Higgledy Piggledy

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The weekend is almost over and it has been so lovely and full of heart. We’ve shared a few meals in company and there’s been baby giggles and puppy pats.
Tomorrow it is back to the ( soul crushing ) work and I look forward to it but I also wish time would slow the f**k down.

Our house is still so higgledy piggledy but life is happening and we’ve just got to go with it. Renovations take forever ( unless you have heaps of cash .. ) but that’s ok, we will get there and there’s a lot of fun in the making. However there are some walls that we just have to paint soon because the colour of them is just doing my head in, more than a year in it and I’m fed up. The plants help though. The make the light pretty and the place feel so .. magical? Homely? Something good.

I’m not even going to open up that Artprize email that came into my inbox this morning.

It’s been a while

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Dear readers,

It has been a while.

I have nothing much to really report, I’ve just upped my hours in order to get more work done. Things are not really going my way at the moment, there’s a competition closing tomorrow that I would usually go for but I think I am just going to save my pennies for the time being. It costs to submit works, then to freight them over and then to freight them back. Whilst this is not a complaint, I do need things to be moving a little more in my favour to take the leap. And since things have very much not been going the way I would like them to be, I’ve got to be a little smarter about it and stop for the time being.

You’ve got to be in it to win it -sure, but you also need money to buy art supplies.

When I am not drawing, I am walking and gardening ( badly ) and cooking and taking everything in at my own pace. Just trying to keep things a little calmer than the year before. I realise I can’t do everything for everyone, and that I don’t really want to. I try to plan out days and hours of ‘nothing’.

Kidlet’s seed drawings


These are mostly done, and then I am onto even smaller ones!

Art swap – Lilli May Waters

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Lilli May Waters is one of my favourite photographers. Her images are lush. I’ve been following her work for years and we have many a friend in common. I wrote to her a couple of years back, we have so many things in common and it blew us both away!

Recently I wanted to get some head shots done and I contacted Lilli to see if this was something she would do, and she suggested the art swap – which is the best idea!

Lilli came to my studio, and though it was sweltering in there she took some amazing shots and I just feel so lucky. Thank you Lilli. Here is her website – Lilli Waters and her wedding photography website: I got you babe

Lilli chose a print of 33 weeks in exchange, which I had done on beautiful bamboo paper.

33 weeks, oil on board, 44.7 x 34.5 cm, 2014

busy bees

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I went to Women of Letters on Sunday – my ears and heart are all full up. I haven’t been to one for a few years now – 2013! Here’s a sketch I did all the way back then:

At this event I had planned to sketch again but I forgot my sketch book ( !!!! ) and it was one of those weekends were I couldn’t get much right.. So I thought I shouldn’t push it.
Angie Hart was such an amazing host, and the letters were very funny to deeply personal. These events are just so special and I wish I could make it more often.

Lately I’ve been really stuck in the studio finishing off my latest piece ( Haunted ) so after finishing it I’ve been trying to leave the house and do a few other things here and there.. To feel human and reconnect. Husband and I recently went to a very special place for us and it was — good to do, I think.

Haunted – Waterloo State Forest

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Haunted
By Lily Mae Martin
Ink on paper
56 x 76cm
2017

These drawings – the landscapes – are challenging, but this one almost didn’t happen. It is on the last sheet of cold pressed paper, which I bought way back in 2013. ( 2013 Lily made a number of poor choices. ) The paper is beautiful, but rough as and my pens just get ruined on it far to quickly. But I don’t want to waste things and this one is meant to match up with the gully one ( in size, at least )
The foreground was the easiest, it is quite illustrative ( dare I say ) and was easy to get my head and pen around. However when it came to creating a sense of depth in the image with the middle and backgrounds – I did loose it all at one point. I had the horrible week of trying to fix it, and thinking I may as well have to abandon it after many, many, many weeks of work. Which was really upsetting.
I kept on at it though, got some advice from my Gene and really hammed up the contrast in this image. it is meant to be dark. Dealing with the after affects of death and grief.
I’m working on a brief for these.


In the gully
By Lily Mae Martin
Ink on paper
56 x 76cm
2016

So they can sit either side of the largest one:


Waterloo State Forest, view from the back
Lily Mae Martin
105 x 75cm
Ink on Paper
2016

My proposed idea is:

However there are more coming so this may change for sure. I thought I’d just do these three, but noooo. There’s many more to come and a statement too.

All the art – gearing up

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Well, the beginning of the year I saw a clean slate and I was both excited and deeply depressed about this. 2016 was a very successful year in terms of exhibitions and building up momentum.

I’ve moved things about so I work full time hours, with bits taken out for school drop off and pick up and cuddles and gardening and cooking. The I work into the evenings Monday to Friday. I’m finding that since I broke my laptop – and have this hear clunky desk top – online stuff isn’t taking over my life as much. And I feel like I have more time, or maybe that’s just the mental clear out – either way, I feel so much better.

My drawing board situation is that there are four pieces coming together, there are more that are in my mind.. I’m doing the landscape for a specific idea which I will talk about later and the nudes – I’m working on some smaller ones for a possible exhibition in future.

Just make the work.

On Saturday I went to Melbourne for the continuation of the Summer Salon exhibition at Scott Livesey Galleries ( LINK ) It’s up for the duration of February so get down and check it out, I have four pieces on display – a landscape, two small nudes and one large nude ( pictured)

In the morning I got to the James Makin Gallery to see Godwin Bradbeer’s Episodes Then & Now exhibition –LINK. It’s on until February 25th and you should totally go see it.

There’s a large retrospective of his work coming up in March – Stigma and Enigma so I hope to make that – it is indeed a different experience to see work IRL than just online.. I think people forget that.
I also wanted to get down to see LAURA curated by my friend Sophia Hewson – but I ran out of time!!!! *cries* So if you’re in Melbourne make sure you go and see it – LINK

Now, that is a very full and lush post and I better get back to it.

AND my tomato plants have flourished and I’ve been eating them, which is the best.

Summer Salon exhibition

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Summer Salon exhibition continues throughout February at Scott Livesey Galleries in Armadale, Melbourne.
I have the above large drawing, one of my Waterloo landscapes and two smaller drawings in this exhibition.
There’s drinks happening today at the gallery with many of the artists present including myself. Hope to see you there!

Three months

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December


January


February ( obviously new ink.. )

These last three months mean a lot to me, I took the next step and am healthier and happier than ever before.. And way more productive. I am told time and time again to journal, I am not good at journaling in the traditional sense so I am trying this out instead. I will keep documenting to keep myself in check.

Self care, yeah yeah.

Sketching

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I did a whole lot of sketches last night, my studio is covered in them and it feels like that is the way it should be and I curse any time it has been any thing other than this!
Anyway I know I am doing work that I probably shouldn’t be doing as there are some works that should be done but I’ll get on top of all of that next week I promise.

Here’s one sketch I did..

Three Hearts

Today I did not attempt to work in my studio because it was very, very hot. So I settled for podcasts under the fan and smaller sketching and working out some things that are admin and very dull. So tomorrow it is Friday, feels like that came about super soon ( as did 2017, as did being thirty three, as did my grey hairs.. ) so I think I should like, leave the house and do things in preparation for a whole weekend drawing! yay!!!