MUM - CAUTION Abstract Art to Follow...

Hello everyone! Yes, I'm here and haven't actually fallen off the face of the planet. Just had a few visits out of town, a birthday, Easter and life getting a bit busy. But I'm here now - have finally unpacked and washed and put away all items of clothing and even managed a teensy bit of painting too. Yes it's been a very busy time for us all here...

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous and the days are , well, perfect. On sunday we went to the local park where the mini steam train enthusiasts let you ride around in their trains for a very small fee. It was so much fun and if you only understood the importance of trains in our day-to-day life, you would realise what a mammoth occasion it was for the peeps to ride in one! There was also a sausage sizzle too, and the playground... We then high-tailed it to the foreshore and walked about a km to another park - Miss Moo rode her bike all the way and I pushed HJ in the pram. Miss M decided that she couldn't possibly make the 1 km ride back to the car - so with lots of cajoling, encouraging and bribery, she finally did make it back, but I had to honour my promise for a 50cent cone at the golden arches. Needless to say it was a long and wonderful day and we'll definitely do it all again next month...

Onto arty things... Our local community art gallery ACDC has had a local artist in residence this past week. I popped in to have a look-see and a chat with Steve and it was really interesting. I've not had much opportunity to talk with other artists (they all seem to play their cards close to their chests around here) or to see work in progress so it was great. He showed me some of his sketches from his moleskine journal too and I was amazed at the life and movement he could capture and create simply with a ball point pen and a few lines. This free use of line to quickly get down a thought onto paper got me thinking and wondering what it would be like to draw and paint like that.

So last night I had a go at a couple of faces. Now I must say that I actually don't like these at all. I'm going to gesso over them - but it was FUN! I didn't think or plan anything. My main motivation was just to try and be free with no expectations at all as to what the finished product would/should look like. I've never even done abstract before, but hey, what the heck! I just let my brush make marks on the canvas and then experimented with ink to apply colour. Here's the results...

They're not even finished, and I'm not going to bother. It doesn't even bother me that I put all that time and effort ( about 2 hours and I got to bed much later than I'd hoped to)) to do them and I'm now going to gesso over them (it would have last year!) I just really enjoyed the experiment - I even learnt more about my skills and abilitites, that is, I don't have many - but at least there's only one way to go from here, and that's up. I've only scratched the surface of my jouney into painting. The more I see and read and explore, the more I realise I know anything at all! But in a way I think that's a good thing, because more than anything, I want to find my authentic and unique creative voice. I want to make art which is uniquely me, and not a melting pot of other people's talents and ideas. That's a long way off, but I'm really enjoying the journey, and that's the main thing isn't it?!

We also had our first Farmer's Market here on saturday morning. It was a bit of an anticlimax for me - as I was hoping for rows of fresh fruit and vegies on tressle tables. If you were in the market for preserved goods, olive oil and honey, you would have been happy! I did get this beautiful bunch of native plants/flower. When I was driving home from Perth these were absolutley everywhere along the side of the road, but it's actually illegal to pick wildflowers in this state. So when I saw them for sale (I'm sure they had a license?) I had to get a bunch. Just looking at them in my kitchen makes me calm and happy.



Hope you're happy today. I'll let you know soon what becomes of the wierd faces...

X Me