New website

I have just built a new website. duanemoyle.com . My original website was in need of a facelift and I have always been uncertain how to contextualise the two branches of my art practice, the personal and the commercial, so I have now separated them into two sites. duanemoyle.com will have my fine art, the work I do for my own artistic development, addressing themes, images and issues I find important and interesting. moylepainting.com will now serve as the site for my commercial work and will display portraits, landscapes, cars etc as well as information on prints and tutoring.

Now I can direct Galleries and curators to duanemoyle.com and those with more conservative requirements to moylepainting.com . For a long time I have been unsure of where I stand in relation to the conceptual vs decorative debate. I enjoy making work for people with specific subject and style requirements and it has been a steady source of income. (artists have to eat) But I know if this was all I did I would shrivel up and die inside.

http://duanemoyle.com   (click on link to the left)

The Way We Were.

Here’s a funny article I found that addresses New Zealand attitudes toward modern art in 1937. Seventy-two years later and not much has changed. We are a nation of pragmatists.
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov11_06Rail-t1-body-d18.html#n57

Win a Free Print!

I am now producing limited edition Giclee prints of a selection of my paintings. They are available in 3 sizes: A4, A3, A2. Each print is numbered and hand signed.

http://moylepainting.com
To see the prints click on the text below:

For a limited time I am offering a chance to win a free print to those who vote for their favourite painting. Simply email me duanemoyle@yahoo.co.nz or leave a comment here with your name and the title of your chosen painting and on 1st August 2009 at 1200GMT I will randomly draw a name to win the free print. Free postage within the UK.

Print Prices:

Stretched Canvas:
A4 £75
A3 £85
A2 £110

Archival Paper:
A4 £50
A3 £60
A2 £80

Some prints are only available in A3 or A4 size due to the original painting being of a small size (prints look better when they are smaller than the original). Also, a few of the digital image file sizes will not be suitable for A2 printing.
Not all the paintings fit the A4, A3, A2 proportions exactly, each print will be sized to match the proportions of the original but be as close as possible to A4, A3, or A2.

A4 = 210 x 297mm = 8.25″ x 11.75″.
A3 = 297 x 420mm = 11.75″ x 16.5″.
A2 = 420 x 594mm = 16.5″ x 23.5″.

Prints may vay slightly from the image on a computer screen, I will endeavour to keep the print as close as possible to the original.

I’m guessing most of the entrants will be friends or family but I can assure you the draw will be completely random. I will write names on individual post-it notes, fold the sticky over and place them into a large bowl. My lovely wife will then pull one name out who will be the winner of a free print!

View the print selection here:

My Latest Painting.

This work has come from a keen interest in Jamaican beauty, landscape and history. I have had the privilege of making several trips to Jamaica and have visited many parts of the island and met many wonderful people from all walks of life. Coming from New Zealand I have had the typical foreigner’s romantic enchantment with it’s warmth and tropical wonders, and yet this has been tempered with the hardship, chaos, crime and dangers that are ever present. It is a land of extremes, and a land easy to love. A land that looks so wondrous and brochure perfect (in parts) and yet that same land has witnessed some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity.

The location of the source image was deep in the Cockpit Country, (where Usain Bolt grew up) a mixture of wild jungle and farmed fields, and the ever-present sugar cane. The subject is mixed race, a descendant of both slave and slave master, victim and tyrant blended together to create what is now a very fashionable beauty. She stands with a confident model pose, looking directly at the viewer, calmly enjoying the sunshine and the surroundings.

What interested me was the fashion catalogue appeal of the land and the beauty that can come from it while acknowledging the bloodshed that has been before, the flaming blood red in the grasses being a sinister reminder of the bygone horrors. The land and the people of Jamaica have been healed and restored, but not completely.

Julie in Jamaica______2009, oil on canvas, 853 x 603mm, £500.

Art For Art’s Sake?

I have been reading a book which has stimulated my thinking further about the fundamentals of why we make art. This blog will be the first of a few that tackle some of my ponderings on “Art for Whom and For What?” by Brian Keeble which, as the title suggests, tackles some large issues. Our omniscient friend Wikipedia tells us that “Art for Art’s Sake” “expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only “true” art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function.” We see evidence of this throughout modern art and it’s quest for the uncluttered essence of art and continual reduction and elimination of visuality until all we have is pure concept and what some in the 80’s called “The End of Art”. This is widely accepted as the status quo in contemporary art and something about it sounds pure and noble; all the trappings of regulations and dogma are pushed aside and the individual can boldly go – wherever. This pluralistic liberty is understandable if you take the secular world-view that we are simply a complex animal with no ultimate accountability and are completely free to formulate our own standards. Brian Keeble believes art should be in the service of the sacred and that our endeavours should be directed towards a communion with Divine Reality. “Even when we recognise the extent to which art embodies values that are incommunicable by any other means, still it is never the cause of it’s own significance. Art has to be significant of something; it addresses itself to something other than itself.” I have heard echos of the same sentiment in other writers that are quickly labeled as ultra conservative, nostalgic, or just plain ignorant of the developments in contemporary philosophy. This is an exciting challenge for me. I find myself aligning with these conservatives in that I have no interest in deconstruction, I want to understand truth and wholeness, and make art that is in service of this, not some vain, clever re-arrangement of the wreckage that has significance to me alone.  

