Author Archives: lilymae

Drawings from the sketchbook, drawing on the drawing board

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Quick drawing I did of a beautiful teddy bear my Grandmother made before I left Brisbane last week.

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Blind contour line drawing of Jeanette Winterson when I saw her a couple of weeks back.

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Growing my hair out, sort of like a hair helmet at the moment! I am thrilled about it, as you can see 😉

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Quick sketch I did at the dinner table while waiting for the vegan red beans and rice to cook down.. Kidelt drew next to me.

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Naked!

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More naked!

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Today I found a wooden toy phone for $1, it’s pretty cool and kidelt loves it.

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This is a very large drawing I have been making a start on this week.. It is so hard but I am really happy with how it is going/ growing.

Paper cranes, kissing kitty & Meanjin illustrations

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I finished Poppet’s room! Though, after a couple of nights she came out one morning and declared “I found a few more spots for you to hang more paper birds mummy” and I laughed and laughed…

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Fabulous photos taken by Gene-he-who-is-good-at-everything.

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This picture is an outtake of something I am exploring – this kitty is truly a gift to our little family.

But, she was unimpressed:

FACE

eeyes

Also this month the new Meanjin is out ( Winter 2016 ) and I have four drawings in there, paire with words by Damon Young. Here is an example:

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I am working on a mammoth drawing – a large drawing, not one of a mammoth though that would be cool also. At times I have to step away from it because it is so complex and it is doing my head in. But I am truly happy with the start that I have made and I hope to get it finished in a couple of months. A lot of work for one piece but I’m trying new things and pushing myself, which is important and must be done. I can hear Grandma saying to me “Why don’t you spend more time on your work?” Because I used to rush through things all the time.

There are other drawings and paintings forming, I haven’t digitized them, I just want to let them take form in their own good time.

Magical bedroom

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Last school holidays Kidelt and I set about painting a mural on her bedroom wall.

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It’s pretty special, the image is one that I found on pintrest that kidlet just insisted on having.. I cannot find the original artist but it is from the Last Unicorn, a movie very dear to me that my daughter now loves.

I finished it this week, it took so long because so much life, death, meals, work and laundry happened.. It’ll probably be tweaked over the coming months as I am still in her room every day sorting and decorating and I can’t help myself.

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Now I am onto hanging paper cranes from the ceiling, it’s a large room so it is a pretty big job.

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I thought I had more folded, but I was wrong.. This evening I will fold more and hang them tomorrow. Kidlet L O V E S them.

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So special!

Under Skin, Under Earth – A Tribute

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Under Skin, Under Earth. Ink on paper, 56 x 76cm , 2016

My Grandmother died a few days before I finished this drawing, it has been so hard to finish.

This begun as an experiment, which is the best part of not having a deadline – experimentation. I want to find ways to explore mortality – all the life and death lessons I have experienced over the last couple of years. I thought I would write about them – but that doesn’t feel like the right to do for me.

I’ve tried drawing people’s objects and painting still lives of flowers, while they were fun to do, they were not enough. I’ve been road tripping and sitting and reading and sketching and photographing and I get inklings of things and then I moved towards other things. I’ll get there, I’ll find it.

When I was a teenager, I spoke to Grandmother on the phone and she had asked me about my drawing. She always asked me about my drawing. When I told her I wasn’t doing that anymore she told me that I was being silly/ stupid/ ridiculous – one of those words, all of which I was deserving. I was such an angry teenager and was putting all that anger into being destructive towards myself instead of being constructive. Anyway, she said I was being silly/ stupid/ ridiculous – that I have a gift. I shouldn’t waste it.

So I’ve been trying not to waste it. I’ve had busy hands for a number of years now. In my early twenties I was making toys, she showed me how to make a simply teddy out of felt. I made a pirate one and Grandma examined it, said I was clever but I make repulsive things. I was really proud.I’ve been trying to make things that I think she would be interested in, my art has run the gamut of angst to art school to hyper sexualized to general interest and exploration of body to telling life stories. The kind of stories that Grandma’s would be interested in. It pains me that when our minds and experience become so rich, our bodies begin to age and fail.

Grandma passed away on Monday evening, I looked up the clock face of the Melbourne Town Hall around the time she left. When I got the texts and the calls and found out what time I remember this moment.. I wonder of it is connected. But maybe that’s just what we all do, try to find meaning in things and maybe there isn’t any meaning.

We are all so temporary. It’s heartbreaking.

News~

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Morning Song, ink on paper, 76 x 56cm , 2016

Morning Song, ink on paper, 76 x 56cm , 2016

Hallo!
I am really pleased to say that my drawing Morning Song has been shortlisted for the Rick Amor drawing prize and my drawing Wrestling Three has been shortlisted for the National Works on Paper prize.
These are both really amazing exhibitions and I am really, really proud of the work that I have going into these exhibitions.

The Rick Amor opens July 9th at the Art Gallery of Ballarat and the National Works on Paper Prize opens 16th of July at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.

