making time

My intention this year was to make more time for art. I cut back my work days to 3 a week... but then life intervened, my workmate left, I worked full time for a couple of months, and now I'm back at my traditional 4 days work with Friday for art and the weekends for family, errands and snatches of art...

To be honest, working 3 days I felt guilty, lazy, flabby. I wasted a lot of time in my head justifying my 'slackness', instead of embracing the time and getting on with it. I'm probably making more art in a busy 3 days than I was in a lazy 4 days.

So nothing has changed, my intention is to live creatively, to give myself time for art - no matter what else is going on, I can spare 10 minutes to sketch or play with gouache or write each day.

This post is in response to the first prompt íntention' - in Kit McNally's August Moon writing challenge, you can find out more about it here.

 

pain and pleasure of painting

There hasn't been much evidence of painting on my blog this year, and I guess that's because I haven't been doing much! I've been really dissatisfied with most of the paintings I've started, and ended up discarding them or painting over them. It got to the point where I was avoiding the studio, going for a walk or baking muffins instead!!

I had a chat about all this with a friend who was visiting Darwin last month. Marita is an amazing painter, her work is exuberant, colouful, wild, playful....and she's prolific!! Her advice was to stop worrying about the end result, to set aside some time each week to paint for the fun of it, just to see what happens, not to censor it before it's started, to play!...

I've tried to hold onto this idea of play as I've started these garden paintings over the last month. I'm still dissatisfied, they fall a long way short of what's in my head! But at least I have something to show you, and a beginning to work on, or develop further in the next painting... and something to show in an exhibition coming up at the end of the month.

These are small 6x6 inch canvases, inspired by things I glimpse in gardens on my walks around the suburbs!
Best wishes to blogland, xxx

more menagerie...

I've been meaning to show you the other pieces I made for the dream menagerie exhibition. Again I was inspired by the designs on my indian skirts, and made some felt camels, a palm tree and a woman (camel herder!)

I'm not skilled enough to make a 4 legged animal that stands up!! So I made them as a wall piece. Working on these kind of projects is very much 'PLAY' I don't really know what I'm doing and just start somewhere and hope for the best! I love that I get to indulge in different materials to my usual paint and lino, especially to be playing with bold colour. You can see work by some of the other artists in the exhibition over on the smallest forest blog - here and here...Nat's photos are infinitely better than mine!!

It's been a busy few weeks, I also had a stall at the craft fair at Tactile Arts 2 weeks ago. Here's a photo of some of the paintings I took along, this was in my garden when I was getting everything organised...

It was a lovely day, perfect weather, lots of visitors, lovely tea and cake!! It was great to make some sales, get good comments, and come home inspired to get to work in the studio. July is whizzing past, the kids go back to school next week, I've started on some garden paintings and hope to show you some next time.

Hope you're having a creative month :)

walk 13 around the neighbourhood

Not one walk but lots over the last month, I've been paying attention to people's gardens because I'm starting on some garden paintings...

and enjoying the park too. I've got lazy about carrying my camera, so haven't been posting my walks, but hope to get back on with the project soon!!

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.

walk 12 The seabreeze festival

Way back on the first Saturday in May I took my regular walk by the sea at Nightcliff, and enjoyed the seabreeze festival.

graffiti wall

I spent an hour or so at the dance stage...

belly dancing

and had to stop for a few tunes from a brass ensemble. I didn't make it as far as the main stage, but had a great couple of hours. My photos don't do it justice!

Best wishes to all :)

All work and no play ...

So I wasn't around much in May, partly because my son was hogging the computer and partly because I've been working full time. My workmate left and I'm filling in with extra days until a new admin person starts.

The downside of this is the lack of time to make art. I've been trying to squeeze in some card making, 10 minutes in the morning before I head to work is enough time to handcolour a lino print or cut out some foam prints and juggle them on different coloured backgrounds. Here are some of the cards I've made using up some of my stash of foam prints and painted papers.

Last weekend was the garden spectacular and the writers festival and I missed them both. I hope you had a great time if you went along...