Work, study, lockdown, etc

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 from Deans Marsh.

 

 

 

Sketchbooks sketchy sketch

Well hello. Again, it has been a long time. I’ve been trying to sort out life and getting into the rhythm of my ever changing routines. I left one job and have started a new one, it’s really fantastic to be working and studying – I am doing different things and learning so much. Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed but don’t we all.

Art has been going well, a little different but I’ve had some very nice things occur for me this year. That is for another post as I wanted to make this one about – SKECTHING and saying hello.

It is very nice to be skecthing again. I thought I’d take on a big painting project this year but I couldn’t afford my studio space and my new home has no space for paint. See I like the toxic stuff so I am not doing it in the house. Why not use the non toxic stuff you say, because I think it’s shite and if there is one area of my life that I have control over – it is this. I lost the sketching knack for a bit there, had to endure months and months of producing rubbish. Now I feel good and am training my eye again. I hope the next body of drawings I do a way better than what has gone before. Which is important to me in my practice, which I know I have banged on about before.

SO lockdown five for us, I am still working as I am an essential worker these days. What a time hey. I am really trying to get as much experience as I can and do my best.

What I can manage now are the skecthes and they are helping rebuild my confidence. Yes I have lost a lot of that, wah wah but here’s to continuously  trying to claw myself out of the dark with pen and paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

See you super soon and I hope you are eating plenty of veggies.

 

 

AIR – Geelong Grammar School

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

Vessels

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, coffee, books 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.

 

Covid selfie

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

Learning new things

I have done many different things with my time this year. It needed to happen. I am a curious person, I like challenges and I channeled that into a full time bridging course at University. It has been a ride, I found aspects of this course hard but I kept on at it despite a couple of set backs. You know, Lockdown 2.0, all the kidlets missing school and being stuck at home adults. We managed. Together all the time, we managed.

I’ve been learing algebra and am about to plunge headfirst into statistics. At the beginning of this course I dreaded maths and now it is my very favourite. I can’t do it so well but I love that there is always a solution. That is soothing.

I’ve not made much art, I just can’t. Though I have been busy with other things I still love to make it when I can. It looks different at the moment. But that has always been the case with my practice, it shifts and it is important to explore different aspects. To fit it in around whatever else is going on with life at the time.

This year has been heartbreaking. I can’t see my cousin, of whom I am very close, she had her first baby on the otherside of the world. Like I did with my baby. It crushes me that I can’t be there. We still can’t see our family on the otherside of Victoria, first it was the bushfires that ripped right through the area and now lockdown. I know there is a lot of people going through monumentally diffuclt times, I know how lucky I am and this year has really been a catalyst of change in me. I need to do something more helpful in this world.

 

Listen, things will never be the same again and I think that I have come to terms with that. It’s time to really engage with community but also understand myself and who I truly am. Whatever that looks like.

Please, wish me luck on my upcoming maths exam.

Stay kind

LMM x

Hello,

It has been sometime. So long that it took me a while to work out how to log back into here.

September next week. Most of this year has passed and it seems to be both the longest and shortest year. Many things have happened, so many things that words don’t seem to really work at the moment. Or pictures. Or anything really. Just sort of passing time with the new way of life, getting used to walking with masks on. People dying and being born and you can’t go see anyone.

Lockdown 2.0 is different this time around as I am still working and now I am studying full time. I can’t say it is the easiest time, but I also know how lucky I am. If I am successful with my studies I think I will write more about that, but no point right now. I will just say that I am using my brain in a very different way and I think it is a good thing.

Work is my haven. As I am sure it is for many people. It is the only place that I am actually creative at the moment. I had just started this job at the beginning of the year and it has been a wild ride for all.

I’ll write sooner next time.

Here’s me in my PPE for work – it gets super foggy in there.

COVID19 Diary entry #3 – school from home

Get up the usual time. Have breakfast. Get dressed and, ideally, I’d love us to go for a brief walk but I still haven’t managed to achieve this just yet.. Do your teeth and hair. Set up the computer for a meeting with the teacher and check the ipad for the days shedule. Wait out the the resistance and maybe I’ll do some boxing or take a deep breath in another room and then keep on waiting. I try and remain as calm as I can. Get some school work done, I get none of my own work done. Cook healthy meals, punctuate the day with snacks, meals, walks around the block. Reading time of books she wants to read and not the books she hates. More emotions and reassure and be calm. On the internet lots of people have very strong opinions on parenting, who are not in this situation, I want to punch them. But I don’t say that on twitter because, violence. She misses her teacher, she misses her friends, she doesn’t like video conferences. I miss my jobs. I miss Arthur Studios and nutting our ways to approach different art practices and the people. I miss the National Gallery of Victoria and teaching lessons like foreshortening where I wrapped black tape around my arms for an activity. We miss Jemima. I have got a very small amount of work done. We’ve somehow worked out how to navigate all the glitchy technology. I’ve realized some things about my kid that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Doesn’t mean that this doesn’t suck. I do watercolours and sketches and have an idea for a new project. Log back into the school schedule and realize that we didn’t get all the work done. I turn off the ipad and tell no one.

 

COVID19 Diary entry #2 – more pictures and words in isolation

I thought I’d try and write weekly, just to keep up some kind of practice during this time. A lot of people have said to me that I would get heaps of art made in this time. I’m sorry people, but I’ve got an almost ten year old to home school, among other things.

Look, I am making things, just not the things I should be making. But I believe all creativity speaks to, informs and folds back into itself. I also believe that sometimes there are bigger things to attend to, and this is one of those sometimes with bigger things. The days that I don’t want to, or rather, cannot reach out to a pencil, pen or brush – I don’t. The days that I do and all that comes out is rubbish, I accept. The days when I have the energy and the drive to make pictures, I just bloody well do it. Unless there’s lesson to assist the kid through, lunch to prepare and dinner to work out.
What’s for dinner? 

I don’t mind, most days. I mean, if I love you I feed you. I feel really happy making food that my family and I enjoy together. I do resent it sometimes and yesterday I cracked, I ordered in. Noodles. It cost me almost 50 bucks though and do you know how many food supplies I could have got with that money? How many books I could buy? I won’t do it again but I had just sold an artwork and it is ok to celebrate, sometimes. 50 bucks, for one meal. I know that businesses are suffering, everyone is. I am cautious, for the most part.

Books are the one thing that I tend to indulge in. Daughter and I have a reading ritual and it is pretty much one of the best things in life. Gosh we have read so much already. I slip between non fiction, fiction, crime fiction, short books and longer ones. I don’t want to read the internet, it is depressing and screens do not great things to my mind. Plus it is too tempting to look at rubbish that just makes me spiral. I don’t need to spiral right now.

Anyway I am between watercolouring and sketching in my visual diary. I planned to write a lot more today but I am going to tuck back into my current read – The Yield by Tara June Winch. I’m half way but I already recommend that you should read it too.

Here are some recents, I’ll write soon.

Be safe and be kind. Read a book.

x