This Wild Song - new website!

I'm so excited to have finished the This Wild Song website and it's now live!  There's a list of the artists involved with the first few interviews, plus you can join the This Wild Song mailing list to be notified when a new artist is featured on the site!

This is my portrait of Nell and you can read my interview with her here.  I'll write a Behind The Scenes post about my shoot with her soon! x

Ps. I now have an instagram account dedicated to the artists of This Wild Song at @thiswildsong

Avant Card

I'm super excited to announce that Avant Card has printed the beautiful Emma de Clario from my This Wild Song series as a postcard!  Keep an eye out for Emma wherever you are in Australia.

behind the scenes with Kim Buck

Hey Kim, soooooo any chance you'd be up for me covering you in charcoal and taking your portrait? .......... my proposal went something like that.

Kim Buck creates photo-realist charcoal drawings and the theme of the This Wild Song portraits is for the artist to become a part of their work.  My idea for Kim was to have her amongst the trees, covered in charcoal so she blends into them, creating a shape that was similar to one of the poses in her own work, and with a white sheet as a canvas.  I found the perfect spot which was the Black Forrest behind Woodend (Victoria), another reason for choosing this area is that my sister lives nearby so Kim could shower afterwards!

We shot the photo on a muggy and overcast day in December.  I'd been flat out with the kids that day, picked up Kim, drove to Woodend, dumped the kids at my sister's, and drove to the location.  The light was fading, which was extra pressure as I'm shooting these portraits at f11 at least, and we still had to make the mixture and cover Kim.

It has been a mad rush all day and I found it difficult to make the transition to artist-brain, to quieten down and look at the compositions of the landscape.  I danced around for longer than usual trying to pick the perfect location, wondering whether the white sheet as a canvas was going to work or look just plain naff.  I was really feeling the pressure with the light fading, photographing someone else, not wanting to subject poor Kim to a reshoot, and wanting to create a freakin awesome portrait.

We made the mixture of charcoal and glucose, with some water and black acrylic paint.  Then Kim got covered in the lovely mixture which you can see above, and I threw some ash and extra charcoal bits on her for more texture.  I couldn't believe it when I got the negs back and I got the shot in the fifth frame, instincts for the win!

By the end of it I was completely exhausted, sweaty, stinky, dirty and totally in my element.  It was a hard day but also super fun and definitely worth it.  Thank you sooooooo much to Kim for being a total trooper and going along with my crazy idea, you are all sorts of awesome.

check out the final portrait and Kim's interview on the This Wild Song blog

behind the scenes - Susan Wirth for This Wild Song

When I first discovered Susan Wirth she was creating mixed media works, like the following piece.  I approached her to be a part of the This Wild Song series and when we met in person I was surprised to learn how her practice had altered course, and she was currently working on wearable sculptures and forms.  I was intrigued how she felt changing direction, and as she mentions in her interview it didn't feel like a huge shift as she's always worked across multiple disciplines.

Susan is currently an artist in residence at Laughing Waters which was Clifton Pugh's studio and residence.  Located close by is The Black Dam which is a small watering hole, and it's said that Rick Amor gave it its name.  When Susan sent me some photos of the dam I knew that was where I wanted to shoot her portrait, waist deep in it no less.  Thankfully she was up for it and didn't mind getting the beautiful suit she had made wet.

We shot her portrait on a warm morning in December and I played around with a few ideas (just in case) and saved the dam images for last.  I was shooting on film and I love the following photograph but it didn't quite have the impact I wanted.

As it turned out the photograph I selected as her portrait for This Wild Song was one of the last pictures I took, and it was on the digital camera for safety/back up.  It had been overcast all morning and when we were just about finished a little slice of sunshine came through highlighting her in the water.  Lucky timing!

You can view Susan's portrait and interview on This Wild Song here

Thank you so much to Susan for agreeing to be a part of the project, I had an absolute ball shooting this portrait.  Good times.