Check ‘em out at the Art Gallery of NSW website:
My favourites are:
Del Kathryn Barton, Vasili Kaliman and contained familiar together within the Dreaming
John Beard Janet Laurence
Peteris Ciemitis Making sense of place #4
Esther Erlich Tim (really, you’d have to stuff up bad to make me dislike a painting of Tim Rogers, but thankfully this artist did a stellar job anyway.)
Cherry Hood Ben Quilty
Jasper Knight The Honourable Bob Carr
Abbey McCulloch Toni Collette (obviously not a realistic painting, but amazingly beautiful nonetheless)
I really must get around to entering this sometime… nothing to lose and $35,000 to gain…
AfricanKelli is running a little event called Calculated Acts of Kindness, and considering my love of sending people random things in the post, I’ve decided to join in. So if I ask for your address, I promise it’s not because I’m stalking you. 
There’s a cool video story on Etsy over at the WCBS TV New York website — check it out. They even say what the word Etsy means, finally!
I’ve been neglecting my Etsy duties of late due to all the work I’ve been doing for the show. I need to make some more badges to replace the ones that have sold out, and just other general stuff. I haven’t been promoting myself as much as I intended to either (although I did donate a proof from my Alice screenprint series to EtsyLabs, the place that you can see in the video). And just over there to the left, below the Most Recent Post list, I’ve added the Etsy flash-esque button that will take you to my store. So I have done something at least.
You know what would make an excellent birthday present for me? Buying something from my Etsy store for yourself.
Somewhere, buried deep in my brain, there lives a rant. Every so often, I read or hear something that feeds it, and it comes racing to the surface demanding to be let out. It’s the “You’re so talented. I could never do that…” rant. The backhanded compliment that completely disregards all my hard work. Recently, the rant was called up by the following.
I was keen till I saw that it’s 26 photo comps.
I’m creative, not commercial.
I don’t know who wrote that. Someone on a board the Mister visits. For starters, it’s one photo competition where you post 26 photos, not 26 photo competitions. Secondly, taking 26 photos over a two month period is not hard, or excessive. It’s three photos a week. But the “creative” comment is what drove me over the edge and into TalentRanting mode. It implies that creative people don’t, or shouldn’t have to work hard. That we should only create when the muse strikes, or some bullshit like that. I can guarantee that for every hard-working “talented” person you notice, there are ten other people sitting alone in their rooms wondering why nobody will recognise their brilliance. And their are ten more whose talents have been completely forgotten, because they didn’t exercise them enough and they forgot how to do what they once did so well.
Sitting around waiting will get you nowhere.
/rant