On your hands and knees
Scrub that floor
Manuscript- know it by heart
Family, cult-like
Mother, two sisters – princess and the werewolf

Rituals
Hailing to the Watchtowers
The blood that binds us,
And the whisky that numbs us

Scrub that fucking floor
Cant you see we don’t want you no more?

the slime of all my yesterdays
rots in the hollow of my skull

and if my stomach would contract
because of some explicable phenomenon
such as pregnancy or constipation

I would not remember you

or that because of sleep
infrequent as a moon of greencheese
that because of food
nourishing as violet leaves
that because of these

and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight

‘Sylvia Plath and The Worry Bird. By Justin Fitzpatrick.

Was it the loneliness that came first?
Or the endless cries at night, the endless need
Is the blackness deep within me?
Or is it the weight that comes with time

Watching, reading
Analytical, deciphering
They, them
You, me

There’s always excuses
There’s always reasons
It’s there, it’s screaming
Drowning me out

Me
Drowning

Above are a few photos from a painting I am working on. I did the undercoat many months ago and then put it away and forgot about it. I am happy I did this as I feel I have come a long way as a painter- and as a Mother.
The textures and colours overwhelmed me a little while back, whereas now I am excited about them and enjoying watching it transform. This painting is 80 x 60cm in size- it’s not the biggest painting I have worked on, but not the smallest. I plan to actually paint this a few meters by a few meters- that would be amazing.

My idea behind this painting took a while to form in my head but it is clearer to me now. Birth is arbitrary. Birth is a death. Birth is painful and life changing experience and I feel it is very much taken for granted by our society. We scoff at teenage mothers or women who aspire to be JUST mothers. We scoff at housewives, domestic ‘woman’s work’- it’s so taken advantage of that most of what mum’s do and go through- is wordless.
I wanted to pay homage to this ‘everyday miracle’- to the agony that is birth. I wanted to congratulate my friends- Natasha and Jarron, with more than just a store bought card. I wanted to congratulate them for making this baby girl and for loving and caring for her.
Raising and shaping a human being is one of the most important jobs in the world- regardless of what our current societal structure tells us.
One day there will be words.

L
x

Means that before lunch time my finger and hands have cramped.
So far 35 drawings are now mounted with only 40 more to go.

We’re getting there!

L

I’ve been thinking about home and the physicality of it- what will be new, what will be old but I may (or may not) see differently. I’ve been thinking about the air and the light- I’ve been thinking about the landscape.
I’ve been thinking about the people- about people that used to be big parts of my life and are now that of strangers.
Here I’ve gotten used to my anonymity. I’ve gotten used to letting everyone around me knowing me as I am now and not seeing me stumble (too much), not seeing me fucking up (too much.) Here I have gotten used to not having a past, an ex to avoid and that girl he kept comparing me too.
Here there aren’t events that I feel I can’t go to, here I can make friends with whoever I want, here I can send my work anywhere- because someone isn’t involved with someone who is going to cast me out because of things that happened many, many years ago.

Here I’ve learnt that holding a grudge against someone for years is a very hard commitment. Holding a grudge against things that were said and done so many years ago means someone got stuck. Feeling threatened by someone you haven’t even spoken to in six years, well that person may as well be factious.

When I go home the slate is clean for me- I’m letting bygones be just that. I’m going to let Melbourne open herself up to me in the ways that I couldn’t before. I have the faith that people will take me as I am and judge my work by it’s merit, not what has been said about me. I’ve forgiven, I’ve accepted, but I know that doesn’t mean others have- I accept that too. But I’m not wearing it.

They can keep their patchy bit of grassland.

I bought this from a flea market for 8 euros- original case, instruction manual, cleaning equipment. It was heavy and when I was carrying it home it occurred to me that I was a little silly. I am a fan of beautiful and useless objects- but I am more of a fan of a photo of them.
My Mum collected beautiful things, she had a lot of them too. I’ve noticed with me it’s pictures. Pictures of people, places, things. I have a great love for photography and though this instagram thing is a fad- I still enjoy it.

I saw this outside of Gene’s work. I haven’t managed to visit him there for months and months. It seems I am not the only fan of beautiful & useless?

This is a place I make the effort to go to as much as possible. It’s location will remain, well, locationless. But I love it, and it’s ceiling.

This is my front door. It’s like many front doors here. Old, fancy, heavy. It’s beautiful and when the weather here warms up I’m going to sit outside and lovingly draw it.

Bike ride! I rode to the dentist last week and then rode through a park. I don’t ride much as I am too sleep deprived and skittish to trust myself on a bike, but when I do I really, really enjoy it.

Warm weather, please hurry the f**k up.

Lily
x

This painting was a tricky one- I don’t usually paint backgrounds. Also because this is from a tiny, blurry photo a friend took back in 2009, so the detail wasn’t to clear. I didn’t take any photos at the beginning because I didn’t think it would work out.
But it did.

This photo is of the second and third layers. I was really struggling with the angles of our faces and trying to get Gene’s laugh right.

This is the fourth layers- mostly working on the back ground- the blurs, lights and shapes. I’ve started work on the clock again because the face wasn’t white enough. I’m mostly working on all of these to avoid painting the polka dots on my dress.

But one Sunday afternoon I got out a beer, put on some music and just painted the damn polka dots! Took me two hours.

This is the final result- it’s undefined and unrefined in a lot of places, but I think that fits with the overall mood of the painting.

Gene and I were out for a night of dancing at the Kaffee Burger on Torstr with our friends Nom and Adam. Nom and I were in frocks, the men wore ties. Gene was too tired to dance so he sat in the corner drinking a beer while we whirled about on the dance-floor. We danced to unknown Euro- pop, to the Pogues and the Ramones. Sometimes we’d stop to refresh ourselves with red wine- that was warm as the club was very hot inside.
There was a very drunk man dancing with a new girl for every new song. I say dance, but he was really just swaying- trying to stay up right while looking up every now and again to pay his new girl some attention.
After a few hours there we left to watch Berlin turn from nighttime to morning and found a station that was unlocked. We were waiting awhile for the first train to arrive, and Nom caught this moment on her camera.

I decided to paint this as there are very few photos of Gene and I together. It is also from a time when we were together as a couple, not parents. I think it is always important to remind yourself- and one another of those feelings and times that brought you together- as sometimes they can get lost, buried, under all of the day to day, week to week stuff that needs to get done.
Laundry becomes more important that a kiss, food shopping becomes more important than a walk together, cleaning more important than a cuddle, sleep (much) more important than sex.

So this is our moment, this is me remembering.

This is a painting about a habit I started at the age of 11 or 12.
Something had just happened- I can’t recall exactly- but I remember the stress, the anger and the anguish was getting too much. I felt like my skull was going to split apart. So I ran into my room, picked up a pair of scissors- with lime green plastic handles- and just cut up my arms. Both of them. They weren’t deep. I sat while the skin of my arms just burned an angry pain and cried, calming down.
Since I didn’t think much of it I wore a t-shirt to school the next day- a girls school that just made me wish I was dead most days- a teacher snapped up my arms in mid conversation “What have you done to your arms?!” I don’t remember what happened after that either.

And since things didn’t get better, they were just getting worse, I kept doing it. Scissors, stitch-cutters, razor blades, pins, needles. Blood, patterns, infections. Things kept getting more violent and more uncertain and I sort comfort in this behavior.

Fuck you all, no one can hurt me as much as I can.

Doesn’t make sense does it? But sometimes I think it is easier to behave badly, destructively, than to seek help, do the right thing. But I think I was pretty stuck, just a kid with no idea about the world.

I know a lot of people do this, but no one talks about it.