There’s no greater compliment for an artist to have someone recommend your work. It says they like your work. It says they like your work enough to share your work with other people. Is an art recommendation really that important? Yes. It’s not like recommending a sofa or a brand of milk. They like your work enough to stake their own integrity on your art. This is a big deal. Duffy’s Lane, (Courtcliffe Acres), Ray Monde, collage and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 2018. Th

At this point in self-isolation things start going crazy, off-piste. Somewhere between the half-way and three-quarter mark, people get wobbly. It happens to astronauts, cosmonauts and people wintering in Antartica. I blame the dreaded third-quarter for HAL9000 losing his shit. For us at home, it’s manifested itself as some very unusual interpretive dancing and an unhealthy obsession with hot sopressata. One of the last exhibitions I saw was John Akomfrah’s remarkable Future H

What the Australian bushfires taught me about making decisions in a time of coronavirus (COVID-19). I’m one of those people that likes to be prepared. I check the exits on a airplane. I feel under my seat to make sure there’s a life jacket there. So when the mountains burst into flames behind my house in November 2019, I planned to leave. I love my home at Riverbend, it’s insured, it’s replaceable. I didn’t want to be one of those people to die with a garden hose in my hand.

Sometimes art goes bad. Look at her face. The horror. This is not intentional. I wasn’t trying to create an image of a women who had been burnt in an accident. Or a woman trapped in a disfiguring face mask. I was trying to create a woman with attitude, cigarette in hand, giving the viewer a withering glance. I didn’t have the right colour papers to create realistic tones in collage. I ended up with a mess. A right awful mess. A week later, it happened again. I was struggling

Studio space in Seattle is really hard to come by. I was fortunate that Clare Johnson had landed a residency and would be out of the state for three months. She was looking for someone to look after her space in 57 Biscayne and I was keen to look after it. We hit it off and is kindly letting me work in this beautiful space. My new short-term studio The space is roomy, has wonderful high ceilings and is beautifully lit. The big white wall is just dying to be covered in my stuf

Taking risks sometimes pays dividends. The risk is worth the reward. Other times, they fail terribly. Like at my high school dance. Important lessons from risk-taking The school dance is beach themed. I thought it would be a good idea to make breasts out of coconuts and pink socks, wrap myself in a hibiscus tablecloth and apply red lipstick. I remember looking at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and almost chickening out. Then I told myself, if I don’t do this I will regr

Around this time last year I wrote to Les Murray, Australia's greatest contemporary poet, to ask if he would sit for me. His reply was quick and came to me by a postcard from his On Bunyah collection of poems. "Dear Ray, how could I refuse a portraitist from the Krambach side of Burrell Creek who wants to paint me? You are welcome to try! Hurry, though, I turn 80 this year." There was an urgency in his messages and yet, he continued to reply by postcard to arrange the logisti

Last Friday night, I picked mum and dad up at the Goulburn South Caravan Park and drove them to the Goulburn Workers Club for a quick drink. We settled into a fancy booth that looked out across Auburn Street, where locals were doing mainies. As I came back from the bar with a tray of drinks, my partner’s wildly gesticulating arms collected with the tray, I overcorrected and the drinks flooded across the table in a crazy gin-tonic-red-white-wine deluge. My childhood superstiti

Last Friday night, I picked mum and dad up at the Goulburn South Caravan Park and drove them to the Goulburn Workers Club for a quick drink. We settled into a fancy booth that looked out across Auburn Street, where locals were doing mainies. As I came back from the bar with a tray of drinks, my partner's wildly gesticulating arms collected with the tray, I overcorrected and the drinks flooded across the table in a crazy gin-tonic-red-white-wine deluge. My childhood superstiti

On the way back from dropping my artworks at Michael Reid Murrurundi, we stopped in at Newcastle to see my old high school girlfriend. She'd recently moved there from Sydney and has settled into that city so well, only a spitting distance away from the glorious Merewether Baths. We walked and talked. The weather was squally, waves crashed over the walls of the swimming hole. It was beautiful and meditative. When I dated her, she lived in the mountains, it was an hour's drive

