ZeroSum_BW Painting

https://www.simonhartasartist.com/ Not just an artist.... I have maintained a 30+ year career as a professional Art Handler. Beginning my career as a Museum Assistant to Conservation at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra also fed my soul as an aspiring artist just out of art school. I moved to Sydney in 1986 and began work in the private fine art logistics sector, where I became an early adopter of world’s best art handling practices. The industry was something of a breeding ground for artists and musicians. Places like the MCA were also nurturing artists in their ranks of preparators. In 1994 I was included in the second Young Art New Galleries program operated by the MCA. Family and buying into a fine art logistics venture put my personal artistic ambitions on hold for some time while I continued with a art handling, packing and crating career. Over the last 30 years I’ve worked with a broad range of artists across many continents and many disciplines. I’ve hung Picassos, crated Jackson Pollacks ‘Blue Poles’, held a child’s rattle excavated from Pompeii, I’ve sat in a RAAF Hercules, with my crates and equipment, doing a strategic landing (super steep and fast due to gunfire in the area) at Phnom Penh, Cambodia to extract ancient Khmer sculptures for the original NGA blockbuster “Age of Angkor” in 1992. Now I am training others. In the meantime, painting returned – with a vengeance. Nights and weekends I paint in what is little more than a large cupboard, the confined space naturally dictating the size of the artwork. This is why my work consists primarily of a series of 5 x 7 inch canvases or works on paper. As for the numbers. I wanted to be able to dive into mark-making and gesture without the constraints of subject but I do find them evocative, flexible, intriguing and elusive.