Red skirts and red studios

Here's a new painting - about 2 weeks old, called Ginger cat in the red room.


I seem to associate red with creativity, Matisse has a red studio painting doesn't he? Twenty odd years ago when I was an art student I bought a red paisley skirt at a jumble sale for 2p!!! And then wore it to the studios everyday for the next 3 years. I called it my painting skirt and somehow putting it on put me in the right frame of mind to be creative. Eventually it wore thin and fell apart - I wish I'd known I was going to end up gluing fabric to my paintings and I'd have saved the scraps to turn into art!

Here's a photo of one of the pineapples, also about two weeks ago, growing bigger and with tiny purple flowers.

About the birds

I think this is the first painting I made where there are birds on people's heads. It's from about 4 years ago, and is a kind of a family portrait of myself and the twins who were 3 or 4 back then. The birds are ones that we see in the parks or beaches in Darwin - from left to right - plover, wedge tailed eagle and ibis. (Neither the birds or the people are very realistic, but that's a whole other discussion.)
A while ago someone on flickr asked me if there was a story about the bird in this picture,
this was my reply. 'I do a lot of paintings of women and birds, I think the birds can express something about the woman's character, also that it can explore the tension between freedom and duty. Also I like the humour of the image if you take it literally. I don't have an exact story for the paintings and I hope the viewer will bring their own ideas to it too.'

I'm completely submerged in the book 'The Time Traveler's Wife' (about 3/4 of the way through and dreading a tragic ending.) in it there is a scene in an art gallery where a ten year old girl is talking about the artworks 'bird boxes' of Joseph Cornell. She says... 'He made the boxes because he was lonely. He didn't have anyone to love, and he made the boxes so he could love them, and so people would know that he existed, and because birds are free and the boxes are hiding places for the birds so they will feel safe, and he wanted to be free and be safe. The boxes are for him so he can be a bird.'

Joseph Cornell is a real artist although the book is fiction, you can see a slide show of his works here. It's funny that he was mentioned by an artist in the last issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine though it didn't make much of an impression until I read that scene above and some kind of little alarm bells went off!!

Here are a couple more bird quotes;

Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken winged bird
that cannot fly.
Langston Hughes

“Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all.” Emily Dickinson

Hope your weekend is going well, I'm trying to have a quiet one - though the kids have other ideas!!

Composting

I'm sure no-one else in the world is interested in this photo, but here it is anyway, my compost heap!!
I'm ridiculously pleased with it- a mountain of palmfronds and kitchen scraps. At the weekend I squeezed on the last few leaves and sweepings, watered it and topped it off with some flattened boxeds and a brick - to stop the whole lot from blowing away. It will moulder and rot through the wet season and hopefully be useful compost by the early dry (April/May) next year. I have a second bay to fill in the meantime!

My whole weekend seemed to be spent breaking up squabbles with the kids...and filing. We just got a second hand filing cabinet, and now I have no excuse not to organise 15 years worth of papers. I did manage to do this little painting.
And today this possible - first draft - poem.

Declaration

When I come out
from the bedroom
where I've been drawing
or reading poetry,
you're watching tv
and want me to be enraged
about something you've seen
on the news or perhaps
on youtube.
I don't have the strength
to take on the world,
I need to save it
for the daily tussles
over showers and readers.
I make my declarations
for hope, with paint on canvas
with seeds planted
in warm soil.

Reasons to be cheerful

(The title of this blog post shows I'm an Ian Dury fan from way back.)

First reason to be cheerful, is we have two pineapple plants flowering. Growing pineapples in the tropics is easy, but only for the patient! You just cut off the top of a pineapple, plant it in the garden, water it now and again, and wait...a couple of years...

Here are the plants, about thigh high,

and the beautiful spiky flowers nestled inside that should be fruit by christmas. I'm also waiting with bated breath for 3 eggplant flowers to open. Fingers crossed they won't just drop off like the tomato flowers did.

The second reason is these gorgeous embroidery threads that I couldn't resist at the dollar shop. I don't do much sewing, even less embroidery... I'll probably sit and look at them for a while, maybe steal the colour combinations for some of my paintings.

The third reason is this inspiring new book I picked up at the library - Eco books by Terry Taylor, it shows you how to make books from recycled materials, there are 40 projects to try, some simple, some too complicated for my limited bookbinding experience! I'm having a go at a fabric covered one and I'll let you know how I get on.

new journal page

While I was preparing for the craft fair, my journal was neglected!! This is my first 'getting back into playing' page. I started off by loosely painting some faces and then worked more into the ones that interested me. I'm reading a book of short stories set in India (the anger of aubergines by Bulbul Sharma), and I think the atmosphere of it has sneaked into this page.

I've been really struggling with writing (poetry), possibly sending out work has made me too worried about the finished thing, so I'm going back to basics, here's a couple of not quite haiku...

Hard as rock
round and green as peas
baby mangoes.

clattering
at the kitchen sink
indigo sky descending

That was the craft fair!

The last couple of months I've been very focused on getting work ready for the craft fair, it finally came around on Sunday. Here's a shot of my stall.


We made some cards and bookmarks from the kids prints, here's my daughter looking after them.
I really need to make some more of these...bird fridge magnets!

We had a nice day, I managed to sneak off a few times and look at some of the other stalls. Now I'm looking forward to a month or two of being a bit more experimental, doing open-ended work, following my nose just to see where I end up.

The hopeful gardener

I finished this painting about a week ago, it's called the hopeful gardener. She's dropping seeds into the soil and telling the bird not to eat them!
I feel a lot like her about my efforts in the garden! This is my first year of seriously attempting a veggie garden. I've planted things before and even had some success (mainly basil) but it's been a bit haphazard and disheartening when things don't grow because it's the wrong climate and I don't know what I'm doing...

bok choi seedlings
So now I'm using Leonie Norrington's book as my bible - if she says it's easy to grow here I might have half a chance! The garden has changed a bit since these photos as I've had to put a knee-high fence around it to keep the bush chooks (scrub fowl) out. The bush chooks are about the size of a chicken, black with orange feet and a wierd call that's a cross between a screech and a gobble. They must come scrabbling for bugs in the soil and throw the mulch around - they've got into my veggie patch about 5 times now - I started off with 5 capsicum seedlings but only 2 survived. The basil seedlings have been flattened 3 times and I've had to replant again... Sometimes I wonder why I'm trying to squeeze another thing into my life! but the first thing I do in the morning is check out the veggie patch!!

parsley and mint

eggplants