Mirka Mora

Mirka Mora (1928-1918) Melbourne based artist, born in France, has died aged 90. 

Mirka was born in Paris on March 18, 1928 to a Lithuanian father, Leon Zelik, and a Romanian mother, Celia Gelbein. In France Mirka attended theatre school with Marcel Marceau. Amazingly the two were reunited in 2003 when Marcel Marceau delivered to Mirka the honour of 'Officier des Arts et des Lettres'.

The second world war engulfed Mirka and her family, they were placed in a concentration camp but miraculously she escaped Auschwitz.   

                                                          Above: Georges Mora 

In 1947 Mirka married Georges Mora (June 26, 1913 – June 7, 1992) a German Jew born in Leipzig.  Georges was a medical student Georges who fled Germany for Paris in 1930. However when the Spanish Civil War broke out, Georges left Paris to join the cause, after a plane crash he was a prisoner of war for a time, before joining the French resistance. 

Their first son Phillippe was born in 1949 and together they emigrated first to New York and then onto Melbourne, Australia in 1951.  William Mora was born in 1953 and Tiriel Mora was born in 1958.

In Melbourne this young family found a vibrant, accepting society full of optimism and opportunity, Georges at first became manager of a flatbread factory before opening a café in 1954; 'The Mirka Café' quickly became three cafés, and then came the Balzac Restaurant. The hospitality and warmth of this young couple, meant they became key to Melbourne's bohemian subculture. Georges also became an influential art dealer and in 1967 he founded the Tolarno Galleries, the first commercial art gallery in Melbourne. Meanwhile Mirka's career as an artist thrived, she was commissioned to create many murals whilst enjoying her own path as an artist creating soft sculptural dolls and paintings.

                     Above: Charcoal drawing (1963) Below: Reflections on Love 

Mirka's art was not confined to one genre, scale or medium, she fluidly moved between murals, sculpture, painting, textiles and mosaic. The common thread was colour, exuberance and love with an iconography gained from a love of classical mythology. 

In 1999-2000 there was a retrospective of her work at Heide Museum of Art, celebrating 50 years of creative output. She had over 35 solo shows during her lifetime and only two years ago her work was translated into dress fabric by German fashion brand Gorman. Her mural at St Kilda's Tolarno Hotel has heritage status as do many other of her public works in Melbourne.

Below: 'Chatter In The Garden' 2011

                         Above: 'Cat with Friends' 2014.

“I think everything is funny. It’s so funny that we have to die. It’s cruel, but it’s terribly funny. You have all these dreams and you’ve got to leave everything. In my grave I’ll take some brushes and some paint. You never know!” - Mirka Mora

Tom Wilson III

Below: "A single line of teeth like the tops of a mountain range is a section of a fallow deer  lower jaw."

Tom Wilson is a friend of mine from my days studying at Edinburgh College of Art. He has always had a fascination and passion for nature and wildlife and his practice has been to draw, paint and photograph his findings. Recently he started taking plaster casts to document his specimens, and lately his attentions have focused upon teeth.

 "I have collected a whole range of teeth, as part of my skull and natural found objects collection; deer jaws and teeth of cattle and sheep. I have sawn teeth in half so that children can see how they  are made and I have rare teeth, a woolly mammoth  and a cave bear tooth, with badger, fox and other predators. The collection of objects that I have built up includes objects which have been chewed and eaten, from hazel nuts by mice n voles, to trees gnawn by beavers and bark stripped by deer and I used these to create small plaster  casts. Together the collection enables you to have an insight into how animals live and behave and using the plaster then develops these insights into finished art pieces." Thomas Wilson

Above and below: casts from apples gnawed by rabbits.

Below: Cave Bear Tooth.

Joyce Gunn Cairns II

Swifts by Joyce Gunn Cairns I love the delicate lines and muted beauty of this painting, it holds for me that time between winter and spring when we all are holding our breaths waiting for the sun to bring its warmth, hope and abundance.

Sophie Herxheimer I

Sophie Herxheimer is a London based artist, poet and story collector. For the past twelve years, she has been gathering people's tales of food and transposing them into these illustrated transcripts. She now has over 1200 of these inspiring warm, and humorous insights into people their memories, philosophies and wisdom.

Lynn Arnold

Lynn Arnold has a great love of music which she sometimes commits to paper in her expressive collaged works. The works I have selected are; Above, 'Martha and the Vandellas' and Below, 'Bob Dylan'.