The image below is one of the greatest paintings I have made. I painted it at the start of 2004 and was interested in the simplicity and clarity of the image and the name of the flower amused me: “Royal Highness”. It played with the notion of beauty and its disenfranchisement, but also, and more honestly, it addressed my own enchantment with romance and the daring possibilities of humility in art.

Royal Highness______2004, oil and acrylic on canvas, 300mm diameter.

Something Sickly Sentimental

 
It’s been a while since my last post due to the distraction of employment. I’ve been working. For money. And that’s good but it means I have less time for more important things like painting, blogging, pondering the universe and staring at my bonsai trees. I’m a little sad to think about the looming possibility of permanent, full time employment and the limitations that will place on my art practice but money brings other freedoms.

 

Since my last post and my renunciation of my membership to the negative cynics club, I have been haunted by a dreadful word: sentimental. It conjures up ideas and images vastly opposed to that post-modern, disaffected, cool club that I have sought for so long to be a part of. How can I address love, joy, enchantment and celebration with out it being classified as maudlin, mawkish and bathetic? How can I paint the sweetness of flowers tenderly yet with strength and conviction, and in my own way critical of those things I find untenable? To be classified as sentimental is surely an insult and cause for great embarrassment. So in my time of trouble I turned to the big book, the dictionary. Sentimental is defined as: “weakly emotional; mawkishly susceptible or tender” and “artificially or affectedly tender; — often in a reproachful sense” “addressed or pleasing to the emotions only, usually to the weaker and the unregulated emotions.” These are the familiar negative definitions but there is also something about “sentimental” that appeals to me: “The tender emotions and feelings, as love, pity, or nostalgia” and “romantic, tender; characterized by refined feeling.” Perhaps the biggest irritation  to contemporary thinkers: “containing a moral reflection” After digesting these I am beginning to understand my position. It’s not sentimentality, cynicism, or even abject reflections on nihilism that I am opposed to, it is artificiality – which is dishonesty.  Rather than making ambitious, clever work I want to unravel what is important in life and make work that honestly reflects that. For now I want to address sweetness and beauty; images of loved ones, some flowers, some children, what ever stirs my soul. To dwell on the misery and gloom that shouts from every newspaper may be current but to focus on that without any reference to hope and redemption would be untruthful. I’m choosing not to ignore the grim realities, but in my experience they are inferior to love, domestic bliss and enchantment with beauty. It’s all very sentimental but that’s ok by me.

Ko Mauao te Maunga_____2008, oil on canvas, 502 x 705mm.

Irony Exhaustion

I’ve been having a pleasant and soothing time dwelling on things close to my heart. Irony isn’t one of them.

In recent years contemporary painting has been validating itself with self-aware parody, cynicism and irony. So as an eager young artist I developed a way to fit into this mode of criticality. The work I did for my masters (click link in blogroll at top left) was a strategic, carefully planned foray into making work that was witty and clever, as well as indulging in a form of classical painting that tickled my fancy. The results were magnificent – that sounds vain – and it is, but that’s what it was all about anyway. I wanted to make the boldest, slickest work possible, pushing myself forward as “The Prince of Painters” struttin’ his stuff and engaging with contemporary critical discourse. 

After making “The Philistine” (see first blog) and receiving many positive comments and feeling like my grand vision was hitting the mark, someone commented that it all seemed a bit flat, detached and clinical. True. And the dominating message was my love of painting. True. It was all brains and brawn but it had no heart or soul. I wasn’t being as honest as I could be. The love of painting was genuine, the issues and the critique were something I felt was a necessary addition to be taken seriously by the art world. I didn’t really want to mock painting, I love painting! The issues addressed are interesting but what would I paint if I didn’t bother trying to make my art all hip and contemporary? What images and issues are important to me?

