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Showing posts with label Dmetri Kakmi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dmetri Kakmi. Show all posts

Sunday, June 7, 2020

The week that was



Yesterday week, Shane and I welcomed our first visitors since the recent easing of social distancing. Dmetri Kakmi (above and below, left) and Leigh Hobbs (above and below, centre) are dear friends who have been sorely missed. Due to months of lockdown, this was their first visit to the house. It was lovely to see them, but the afternoon passed far too quickly and now we’re missing them all over again.


In the week that followed their memorable visit, I’ve been developing several new works on paper (see below). The drafting table was formerly owned by Leigh, who gifted it to me several years ago. Coincidentally, at the time I had been searching in vain for one. It has become an essential piece of equipment, especially in my new studio, where space is of the essence. It gives me great pleasure to know that it is also linked to Leigh’s creative history. Shane has added a shelf so I can work on more than one project at a time. 


Working between different sizes is proving to be a liberating and learning experience. These works, shown in various stages of progress, are pencil, ink, gouache and soluble graphite.



Thursday, March 5, 2020

Opening night of 20[2020]


Featured here are two captured moments from last night’s opening of 20[2020] at Tacit Galleries(See also my previous post). 

In photo 1 (top), I’m pictured with my painting New Horizon. (Photographer: Dmetri Kakmi, with artistic direction from Megan Backhouse). 


Photo 2, above, shows artist Jim Pavlidis (left) and model Leigh Hobbs (right) flanking Jim’s portrait of Leigh. (Note the portrait-within-a-portrait of the subject's immortal creation, Mr Chicken).

20[2020] concludes on 15 March.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

A visit to Newstead

Last week my partner Shane Jones and I visited our friends Leigh Hobbs and Dmetri Kakmi at the cottage in Newstead that they’ve periodically house sat for many years. It was our first visit to the cottage, which was utterly charming, and also the first occasion we’ve taken time to explore the area. After a hearty lunch (doubly welcome on such a cold day, as was the open fire) we all went for a walk in the nearby woods, accompanied by Dmetri and Leighs’ two eager hounds Snowy and Lulu.

Newstead is about 15 kms from Castlemaine; both are part of the historic Goldfields area of Victoria. The crevices and potholes in the photos below are remnants of its goldmining history. I have a project relating to this very subject looming (more about this in a future post) and was able to collect a great deal of reference material, namely the leaves (mainly eucalyptus) some of which are pictured in the final photograph below.

For a short history of Newstead, click HERE.

Into the woods

The man-made crevice (above) and pothole (below) date from the gold mining era

Left: Leigh Hobbs; right: Shane Jones

Shane and Dmetri Kakmi

Aside from a few scattered bricks, there is little evidence of the cottage that once occupied this spot

At the approach of dusk: Shane, Leigh, Snowy and Lulu

Shane in a spontaneous moment of levity - or possibly an attempt to levitate

A small selection of my own treasures gleaned from Newstead's goldfields