"In my paintings, I play with color and texture to convey a kind of narrative, translating the world around me. I use collage and objects of personal interest to me that become anchors or signposts guiding the viewer through my work. Using a combination of mixed media I also explore the human psyche as well as physical aspects through figurative abstraction. I play with a balance of the sensitive and the raw, the obvious and the vague in my artists’ world." Lynn Arnold

Heidi Rosin

German artist and graphic designer Heidi Rosin's works are small (usually 30 x 40 cms) mixed media pieces with layered and collaged meanings. Heidi's recent works feature horses and people but have no title to assist their interpretation. They are vivid emotional works that tell strange and worrying stories in a brutal but primitive style like miniature graffiti's shouting back at the world.

David Lockhart

Over the next ten weeks, I am working in Benarty Primary School in Fife, as part of a project highlighting the work of the late Jennie Lee.
Earlier this week I went into the school for a meeting and in the reception area was this large 19 x 12 foot mural 'Many Mansions' based on a biblical text 'In my fathers house are many mansions . . .' 1961. Designed and executed for the new school building by artist and musician David Lockhart (1922-2014).
I like to think of it as being about the many doors that open to you when you educate yourself, or the way you can visit different times, people and places in your thirst for knowledge.

Christine Sin Kim

The convoluted path of research leads you to many wonders, I find this constantly in curating this blog but now also in my studies. I have been researching silent books or wordless books. books that communicate through pictures alone.
Strangely and I have no idea how, apart from that I was exploring different methods of communication, this meant that I found Christine Sin Kim last week. First this TED presentation:

Then this wonder of a film:

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Christine Sin Kim is an American artist who is seeking to expose and discover sound in new ways originally through drawings but now in performance works. Christine was born deaf and so has a completely different knowledge and experience of sound. Her work is a great insight into looking and experiencing fundamental realities in new ways.

Kathy Beynette

Painter Kathy Beynette's hare/rabbit family in her composition 'Be Good'.

“Before I became a painter, I wrote fiction and poetry which probably explains my narrative approach to painting. I am pleased that people think my work is whimsical and fun." Kathy Beynette

Shelagh Wilson

This blog is so strange, it is a mirror to my soul, the work displayed too often reveals exactly how I am feeling.
I am away for a few days now, portfolios and computer in tow, as until the end of the month I have an array of urgent and overlapping deadlines and projects, work that cannot be left behind despite the family all being on holiday.

However just for these three days in amongst the research and illustrations, I hope to get out in the bare trees, winds, rain and murky dawns and dusks of winter trudging through sodden loam to listen and breath in winter. This sketch is by Brighton based artist Shelagh Wilson made using Oil bars, ink, pencils and gouache on paper.

Marina Godoy

Marina Godoy is a Brazilian artist who works primarily in textiles and collage. I loved these two images of birds. However Marina's portfolio is very varied and quite dark and abrasive in its texture and content but there are lots of treasures to discover.

Barbara Perrine Chu

Barbara Perrine Chu is a dynamo of creativity, for years her blog has exposed me to new and classic painters, potters and sculptors with wonderful details of their lives and works.
Barbara's own works are bright, narratives on life. This piece called; 'Stair way to Heaven' with its loving couple floating is very Chegalian but it also has a graphic dynamism and powerful colour of Brian Wildmith or Kveta Pacovska.

Józef Wilkon I

Józef Wilkon is one of my favourite artists and so it is with joy that I add his charming work of a man feeding the birds in the snow, to this weeks snow themed works. One day I hope to get to visit Józef's ark, but for now I can enjoy reading his Christmas story 'Thomas and the Dove' to Freya.

Serge Zhukov

I am really enjoying figurative drawing this week and continuing with this theme, this is the work of Serge Zhukov. Serge is a Russian artist who graduated from St Petersburg Academy of Art in 1980 he has been living and working in Philadelphia since 1990 and exhibits regularly at FAN gallery.

Jason Rohlf I

Shop rag paintings by Jason Rohlf, using layers of painting rich in colour, texture with a wonderful sense of patina.

"Making navigational decisions is subjective to the individual and the inputs are sometimes contradictory. Through a combination of deliberate action and intuition the works hope to reflect back the myriad choices we all are confronted with on a daily basis." ~ Jason Rohlf