Yesterday afternoon the rain held and we – my friend and her two wonderful children and I – sat beneath a ginormous mother tree and drew her. I’ve gifted my sketch to them.

Tools – note the tea cake, it was very excellent.

Nothing is Untouched (Moorabool)

By Lily Mae Martin

56 x 76cm

Ink on paper

2024

Good day, it is beautiful and sunny here today.

I rearranged my lounge room recently to place my drawing board in a spot where I can get the most natural light. I completed one drawing and I am still struggling with another as I have been for years. It’s an interesting one, I can see the evolution of my drawing style changing. Which is part of the challenge because part of me doesn’t like seeing the old style but the other part of me is thinking this is important – FINISH IT.

Here is a cropped detail of the completed one:

I’ve been up to 2AM some nights sketching new ones. The landscapes have been the focus recently as they are safer for me now, on multiple levels. They are an escape. I think I am a bit cautious of human content however I am still collecting material because it is an important part of my practice.

OK now, CLASSES.

I am running two drawing workshops at the Art Gallery of Ballarat.

Saturday the 20th of Jan and Saturday the 3rd of Feb. You can book here: LINK

If you have been to one of my classes before I still set exercises for everyone to do but I will come around individually and give you guidance on what you want to focus on.

LMM

We sat in a little place to eat lunch that had views of the habour and I sketched these little boats. 

At an art store in Hobart I purchased a nib pen and a little pot of ink to play around with:

The little pademelon came to visit each evening, sometimes her joey would make an appearance.

The bottle of ink was leaky so I gifted it to an artist in residence in Queenstown as I knew he would put it to good use.

I was also doing a drawing of Mt Owen but did an art swap before I got a good picture of it. The Western Tasmanian landscape is inspiring so I am sure to make more in the future. I am so glad to be home and I know it’s xmas time but I am going to use this time to make art 🙂

Daughter and I just got back from Tasmania. We went to Hobart, MONA via the ferry and then drove out West to see the Franklin River, waterfalls, artists – mountains.

The whole trip was memorable in that not everything went according to plan. I said to my daughter “We are creating memories! And not all of them are good” 😛

We were both inspired and spent most of this trip drawing. When we got to Queenstown we stayed in the apartment above where I did an art residency years ago and that night we were up very late draw draw drawing.

It was really special to take her to the part of the world that inspired me so much. Show her artists spaces and exhibitions. She didn’t care for MONA tho 😀

I’ll post some of the skecthes soon. Good to be home, I missed my cats.

Wrapping everything up for the year. I have more time to see friends, spend funny and wonderful times with Teenager, walks to look at birds and trees, enjoying my cats, super cute dates and precious alone time.

DRAW.

I go in and out of being blown away that I am in my fourth decade of life. It’s like, how? But then I am acutely aware of how lucky I am to be here.

Teenager and I are not huge fans of Christmas, we keep it super quite and basically keep away from it as much as possible. Goodluck to all this holiday season. Don’t let people pressure you into spending too much money and doing things you don’t want to do just in the name of Christmas. It’s not worth it.

HOW is it less than a month to Christmas – and is that something I say every year?

Probably.

The year coming to a close, a good thing. The garden is going gang busters, I have a holiday with Teenager coming up (SO excitement) and I’ve just hit the seven years sober mark. I like this time distance, I don’t think about it being in my life and I can’t see it back in my future.

I’m grateful to the sky overheard and my time. A new lease on life I have.

The small drawings have halted for the time being because I am back on the bigger drawings at my drawing board. It has been years since I have had the space and time to begin this. It was all knocked out of me, repeatedly, beginning with the loackdowns of 2020.

The world is a brutal place, the news is heartbreaking and people are cruel – in these drawings and in the lines I can have my voice, my place, my safety.

