What style of art really makes you angry?

II don't tend to get angry about art. I think the artistic process is one of
the best qualities or the best system human beings have for enabling sane life.
So I don't go to galleries and get really pissed off in the process. I guess
there are levels of respect that I hold for various artists. What I can't abide
by more than anything else I guess is thoughtless art, um, art without purpose.
If the thought is not there in the application of the artwork and in the process
of the artist "doing" the artwork in a *context* of some sort then there is
little purpose to the art. If there is no interaction with other artists' work,
or with the public through a challenge to the public's perception, or with
the tradition of art, then I don't respect the art. It doesn't make me angry
though, just disappointed. I guess what makes me angry is not so much the art
works themselves, but the machinations that go on behind the scenes. And here
I see the two main culprits are the old "nepotism" and "cronyism". In the art
world it is so often not what you paint, but who you know that determines your
success. I think that would bring me closest to being angry.

PIC: Title: Inner

Was art your first love or do you have another passion?

I really don't think there would be many people around who fell in love with
art first. My first love? I guess there were three or four things that I fell
in love with and correspondingly they have become integral within my love of
art. The first thing would be nature. I was a dreamy kid who loved to sit out
in the Australian bush to just stare and think. I'm not saying that I was a
young Aussie Emerson, but my devotion to the natural was unusual. I guess I
had a keen concept of the primordial magic of nature, whether it be the ocean
or the forest or the mountain, I loved them all. I guess after that I fell madly
in love with a girl, I was about 17 at the time and that kind of obliterated
all of my other loves for a while, so it was a baptism into a whole new level
of love. That was incredibly powerful. If I could harness some of that energy
into my artworks… hang on no, it didn't turn out - bad idea. My heart was broken
within a couple of weeks, to pick myself up from that, I guess, I went onto
my third love which was cinema. I do have a profound love for the cinema. My
love for the cinema was like a religion. I wanted to exist for film for a long
time. I wanted to be a film maker, I wanted to write scripts but that shifted
and to this day, art has been my love and naturally it integrates all of my
other loves.

PIC: title: Leaves No 3

What would you like to be better at, and why?

(Laughs) Well the simple answer to that is everything. Most of all, I'd like
to be fitter, I'd like to be an athlete. I used to be athletic as a teenager
and my back has deteriorated, but the desire is still there. I'd like to be
better at escaping, to be more protective of myself and to be better and getting
exactly what I want out of life - to be more selfish I guess. Overall, I don't
have too much to complain about.