Featured Artist: Brendan Lovelock
My background in art has been relatively short. A career in science, technology and healthcare kept me well occupied for many years. However, a stint in New York State, close to the famous Corning Glass Works sowed the seeds of interest in more unbounded pursuits. Watching the skill of master glass blowers and their assistants working as carefully choreographed teams deftly crafting their ever-flowing medium at dangerously high temperatures captured me. When we returned to Melbourne, I started amassing the skills and tools for desktop glass work, all sorts of high temperature glass torch gear, a shed full of brilliantly coloured glasses and of course two calloused and scarred hands from the failures, which in glass work can have very painful consequences. The Melbourne glass community was small and close-knit, a great place to learn. I had a focus on figurative glass beads.
On pondering how to advance this work it became clear that technical glass skills would not be enough, and I would have to seriously focus on design, and in doing this, dramatically improve my ability to draw. Luckily, I found a very skilled and patient artist (and close friend) and we spent a couple of years working on sketching techniques. That of course led to a progression into painting, and naturally to watercolours, an artform, like glass, that boarders on alchemy, heavily leveraging the material sciences of my training to deliver what can often be magical results. This beginning has led to an absorbing past 5 years better understanding the joy, complexity, and frustration of watercolour. My retirement 3 years ago led to the decision to put down my glass torch and focus solely on painting.
The paintings I have chosen come from the two areas which always capture my attention, flowers, and landscapes. The objective of capturing the fragile splendour of a flower is a challenge that I never tire of. My second area of interest is in landscapes where translating the patterns of life, the intersection of people and nature onto paper, is a lifetimes work that I am only just embarking on.
On pondering how to advance this work it became clear that technical glass skills would not be enough, and I would have to seriously focus on design, and in doing this, dramatically improve my ability to draw. Luckily, I found a very skilled and patient artist (and close friend) and we spent a couple of years working on sketching techniques. That of course led to a progression into painting, and naturally to watercolours, an artform, like glass, that boarders on alchemy, heavily leveraging the material sciences of my training to deliver what can often be magical results. This beginning has led to an absorbing past 5 years better understanding the joy, complexity, and frustration of watercolour. My retirement 3 years ago led to the decision to put down my glass torch and focus solely on painting.
The paintings I have chosen come from the two areas which always capture my attention, flowers, and landscapes. The objective of capturing the fragile splendour of a flower is a challenge that I never tire of. My second area of interest is in landscapes where translating the patterns of life, the intersection of people and nature onto paper, is a lifetimes work that I am only just embarking on.