I've got my first solo show in a commercial gallery coming up in May - at Michael Reid Murrurundi. It's an extraordinary opportunity to showcase my work to an unseen audience. I have an extraordinary sense of obligation to 'do a good job'. To create works that will not only resonate with the audience but will also reward the gallery with sales. I am coming to realise I need to dismiss the thoughts running through my head 'Who would buy this?' and instead focus on producing th

I’m working late into the night on a new series that focuses on the suburbs. It was inspired by a recent trip to Madrid where I saw a lot of works by Picasso at the Reina Sofia – Pity and Terror, Picasso’s Path To Guernica. What struck me about his early works was that they were often limited to a single room, they were painted as a closed space. It got me thinking about the closed spaces in wide, brown Australia. For me this led me to the suburbs, in particular suburban back

I’m working late into the night on a new series that focuses on the suburbs. It was inspired by a recent trip to Madrid where I saw a lot of works by Picasso at the Reina Sofia – Pity and Terror, Picasso’s Path To Guernica. What struck me about his early works was that they were often limited to a single room, they were painted as a closed space. It got me thinking about the closed spaces in wide, brown Australia. For me this led me to the suburbs, in particular suburban back

What makes a great work of art? How do you separate the best from the base? What makes an artwork worth $110.5 million such as a recent piece sold by the artist Basquiat? And what work is worthless? This question was brought into sharp focus at this year’s Archibald Prize when Mitch Cairns portrait of his wife took out the $100,000 prize. Other well-known artists such as Tim Storrier and John Olsen harshly criticised the winner. Carins’ work certainly wasn’t my favourite this

It’s rare to get up in the face of artists. See their work. Hear first hand what their work is all about. When you’re at exhibition openings in galleries, it’s sometimes hard to know who the artist is, let alone get a chance to speak with them and dive into their mind. Yet this is exactly what happen at The Other Art Fair (TOAF). When it was quiet, I ducked off from my stand to talk to other artists, see their work, hear their stories and revel in their creations. It was grea

It’s rare to get up in the face of artists. See their work. Hear first hand what their work is all about. When you’re at exhibition openings in galleries, it’s sometimes hard to know who the artist is, let alone get a chance to speak with them and dive into their mind. Ray Monde at The Other Art Fair Yet this is exactly what happen at The Other Art Fair (TOAF). When it was quiet, I ducked off from my stand to talk to other artists, see their work, hear their stories and revel

I play silly mind games with myself. I always have since I was a kid. Last year, before The Other Art Fair Sydney, as I undressed to get into bed, I threw my clothes towards the dirty clothes basket and thought “If I get them in, I’ll sell one of my pieces”. My clothes didn’t make it into the basket. Not a sock. You can imagine my surprise when I sold all my works. More than that, I had really rich, engaging conversations with people about the work. Shared my stories and saw

Dan Kyle's paintings of the Australian landscape are compelling. The pale trunks of eucalyptus trees like ghosts stalking the landscape.

I’m going to say it right now, I love Dan Kyle. He’s a young guy, living in the mountains taking an obsessive look at the Australian bush around him. To be honest, it’s not the man I love, it’s the artist. He paints trees again and again and again. The pale trunks of eucalyptus trees like ghosts stalking the landscape. They’re silent witness to what’s going on about them, the birds, the rainfall and the incursions of people. They stand in judgement, looking at us to look with

I love now. I love this moment. I love the start of something new. This week I started a new series. A series exploring childhood experiences – one more time – but this time it’s going to be better. It’s going to be better because the more I think about my childhood, the more my memories become clearer and the more I uncover long forgotten experiences. It’s also better because the more I create, the better I get. My skills improve, my colour work gets better and the more conf