I don’t have any interest in the grotesque, the abject, death, decay, vulgarity, and deconstruction. They are the currency of much art today but not something that flicks my switch. Clinging to avant-gardism and the relentless pursuit of novelty has also lost it’s gloss. As conservative as it seems, I want to paint sweet flowers, portraits of my beautiful wife, rich landscapes full of history and depth, which sound like the sort of thing your Nana might like. If sincerity was my new benchmark then joy, love and beauty are the issues most pertinent. I have a great life, I’m not bitter, angry or tortured. Recently I have been exploring specific interests through subjects that I find visually affirmative, personally potent and conceptually engaging. This work aspires to celebrate life through a medium that enthrals with its primary visuality. I aim to engage an audience in a deep way about important images, ideas and issues; making art in ways that I love for people I care for.

What on earth will all this look like? Am I in danger of becoming the Michael Buble of the art world? If someone calls me Katie Melua I will burn all my brushes. But perhaps by opting out of the current fashion, the work will stand out. “Moving with the times places you in a blind spot: if your part of the general tenor, it’s difficult to add a dissonant note.”S.Price(2002)Dispersion. http://www.distributedhistory.com/Dispersion08.pdf                           This could put my career in jeopardy. Many galleries look out for things that “look like art”, they don’t really have a clue but if it looks like something out of step with the trends, they won’t touch it with a barge pole. 

Maybe I’ll eventually refute these statements and go back to satire and irony, they are kinda fun things, but for now I’ll speak direct and clear. As an example the image below is a recent work “Mother and Child”. It is a partial copy of a Raphael painting “Madonna of the Chair” that I chose for it’s sweetness and tenderness. Despite it’s original religious references it is simply a mother loving a child, a depiction of one of the strongest bonds in humanity. 

 

Mother and Child. 2009, oil on canvas, 542 x 453mm.

An Embarrassing Condition.

“Artist as a social role is somewhat embarrassing, in that it’s taken to be a useless position, if not a reactionary one: the practitioner is dismissed as either the producer of over-valued decor, or as part of an arrogant, parasitical, self-styled elite.”  S.Price(2002)Dispersion. http://www.distributedhistory.com/Dispersion08.pdf

 ”So, what do you do for a living?” me- “Umm, er, I’m a part time art installer, and sort of, er, an artist”.

I am guilty of feeling guilty. I have a great life so I’m not about to moan on about the burden of struggling to find my own visual language and then finding a gallery interested in such things and hoping they can find buyers so that I can make more of these things, but there is this feeling… Maybe it’s the voice of the pragmatist/late Grandfather in my head “What on earth is the government doing giving all this money to the arts when nurses need a pay-rise!” The nurses are always the Ace card. No-one would dispute they play an incredibly tough and vital role in any society which makes artists always look a bit vain. Thanks to that bunch of under-paid do-gooders I seem a bit useless. And then on top of that there’s that archaic concept of “man as provider” that rattles about my consciousness (again sounding like my late Grandad) that adds to my embarrassment. Woe is me.  

I live near a train station so everyday (if I’m up early enough ha ha!) I see streams of people  trudging off to their 9-5 jobs and I quietly rejoice I’m no longer one of them. But then my wife heads out to join them to pay all our bills and get abused by grumpy passengers and I stay at home in my sweatpants and slippers and listen to wonderful music and think about what to paint, how to paint it and WHY OH WHY!! I promised not to moan but that’s about all I’ve done so far so I’ll stop that thought there. 

It’s not like building roads or clearing land-mines or saving the South American rainforests. I am the creator of luxury bourgeois wall decorations… With lots of time on his hands to think, and ponder and solemnly reflect. (for most of you it’s simple daydreaming, but not us noble artists) 

But then something stupidly simple and incredibly useless captures the hearts of the whole world. A boy from a small rural town in a small poor nation runs faster than anyone – ever. And he does it with such breathtaking ease and nonchalance, confidently beginning his celebrations before he has even finished. Every time I see his image or remember those races it makes me want to sing and dance and do the hand pointy thing.

But what’s the point of that?

 

The First Blog.

I am skeptical about blogging. It seems self indulgent to assume the whole world wants to know when and why I last picked my nose or what trivial issue is driving me to the soapbox. But I need to organize my thoughts and find a way of articulating them in a form that isn’t just unintelligible scribbles in a notebook. And people may actually be interested in the life and work of an artist figuring out what to make and the point of making it. So I’ll try to keep it brief, amusing and for those who can’t be bothered reading, I’ll include images. It will be partly manifesto, some progress updates, the occasional rant, maybe even some criticism, but I promise to only write when I have something interesting to say.

The Philistine 2008, oil on linen and board, 1330 x 890mm.