Hope you can make it down to see the works while they are on display. Good luck to all the shortlisted artists!

Wrestling three, ink on paper, 75 x 105cm, 2015

Wrestling three, ink on paper, 75 x 105cm, 2015

Quick drawing, walnuts

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While I am baking a walnut and banana loaf ( 45 minutes ) and wait for it to cool ( 10 minutes ) I do the above drawing. I say to my husband I am so tired and he says but you’re drawing walnuts and I say I have to and he giggles at me.

My neighbour left a box of them on my doorstep the other day as a thank you. How much joy they have brought into our house. Husband is happily munching on them, Kidlet doesn’t like the taste but she loves to open them up and marvels at the insides, she says they look like brains. We’re all cracking them out of their hard shells and sorting them so I can bake the loaf. Even the kitten is playing with part of a shell. So much joy.

Thank you BB.

Quick drawing at bedtime

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Routine, routine, routine. Most of the time it grounds me, sometimes it fuels me and other times it just crushes me. Yesterday eve I thought poo you routine, and kidlet and I sat at our dinner table drawing together. She numbers up to forty, me putting the finishing touches on my sketch of Civic Hall. I had started it out in the rain, with my hands going numb.

When I came in to cuddle her later on she said I like your drawing mummy. I’m still glowing.

Magic Realism

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A number of weeks back I was researching Andrew Wyeth – in particular his treatment of hair in portraits – and I came across the phrase magical realism and it just seemed to trigger something off in me. I haven’t been able to stop drawing. And the drawings I am doing – and are planning to do – are dense.

I’m feeling incredibly excited and challenged by this new direction. The concepts are not yet completely formed but they are forming. I try not to get too wordy at this point, because if I write it all out then I feel like I’ve already explained it to myself and won’t feel driven to explore it in drawing. Words are art too.

Process is important to me, and blogging has opened a space up for me to have a place to document it. I have always struggled with visual diaries.. I feel like the ideas and sketches are trapped in those things. Blogs I use to glance over and to edit and to be reminded of things and feel pushed to develop myself. Hosting can be a pain, and I loose things and have to update things to a capacity I can’t always sustain.
But it’s all a learning curve and I think within the juggle of parenting, life-ing, writing, illustrating, teaching and artist-ing I have come to find some sort of balance. I’ve dropped a lot of stuff and working on what I truly want to do – drawing. In giving myself this space to practice and work at my art, I think I am beginning to produce some of the best work I have ever made. Within each work is a new question and an aim to be better than the last. I think I am getting to a point now where I just need to knuckle down for a few years to make another large body of work. I’m almost there.. I am pushing my drawing to the next level. It makes me feel so alive.

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So I will keep posting some updates here, while this language develops and while this project goes. I would also like to add that I have been reading loads and listening to stories while I draw. I think this is informing my work too. I’ll unpack that another day.

Peace and bunnys
x

His Hand

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I am listening to Like A Prayer – a podcast by The Wheeler Centre.

This is the only poem I have written and put out into the world.. I wrote it at about 2AM in Berlin, back in 2011. I had been struggling all day, to write something in my little dinky kitchen and I gave up and went to sleep – unsatisfied. A few hours later, I woke up with these words pouring out of my mind.

When you fell, you crumpled over like

A ventriloquist doll

God had removed his hand from you.

It drove me mental that what I was trying to write came out in just three lines. Seventeen words.
But what an important event it is of. And though it is just three line, seventeen words – they do so much.

This poem is dedicated to Peter Orr and Lynall Hall Community School, my second high school. December 15th 1998.
RIP.

Sketches, Clunes Bookstown

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This weekend I saw April out and May in at Clunes booktown. Clunes is a town I like to visit regularly because it is *so* beautiful, and book town is something I didn’t get to experience until last year and then only very briefly.

I went to many things. The launch of Goldfields and the Gothic – edited and compiled by David Waldron, Writing Goldfields History, Mad Poet’s Tea Party, Ordinary Places with Cate Kennedy chaired by Michael Williams, ( This was the absolute highlight of the whole festival, Michael and Cate were warm and generous ) The Mothers with Rod Jones chaired by Jo Case – ( I purchased the book after this and have read quite a lot of it already, what a truly touching talk and book ) and finally Infidelity, Open Marriage and Journeys Through Time and Place.
That’s incredible for $10 over two days.

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bclballaratcreswick_lily_mae_martin Blind continuous line drawing on the train from Ballarat to Creswick

pen_lily_mae_martin The Empty Chair – “Since the 1980s PEN International has used the Empty Chair at events to symbolise a writer who could not be present because they were imprisoned, detained, disappeared, threatened or killed. The Empty Chair often represents a specific case, rather than all writers at risk, and regularly takes centre stage at such venues as the Melbourne Writers’ Festival.”

book_earrings_lily_mae_martin Book earrings!

home_lily_mae_martin I had a magical, meaningful weekend and I am so grateful for Clunes Booktown and the amazing people who made it happen. Thank you.