Alex Grey
Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold by Stephen Fry
The Sorcerer’s Skull by Robert E. Vardeman
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han
Magician by Raymond E. Feist
Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen by Brian Raftery