
Inspired by my recent trip to The Brett Whiteley Studio. I pulled the trigger on this Dire Straights LP (CD art would have been way too small!) which features his art.

Inspired by my recent trip to The Brett Whiteley Studio. I pulled the trigger on this Dire Straights LP (CD art would have been way too small!) which features his art.
Revisited The Brett Whiteley Studio in Surry Hills with Dianne this weekend. It’s the workplace and home of one of my favourite Australian Artist’s Brett Whiteley (1939–1992).
He is represented in the collections of all the large Australian galleries, and was twice winner of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes.
“Difficult pleasure” is how he described painting, or creating art stating; “Painting is an argument between what it looks like and what it means.”

Brett Whiteley – Art, life and the other thing 1978
Whiteley became addicted to heroin, this shows in quite a lot of his work and is what drew me to study the Artist when I was a kid in high school. It was his 1978 Archibald Prize-winning painting ‘Art, Life, and the other thing’ which I chose to do a major on, specifically ‘the other thing’ depicting a baboon injecting himself with needles. The tormented baboon is the symbolisation of his battle with heroin.
On 15 June 1992, aged 53, Whiteley was found dead from an overdose in a motel room in Thirroul, North of Wollongong.
Proving that 90’s mindset that Artists only make it when they’re dead, in 1999 Whiteley’s painting The Jacaranda tree (1977), sold for A$1,982,000, a record for a modern Australian painter at that time. In 2007 his painting The Olgas for Ernest Giles was sold for an Australian record of A$3.5 million.
There are no photos allowed in the studio (respect to Wendy Whiteley his ex-wife and muse), but as a visitor you’re offered the unique opportunity to experience the atmosphere of the space; the studio full of unfinished paintings, his inspirational graffiti wall covered with quotes and images and a living area full of memorabilia such as photographs, objects, postcards, furniture, his music collection and sketchbooks.
Entry is free and the exhibit changes 3 times a year. It’s open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. If you’ve never been I highly recommend you go check it out!
All photos by Diana Panuccio, Photographer at The Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Writing as Art. Is it a thing? I had to google it.
I enjoyed creative writing in high school, and throughout high school I kept a hand written diary which I made entries in quite religiously.
Recently I rummaged through a plastic tub full of high school love letters and diaries (a memory container!). In it I found A4 sheets stapled and taped together, when un-ravelled and laid out on the floor it went from my lounge room to the hallway in length! I instantly remembered what this was. It was a thing we used to do at Edwina’s place. Punch a cone, go to the A4 sheet on the wall and write.
It was your choice whether to continue on, or debate, or contribute or completely ignore the previous entry, whatever the case, you just had to write your bit. I started reading some of it; “Fluorescence! We are fluorescence!”, it’s all pretty whack, but quite beautiful and mind altering. All of this is the very definition of creative writing to me.
I wrote a lot throughout university but I no longer hand wrote. I used a typewriter for a year but finally caved in and started using the computer to write.
Initially I was writing everything in Outlook Express, an email app. Outlook would underline spelling errors in red and sentences that were too long in red too. I got better at writing by using Outlook. I started to spell better and I also started to learn how to order a sentence better by cutting and pasting words from back to front and vice versa. This cutting and pasting was something I couldn’t do on the typewriter so I never went back.
Eventually I got sick of Outlook as it didn’t accept my writing style. I try to write how I speak. I ramble a lot and thus I use a lot of dots… every time I’d use these pauses I’d get red lines and having red lines all over the place whilst I was writing was really starting to piss me off.
I’ve heard of multi-platform add-ons I can use to check my spelling and grammar but I’m not too interested to be honest. I’m not getting too many red underlines right now, looks like either I’ve finally conformed to how my computer wants me to write, or AI has honed in, recognised and accepted the way I write?! Creepy… right?!
Also on Medium.

Tribute to Kustom King George Barris (Nov 20, 1925 – Nov 5, 2015) Designer of the 1966 Batmobile (which I watched on TV as a kid!). #respectyourelders
Dianne bought me this blank canvas. Isn’t it amazing?! It’s the best gift I’ve received in a long time. I have it set up in the lounge room, and I just take glances at it throughout the day. It’s super inspiring. Not sure what I’m going to paint, but that’s part of the fun!
Nanami invited me to see her put the finishing touches on her first mural at MullenLowe Profero Sydney. Be sure to visit Nanami’s site for more of her amazing art: https://nanamicowdroy.com