A New Adventure Begins!

A month ago I began brainstorming ideas for ways to start getting somewhere in my artistic career. I decided I needed to start working towards an exhibition, but I needed a subject, a theme. 

I began a list and wrote down 'Huts' and didn't get any further than that. I had been thinking about drawing or painting the old farm buildings and huts one sees everywhere in New Zealand. And now the idea suddenly came back to me.

My friend, Caleb, was with me at the time and, together, from the one idea of huts as the subject for an exhibition, we came up with a wild idea which has become quite a serious project! 

It's called 'The Art of a Hut'

This is what I wrote in my

The Art of a Hut Newsletter:

This summer, if all goes to plan, two friends and I will set off into the bush to disappear into the backcountry for six months. We will be traveling all around the North Island staying at DOC huts all the way. And I will be drawing each of the 50 or so huts that we stay at. After the six months I will go home to my studio (quite sick of the bush by then I'm sure!) and work on larger finished drawings of the huts and prepare my work for an exhibition sometime in the spring of 2014.

   I am really looking forwards to drawing the huts and anything else my pencil finds to sketch on the way. There will be a lot of tramping involved and a whole lot of roughing it. It will be quite an adventure and an amazing opportunity to experience my own country in places where our roots are still in sight. I will be taking a journal with me and keep up a written record of our adventures in the bush; for we also have in mind publishing a book of my sketches and the stories of the huts as we experience them.

   I have chosen pencils over paint, not only because this will be a lot cheaper and more realistic for me, but because I really love drawing as a medium in itself. I wish to promote it as an important aspect of the arts and show that it is not inferior to painting, and can stand alone as an artistic end in itself.

   This is a really ambitious project for me: a poor artist having barely started out in my career, but I believe it will definitely be worth it, and hopefully will be the means of opening many doors of opportunity into the future.

   So, there you have it! The rest of this winter will be spent in planning and fundraising and all that sort of thing which is going to be a whole new learning experience for us.

I plan to have this blog very involved with the project all the way, so 'stay tuned!' as they say.