Hand-printed cyanotype photo on Lanaquarelle paper, from Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia.
First in a limited edition of 20 prints.

My Bokor in Blue series of cyanotype prints are now available from John McDermott Gallery in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Each print in the edition is unique due to my brushed application of the chemicals, and the available sunlight and water that day.

The image above was taken during the 16 months I lived in Siem Reap, Cambodia, from 2005-6. When not printing photos, I worked as a radio DJ and organized a program to teach photography to children who’d been injured by landmines. Eventually I worked with the Angkor Photo Festival to teach digital photography to street children.

This series was my first visual work to explore the no-man’s-land of cultural fusion and friction, particularly between East and West. Bokor was built by the French for their wealthy colonists in the early 20th century, then was a popular spot for the Cambodian King and elite during the 1960′s Reyum period. It still bears the scars of the Khmer Rouge-Vietnamese conflict during the 70s, and graffiti from the trickle of travellers who’ve made their way there ever since.

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[photo of a study on Dongba paper for the Calendar Girls series which I'm working on this month at my studio in Lijiang, China]

Throughout much of the 20th century and into the next, Art and cold hard Cash have been at odds, in the eyes of artists, the public,  and those gallerists/curators who work with us.  ["Commercial art"  and Illustration are considered lowbrow compared to "high art", which is another debate altogether.]

The line in many art schools, parroted by tenuously-tenured academics, goes something like this: “making a living at your art is impossible” (perhaps because they feel this might apply to them, if they tried) “so get used to doing something else to avoid becoming a starving artist statistic – but you won’t be qualified to do anything but art anyway”.

Chris Guillebeau and Zoe Westhof are out to change that with their new Unconventional Guide to Art and Money .  It’s a refreshing, practical take on the business of art, for artists working in all media. And I’m pleased to take part in this project: I’m one of  about a dozen artists consulted for advice. My interview focuses on how my travels and “location independence” have inspired my art and brought me more artworld contacts; and how my versatile skills and mobile studios have made my income recession-resistant.

If you know someone in art school, or a practicing artist who could use a bump in their career, the Art & Money Guide could be just the jump-start they’ve been looking for.

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Photo from my blog hiatus:Mount Fanxipan looms in the distance from our hotel room in Sapa

Welcome to the new, improved Ebriel Blog. Move over Blogspot, hello WordPress! It’s been weeks since I’ve been able to post online, an eternity in Internet-time.

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