Hi hi

What a wild ride this time has been. I’ve had some truly fantastic art experiences mixed in with the End of the World. I’ve been working a lot in my new job and studying full time and think I am doing ok but never really feel on top of anything at all – I am forever behind.

Hope I pass.

I’ve had some truly amazing and incredibly challenging times working in healthcare. I’ve wanted to go in this direction for a while but didn’t think I was smart enough. And look, I may not be an HD girl but I give it a good go and jeez give me a break with lockdowns, home schooling and everything changing all the time. Labs getting cancelled yet I still have to sit exams. I am not getting – most of us nursing students are not getting – enough hands on experience but I am very good at taking my own blood pressure ( always low ) yet I still cannot pronounce sphygmomanometer.

I’ve got paperwork to work out ( I have never been good at forms ) and dinner to make ( kidding, it’s take away pizza, again ) and study to do and all that but wanted to write here because I need to claw myself back to art and this space it is such a big part of me and it’s been kicked out of me since the beginning of the end, well, began.

Make sense? Probably not.

I have been working on this very detail drawing in a smaller size because I don’t have a studio anymore ( no time and can’t afford it 🙁 ) but it’s a nice size to do because in a way it is making me think a lot more about composition and details as it is intimate. I’ve only completed about 4/5 of it and it has already taken me hours and hours. But jeez it is fantastic. It’s of a grass tree in Woowookarung inspired by this incredibly beautiful drawing by Eugene von Guerard. I came across it when looking into early artworks of Ballarat for my exhibition Overburden.

Hours and hours of work already. I get lost in there and it’s magical and I can overthink and not think.

Anyway, wanted to say hello and post this image of a lovely horse I drew when my boyfriend and I went to Deans Marsh but had it cut short because of… lockdown!

Yay!

Good afternoon, it has been quite a long time since I have written and there is much to share.While I am writing to you and I am most of the way through an artist in residence at Geelong Grammar. I am staying in the artists flat, where Hirschfeld-Mack lived and worked. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have this opportunity. It has come at such a good time for me too, I’ve had a number of big things come my way and knock me off of my feet a bit. This place has given me so much in terms of time, art, history, geneous and enthusiastic people.

I’m on a roll and starting my sixth painting since being here, so here I go.

Photo by Drew Ryan

I’m impatient for all of the things that are to come this year.

Around mid to late January I get restless – everyone is back at work, except me. School hasn’t started yet and I want the routine and that sense of purpose which comes with work and study. ( Not complaining but sort of complaining.) I used to be worse at managing these inbetween moments than I am now. So grown up. And even though I am super keen beans to get back to it I am enjoying all the little moments I can each day: the cute things my daughter and her friends say, my cat snoring, magpie song, looking at his ears, coffee, books, records, watering the fruit trees and the soothing that comes with sorting out ones life.

I want to make new drawings but I also live in my studio at the moment and am unsure of my income so it’s tricky. My paper ain’t cheap. It ain’t small. So here we are, another self portrait but in watercolour and then I got carried away with looking through one of my medical dictionaries and my anatomy dummy that you can pull apart! .. I haven’t put it back together just yet..

It’s my birthday on Friday.

That’s my story for now.

Hiya,

Hope your holiday season invloved a lot of hydration and taking stock of the year that was 2020. This is the time of year where I am still in the inbetween as most people have gone back to work but not meeee.

Last year everything in my little world changed, as it did for the bigger world. It’s been coming for a long time but I guess it took the pandemic to force me to take action rather than being lost in my mind and letting fear guide me.

Such poetry..

In a few weeks I begin my second degree, a Bachelor of Nursing. In lockdown one, after I had lost all of my work, I interrogated how I was going to move forward in this life. Art is a big part of me, but my life cannot be art. Over the past few years I have had experiences that opened me up to new possibilities and I decided to work at getting into nursing. In lockdown two I studied full time and learnt all the maths and academic essay writing and all the stuff to prepare me for uni. In early October I recieved an offer into the program.

I nearly stopped making art altogether but Anthony has kept that part of me alive, I have him to thank for that. I can have both art and nursing. I’ll post new works soon but firstly look at me in my placement uniform..

Nurse Lily over and out.

x

I don’t know what took me so long to do a self portrait with a mask. Probably everything that has been going on.

I live in my studio now and it’s interesting sitting with my drawings, paintings and work mess. I’ve been slowly sorting through it, everday I do a little bit. Many things I have forgotten about. I made a little green house cubby on my balcony, which daughter was very excited about. It’s a strange sort of balcony that is exposed to too much weather for me to do much else with. I plan to sit and paint out there but the weather has been a little wild of late. I won’t talk about the weather though, that’s very boring.

Over the months I have been struggling to write a piece that I was asked to write. Then the words that I had forced out I accidently deleted. I tried again and what is wrong with me I can’t write! I stopped working on the series of paintings I was really excited about at the start of the year. Well, apart from little inks and watercolours I have just stopped making my Art Art. The big stuff.

Anyway not much point other than sharing a picture and writing words. The website is a little sluggish and it is getting harder to upload images. I will have to deal with that soon.

Happy holidays and drink your water, regularly.

LMM

I have spent most of this year thinking I won’t make it out alive. I’m sure I am not the only one who has felt this. In those early months of lockdown I tried to bury myself in books, but of course there’s homeschool and washing and dishes and the panic would rise and rise.

I’m not going to survive this, I’m not going to survive this, I am not going to survive this. 

My life has changed, irrevocably. Some days I can be functioning in the world, other days emotions are high and they hurt. Dramatic, no? But I am sure someone out there reading this knows exactly what I mean.

At this point I am facing more instability than I have in a long time – I don’t know what my future is going to look like. I’m really scared people won’t want me. I’m back to full time study in 2021. It’s also summer break and I have no work, no school and no structure and I’m probably going to be alone a lot. I bloody love routine.

Xmas always feels like a kick in the teeth.

Anyway, I digress ..

With something like BPD, a thing that affects your moods, thoughts and feelings it is really hard to tell what is you and what is It (yes I got Faith No More stuck in my head writing that line). It’s nestled right into your whole identity, your being. It shapes the way you experience and interpret the world, it shapes your relationships, your relationship with yourself. You can obsess over suicide but also be paranoid that everyone is trying to kill you – that’s super tiring. You can often feel like you are not real and I can’t describe that one any further, words don’t work.

Writing isn’t coming easy. I must have started about ten different posts over these past couple of months and given up. I’ve rewritten this one over and over again even though it is brief.

Mostly I got this. Mostly. Work in progress and all that stuff.