Dream Menagerie

I'm part of a group exhibition that's opening on Friday at DVAA. The title is dream menagerie.

I've known this show was coming for nearly a year, and had hoped to have half a dozen or so good paintings to exhibit, but sometimes a long deadline is as difficult as a short one. For some reason I found it so hard to find a way into this theme... maybe I got too stuck on the idea of animals and not enough about dreams!

We had a great blurb about exploring the animal in our nature, but I needed something visual to latch onto. I started taking photos and sketching dogs and horses at the beach. I noticed there are animals in the patterns of the indian skirts that I wear, and did some drawings from them of strange birds and girls leading camels. I got a corner of an idea about including the skirt with the pattern of the animal, and playing with positive and negative. I guess that doesn't make a lot of sense, and makes a better lino print! Here's a sneak peak at two of my pieces.

I can't wait to see how the other artists have interpreted the theme. If you're in Darwin it would be lovely to see you, 6pm at DVAA Friday 20th June.

Reasons to celebrate

Frogs are loud this evening, we had heavy rain last night and they are celebrating!

Here are a couple of photos from my garden, a vine grows up just one palm tree. It only flowers for a couple of days a year but when it does it's spectacular!

Friday morning got taken up with framing artwork and delivering it for exhibitions. ( I hate when the whole morning is gobbled up by admin and nothing creative gets done, but sometimes it's necessary.) This lino print is for the tactile arts members show - themed 'TEXT' - which opens this Friday 8th Nov at 5.30.

Also opening this Thursday is a historical display - DVAA revisited - at Darwin Civic Centre. This is just the first of events to celebrate 30 years of Darwin Visual Arts Association. I'll have more about this next week!!

November is shaping up to be very busy, so I'll keep this short and sweet and get back to my long to-do-list! Have a great week!!

Making a start

Out of all the artforms I practise, painting is the 'holy grail'!

Recently I've been frustrated with my studio set up - the table where I paint is also our dinner table so I've had to completely pack up after every painting session. In the holidays I had a tidy up - a little desk that had been a dumping ground for half finished projects could be a work table, a place to have my paints laid out all the time ready to go. An easel I'd got just to display work at the craft fair could be set up with a decent sized canvas. Two weeks ago I got the whole thing organised - the canvas waiting. The intention there to do some serious painting!

Last Thursday morning before work I quickly laid some colour onto the canvas, adoodle of lines, anything so that I wouldn't have to sit in front of the blank canvas on Friday!

Friday morning I blocked in some ideas based on a walk down at the park.

Now that I've put in the tree and the geese, the woman in the foreground is too small, so I've painted her out. It's curious (worrying!) that the underpainting colour and mark making is much more interesting than what I've put on top. It's got too tight too early...I need bigger brushes...it's scary and invigorating to work on something this size (20x30 inch) after many tiny 4x4 and 5x7 canvases.

It's not really anything yet - and likely to be painted over several times before it is - but at least I've made a start!!

If you're in Darwin there is still time to see a lovely exhibition of paintings by Ray Hayes at DVAA, finishing this weekend,, you can see some photos at the DVAA blog.

Wordstorm is coming!!

Wordstorm is Darwin's literary festival, it takes place every 2 years, and is coming up fast, the second weekend of May. I can't wait!! To co-incide with the festival there is an exhibition at DVAA of work inspired by a poem by Michael Giacometti, an Alice Springs poet. It's a very landscape poem, and I've never been down to that part of the country, I was stumped for a while until I decided to work in fabric. For a while I thought this was going to be a sculptural wall piece, stuffed a bit like the mermaids, but it ended up stretched on a frame like a painting. The exhibition opens this friday. Next weekend (5th May) is the seabreeze festival, which is always wonderful. And the dry season seems to have arrived, I'm wearing a jumper!!!