The art that makes me happy

Everyone has their own personal relationship with art - whether it be all about colour, form and function or use of light. Here are some artist's whose work I really enjoy and revisit again and again for inspiration - art makes me happy!

I love the organic and abstract shapes used in Henry Moores sculpture - and they look beautiful in their outdoor settings.

William Turner's technique is almost glaze like, so many layers of colour built up over the canvas - the detail is breath taking when you see his work in the flesh.

I've been a big fan of Gustav Klimt since I was a teenager - I adore his use of colour, pattern and gold leaf detailing, his work has a beautiful organic quality.

Monet + colour = vibrant captivating work, prolific well into his 80's and his painting style and the way he obsessively captivated the same subject and different times in the day was amazing.

Margaret Preston is and Australian painter - I love the graphic quality to her paintings.

I love Lucien Freud's work - this example is one of his tamer compositions. He's known for his more confronting series of nudes. He has an amazing way of capturing the light on human skin.

Alphonse Mucha - I'm a huge fan, anyone who loves Art Noveau should pay Prague, his home town a visit.

The "Elvis" series by Warhol are my favourites - simple black screen printing onto silver acrylic.

Tamara De Lempicka - 1930s German painter with a cubist twist. I just adore the vibrant blocks of colour and the way she capture the texture and light of her subject matter.

Pablo Picasso - probably at the top of my list :) I love this piece 'Boy leading horse' and have seen it in person in NYC, this period of his work is my preference.

Caravaggio - the way he captured the drama and emotion in his work is second to none.

I love the humour and kitsch kookiness of Jeff Koons - as well as the way he plays with scale.

Poster-love

I've always found movie titles and credits inspiring and fascinating - one of my favourites is the godfather of movie titles and movie posters Saul Bass who did a bit of graphic design on the side too! These are a selection from the 1920s, 60s and 70s.

I also love the US propaganda posters from the 1930s and 40s for the war effort - the vibrant block colours, typography and messages they're trying to convey.

Images courtesy of the Smithsonian Institute

Websites I'm loving at the moment

These are the websites that are rocking my world this week:

• A great visual resource Best logo designers from deviantart 
  
• I regularly lose myself in the hand crafted world of etsy, it has something for everyone. 
  
• Scott Dadich the Creative Director of Wired mag is the CEO of www.spd.org, a must for every magazine designer out there - he was one of the brilliant speakers at Semi-permanent 2009 in Sydney. Absolutely anal - like most mag designers!
  
• I'm a big typography fan so fontfeed.com is a great place to visit!
  
• Dafont.com is an old favourite, a site I go back to again and again
  
• I try and keep my finger on the pulse with the UK design world with Creative Review online, the April issue is particularly amazing this month - a visual feast! Grandmother India created the delicious typography for the cover - and I love their website.

Welcome to my first ever blog :)

I am feeling inspired by the 2 day Semi-Permanent conference in Sydney that I attended recently with my good friend Jane Menon to start this blog. It was two days of speakers from around the world from a dazzling array of fields - illustrators, painters, animators and magazine art directors and many more. All there to share their creative process, ideas and working practices - and I loved it! I wanted to explore the immediacy and intimacy of using a blog to spark my creative juices and give my clients and friends an insight into my everyday creative life - what I do and how I do it and what inspires me and catches my eye!

This is a pic of me at the MCA, I went to see the Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years show - which was awesome!