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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Blind continuous line drawing on the train from Ballarat to Creswick
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!
I had a magical, meaningful weekend and I am so grateful for Clunes Booktown and the amazing people who made it happen. Thank you.
Grandma’s salt and pepper kitties
Over the last week I have been back in my studio, I begun a drawing that I think will take me about three months to complete. It’s new and something I have wanted to explore for a while, yet wasn’t ready – until now. Also this week I pushed myself back into drawing from life. I have slacked off a bit with that. So I set myself one hour for each of these drawings, and pushed myself to get as much as I could on the page to a timer.
Tetris Kitchen
Elephant ears plant
Table Stuff
Phallic Banana
Seriously – how phallic is it!
Nose Dive
The last one is a drawing of a bird that I found this morning. I was walking past a hospital and saw something fall to the ground from my peripheral – it made a noise when it landed that made me turn. I thought it dead but when I looked closer I saw it’s tiny body breathing, little black eyes blinking at me. So I called wildlife rescue and while giving my location details, so a rescuer could come and collect the bird, it opened it’s beak up super wide and then it just stopped. Last breath. It blinked no more. So I told the lady on the other end and she asked that I could at least move it so people wouldn’t step on it, which I did. And then I drew it. What a strange thing to witness but at least I was there in it’s final moments so it didn’t get stepped on.
Monkey is unwell and home today. We had a very rough night and though we’ve not had much sleep – I’m still kind of happy!
It’s a sunny autumn day so I’ve done all the washing and made an attempt at the dishes that are never ending and gotten healthy food into us all.. A few years back I would have been a complete mess ( who’s to say I won’t be tomorrow ) but it reminds me time and time again about surrendering to life and taking it all in and being. I think when I started out on this parenting journey, I was not great at it but I kept trying and trying again and sometimes I think I am doing ok at it. I think that’s something that is hard to do, just trying. Try to be real, try to be present, try to do better, try to say sorry, try new things when all the other things are not working.
Anyway, I thought I was going somewhere with this train of thought but now that I am writing, I am not so sure. Ha.
Just keep trying.
Under skin, under earth
I’ve started a drawing and I’m in love with it so far and still unsure if it will work or not. It’s a little different, in subject and in approach and I am having fun.
Sketching and experimenting and feeling a little lost and scared.
Having a little more time to myself – than I have had in about six years – is giving me more time to think about what it is I want to do. When my daughter was younger I just took the little time I had and made work with a vengeance! Now I can take time to plot, to research, to be a little more discerning about what I put out there. I used to illustrate and sketch so much more than I do now. I used to document the process so much more than what I do now. Well, I still document it but I don’t share it online as much as I once did.
It’s lovely to look back, reflect and see what worked in 2009 was different to 2011 which is so very different to now. Now is new, and terrifying but once I pick myself up out of the fear and make myself try things it is so very joyful indeed. I can truly get stuck in the what if, what if, what if spiral and have the fear and uncertainty dictate what it is that I do, and don’t do.
When a body of work comes to an end I get very scared, having this work truly grounds me – in art making and in life. The one consistent, solid thing for me in my life has been my art. That can be very confronting when the rejection letters come in – slow but incredibly steady. When what it is I feel so strongly needs to be made does not quite cut any criteria. When I think that this could give me a sense of belonging in regard to other people, but the reality of making only isolates me further… No, I wasn’t invited to that exhibition, no I wasn’t invited to attend that event, no I wasn’t invited to speak at that thingo, no I can’t come – I got this drawing/ painting on the go and I need to work on it.
Anyway, I’m pushing through the doubt and getting on with the joy of making.
The Home is taking shape, above is just a snap off of my phone, it’s so fresh and so lovely. All these things mean things. There’s my father in law in the middle there, with his belt buckle and a rose he made for me a number of years back. The kitties are my Grandmother’s, my mother had bought them for her with the money she earned from Woolworth’s.
I didn’t get to the studio today, as I had intended. But I made a new folder with images and research that I have collected over the last few years. I feel like I am on the brink of something but I’ve come as far as I can with the thinking and collecting part, it’s time to think with my hands again.
School holidays and renovations are not friends.. much like skinny jeans and periods. Not saying they are enemies – but to take on both means a lot of effort, timing, coordination and cleaning.
I haven’t had much time to get back into the studio to explore and I’ve gone through the terror of what if I never make art ever again and just trying to trust myself but not really maybe I’ll just distract myself I’m walking a tightrope here and it’s somehow working how am I getting away with this I dunno but I am so just go with it ok *deep breath*
So I’ve filled up these holidays with cooking and learning more about food, exercising, reading so many things, and decorating my kidlet’s bedroom. The picture above is of the mural in it’s second day, we’ve been working on it together.. It’s almost finished, the image is from The Last Unicorn. Her room is looking so amazing. Our whole house is looking so different. It’s higgledy piggledy and I love it to bits.
I just had some friends over and we talked about our respective creative practices and it felt so good, in fact I feel inspired to just get back into my studio tomorrow and start experimenting. I don’t know what will come next and I’m done with being terrified of that and want to just see where it takes me.