Joy McDonald

Recent painting and drawing Migration , acrylic, oil stick, on linen, 100cmx76cm Ce Soir , acrylic, oil stick, on canvas, 91cmx61cm 3 drawings from small sculpture workshop Dec 5 2012. Mixed media, 32cm x 22cm

Handmade paper, found material, wire, each 32cm x 22cm Some of my recent work. I experimented with paper making and investigated some of the almost limitless possibilities of mark-making using different media including wax, oilstick, ingrained textures, found material and crocheted and knitted silver wire.  The granny rug was inspired by Lorraine Connolly-Northey's Opossum Cape which I saw at the Tweed Valley Regional Gallery.   Granny rug drawing, handmade paper, crocheted and knitted wire, wax, net. foldback , mixed media, acrylic paint, Arche paper, rice paper, wax, oil stick. Stain , mixed media, acrylic paint, Arche paper, rice paper.  Darling Downs, Black Women's Tears. mixed media, acrylic paint on canvas. Machines are abstractions of the human spirit, mixed media, acrylic paint on canvas, 1.18cmx96cm

Together with Cherie Durant, Russell Fuller, Jennii Gould, Sue Hill, Rose Moxham, Jenny Schuhart and Todd Whisson I am having an exhibition at Graydon Gallery New Farm. Pastiche: it’s all about the rhythm How do you put together the works of eight artists with no common theme, no unifying subject matter, and no common style? For a start, you give the show a name that reflects the heady mix of conjunctions, incongruities, the literal and the surreal. You call it Pastiche. “It’s a bit post post-modern,” says painter Joy McDonald, one of the exhibiting artists. “Truly a pastiche – we use different materials, we’re figurative, minimalist, abstract, there are story book illustrations, ceramics and sculptures.”   “We’re a disparate bunch and we’re all mates,” says Todd Whisson, whose recent exhibition at Red Hill Gallery was a sell-out.  “We talk to each other and bounce ideas around. Now we’ve come together in this exhibition and it’s our paintings that talk to each othe...

Vic Calthorpe, Mary Martin and I went sketching to Southbank a couple of weeks ago. This is the sketch I did of city buildings across the river. I should really find out the names of the buildings!!!! I liked the patterns of the windows in the old lowrise building in front. And of course, there's a motorway in front but I chose to omit it.

This is the painting I have entered into the Chapman & Bailey Belle Arte award. I have no idea where it came from (or where it is going). Giotto - because something about the colours reminds me of Giotto. What is a doppelganger? doppelganger - a ghostly double of a living person that haunts its living counterpart legendary creature - a monster that is unverifiable but popularly accepted as possibly factual. So there you have it.

Project 5 This is the diptych - mechanical object. The painting is based on my beautiful o ld hand-drill. I was thinking of the houses I've renovated and how I had to learn to use tools as I went along because I went to a ' home science' school for girls where I learned to 'set' a breakfast tray and make cinnamon toast! Nothing as useful as woodwork - that was a male domain. I was also looking at Picabia's mechanical drawings and I have appropriated the subtitle of one of his works - machine turn quickly - for the title of my painting - Homme et Femme . The text in the paintings refer to my high school and to Kurt Schwitters notion that machines are abstractions of the human spirit. Project 6 This series of 6 small paintings (40cmx40cm) are called Palimpsest and they refer to what David Malouf describes as 'sprawlingly unlovely' Brisbane. The architectural elements in the paintings are my sketches screen-printed onto the canvas. Brisbane peopl...

These are watercolour and collage studies for a series of small paintings. The paintings will incorporate my sketches of Brisbane buildings, etc. The conceptual basis is to achieve a 'sense of place' and will investigate Brisbane's identity as a changing urban environment.