This is of Moorabool, from a walk I went with a group of people one hot sunny afternoon. I’ve already titled it – Nothing is Untouched. Next to it sits my Otways drawing, so close to finished but the peice is loaded with memories from years ago and maybe that is why I am taking so long with it. But also this is usual for me, I am close to finishing something so then I start something else 😀

Happy days are cats and Teenager and our garden plot and drawing.

A small excerpt of this written piece was published in a local zine this week. Zines are where I first started my drawing and writing sharing experience. I chose this self portrait to publish and write about, I was thinking about self portraiture especially for female identifying artists and in my own practice. Then someone posted a quote by John Berger and I was off. Sometimes social media can be cool like that.

The flowers had all started blooming in my garden around a really tricky time this year. I had forgotten all about planting the seeds on an afternoon I had to myself in autumn, a rare occurrence then. I was glad for it, as it was a reminder to myself that I am happiest and most creative by myself. And these are the things I can share with my daughter.

Enjoy the reading and at the end I have included a photo of the easter rabbits my daughter and I drew.

Drawing, Self.

I like to draw everything that I can. But I also need to sustain myself: I need to eat and sleep and clean the house; to look after my daughter, make an income, to pay rent. All that of work is important, too. And sometimes the necessary wok of living can detract from art making, while other times it adds a richness to it. 

Pursuing an art practice is a lifelong endeavour. Social media, marketing and neat packaging of The Self As One Thing can really crush this. I find myself thinking:

What if this work doesn’t sell? What if it doesn’t meet criteria for this publication or that art prize? Should I be focusing on getting “likes” and generating a following? And what if I just want to draw everything? Sticking to one theme is hard! 

I like to look at it in this way: everything I create contributes to a portfolio that spans the entirety of my life. If I am lucky enough, I still have a long journey ahead of me in both. The idea that I am yet to make my best work really puts a flame in my belly. 

John Berger writes that women are conditioned to see themselves through the eyes of others, specifically the eyes men. Women in art ‘appear’ whereas men in art ‘act’.

I am a woman and even though I have struggled with what that means and spent a large part of my youth wishing I was a boy; I accept that I am one. Further, I am a woman who makes art (Art Woman). 

Self-portraiture is an expression of art that I find deeply fascinating. It is a view into someone’s inner life, their every day, an impression of how they see themselves. 

My final year at university was an exploration in self-portraiture. I had seen a photograph of myself, and I hated it; the strong, physical disgust that I felt looking at that image of myself really struck me and stuck with me. So, I explored it. This was a challenging project but it led to a large body of work in paintings and drawings – repeating and repeating a likeness to this photograph. Some of the works were so large I needed to stand up on a step ladder with my graphite pencils, while others were tiny paintings close-up of the face or just an eye using the tiniest brush. I didn’t see this as a vanity project, even though I wondered if others might – a common accusation made of women who focus on themselves in anyway. Instead, my need to explore this image overrode that. 

The result is I have about 15 years’ worth of self-portraits. I haven’t kept them all – I’ve sold some and lost some and I’ll be honest, thrown some away. But it is interesting when I look back at them. I can see when I was in dark places, I can see hurting, I can see strength, I can see silliness. I look back with kinder eyes now and think about who I was and who I have become. It is a profound experience and I’m not sure words do it justice, but that’s OK because there are drawings. 

My Teenager also loves to draw, and we draw ugly and funny things together. (You should see the results of the “who can draw the worst Easter bunny?” competition we had). This connection is a gift that I am always thankful for.

If it wasn’t for drawing, I simply wouldn’t be. That’s the truth. In my drawing I can explore all that I have no words for; I can render an escape when things are impossible. For me, drawing my self-portrait can be grounding – especially when life falls to pieces. This self-portrait I drew in August. My face emerges through spring flowers. Flowers grow in shit. 

Is spooky month, it’s really cool to see the houses going all out with the decorations already! I do love Halloween but also – how are we already in October?

Pencil drawings have been passing the time while it has been freezing this week.

Enjoy your Tuesday.