Category Archives: Painting

I turned 30 yesterday. 
30.   A day in the Dandenongs with
Riscy was a lovely way to mark the occasion 🙂

Today I printed.  I
used one of my old linocuts and experimented with some lumiere fabric paint it was a little bit hard to get a nice even coverage with my roller, so then I
tried out acrylic paints with textile medium which I think printed better,
although it did gunk up my lino after a while. 

I think I’ll use the fabrics to make some new cushions for
our living room

Lately I have been fortunate to spend some time with two
fabulous artists. 

I met up with Linden Langdon when I was in Hobart last week.  We have become acquainted through our blogs
and occasional emails.  We discussed
blogs, art and the environment over a coffee in the refurbished IXL buildings
on the docks.

Linden is currently doing her
masters in art (printmaking) at the University
of Tasmania art school
which is also housed in a refurbished building on the same dock.

Yesterday Riscy and I had morning tea with Ilse van Garderen
at her beautiful home in the Dandenongs. 
She is borrowing the drawing of hers I bought last year.  It will be included in an
exhibition she is having at Bird’s Gallery in Kew, Melbourne – 16 March to 1 April. 

Ilse has an exciting year ahead, with 3 solo exhibitions as
well as renovating her new home in Turkey!!

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How cool is this, I’ve been playing around with a Kaleidoscope attachment for photoshop. These are some from the Lincut I showed yesterday:

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I’m giving Linocut another red hot go. One of my dorm-mates from Geelong (Chris from Queensland) gave me a few tips, mainly that I should use a texta to colour in the negative areas of my design so I know what to cut away (that freemotion linocutting caper just didn’t do it for me, and as much as I hate to plan things out, I REALLY need to with linocut).

I need to work on the ‘inking up’ concept, but I don’t think it turned out too badly.

Have you ever looked at a portrait of Queen Elizabeth (the first) and lusted after her dress, or longed to slip on a ruff for just a day? Well, maybe I’m a little loony. But I sure do love those costumes and fabrics Mmmm Mmmmm Though I’m glad I don’t have to entertain those corsets LOL

Anyway, I was admiring this portrait (in and ad) yesterday, when I decided I could have a little bit of the fun myself by stealing a bit of her skirt:

Now, as a surefire way of killing a project, I’ll tell you about the germ of an idea I had whilst cutting away. Perhaps I could do a little series of linocuts featuring bits of fabric. But only the good stuff (and stuff with big motifs LOL, my linocutting skills aren’t that great). Anyway, now I’ve let it out of the bag, it is sure to be the last you hear of it! 🙂

And, just to keep the magic going, here is a sunrise photo I took in Geelong (Chris of Linocut fame is just visible to the right, she is wearing the lovely blue felt hat she made herself!)

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Edited to add some more info on Lady Reynell:

Excerpt from the article “Robert Peake & Scipione Pulzone in Adelaide” by: Angus Trumble at Antiques & Are E-zine

“Mark Weiss, who has published the painting in his recent Rex Irwin catalogue, Tudor and Stuart Portraits, 1530-1660, London & Sydney 1997, states that: ‘Frances, who was the daughter of John Aylworth of Polstow in Devon, married Thomas Reynell (1555-1621) in about 1580 and by him had nine children, three of whom were sons…The first was born in 1581. The Reynells, a West Country family of great antiquity, were first recorded in the 12th century during the reigns of Henry II and Richard I as having custody of the castles of Exeter and Launceston. Thomas Reynell, whose brother Sir Carew was cup-bearer to Queen Elizabeth, was knighted in 1603, following the Coronation of King James I [and VI of Scotland].'”

Now, I grew up in Tasmania where English place names are numerous, but I never knew that Exeter and Launceston were named after castles. Launceston is the second largest city in Tassy and Exeter is a ‘blink and miss it’ town in the same region. We get most annoyed when mainlanders refer to Launceston as Lawn-ceston, it is pronounced lon-ceston. Anybody know how they say it in England? Continue reading →

Today has been filled with wonderful creativity, check out what is drying on my fridge right now:

In addition to the linocut, I did heaps of painting. This is another version of the Bird and The Tree.

I also finished the orange stripy scarf (no pics) and started writing a romance novel LOL Seriously, I’ve written about 300words. Normally my writing sends even me to sleep, but I’m really enjoying this one so far. I’ve probably attempted 5 novels since the age of 15, and this is the most I’ve ever written on any of them! 🙂

I also washed a heap of fabric for a dyeing session tommorow.

Tori Amos in concert was pretty cool, very intense. I’m not taken with her new album, The Beekeeper and she (of course) played a lot from it, but she mixed it up with some of her older stuff which was great. She had an organ and a grand piano facing each other and even played them both at the same time which made for a very physical, gymnastic performance.

My favourite album of hers is Boys for Pele, I listened to it today just to reaffirm that I LOVE TORI :-), It’s been a long relationship, but I’m still committed (as long as I don’t have to listen to The Beekeeper too often). Continue reading →

I was feeling pretty bad about obliterating the beautiful leaves on my Linocut extravaganza so I made a tracing of them in photoshop, printed it out then fingerpainted it.

I picked up some very cheap watercolour paints on a whim today, and already I have put them to use 🙂 They do have a funny smell though and I hope they aren’t poisonous, as I’m pretty sure I have managed to eat some (urggg!!).

Tonight I must make a bag. A wonderful, seductive, gotta have me bag that will sell for big bucks at the annual Shave for a Cure (for cancer) auction at my workplace.

I saw an exhibition of photograms by Susan Purdy on the weekend at the Cowwarr Art Space. It’s the second time I’ve seen these works and I really love them.

I’m sick of feeling dissapointed everytime I see work that I love and can’t buy so I’m thinking about setting up my own little fund for buying art. If I put aside $30 per week, I’d have around $1500 per year to spend on art. How cool would that be?

Also check out Clive Murray-White who lives in Cowwarr and runs the Cowwarr Art Space with his partner Carolyn. Clive does wonderful marble sculptures. When I met Clive and Carolyn at their gallery a few weeks ago I was blown away by their friendliness, Clive showed me through his workshop and it was great to get a feeling for the logisitics of dealing with those huge pieces of marble. I’d need to put away a good deal more than $30/week get one of his big heads.

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Righto. I’ve probably gone overboard, I’ve certainly lost the effect of the beautiful leaves… but I couldn’t just leave them like that since this was intended to be a linocut learning exercise.

As you can see I have toyed with the idea of putting a basketweave pattern in next… I don’t think it will work though.

I was at a dinner party on Saturday night with all sorts of arty types and one of them gave me some hints for dealing with the ‘busyness’ of the piece…. take prints then cut more away, print, cut, print cut etc. I’m concious that I don’t have a press so I may not be able to handle big white areas too well. But this is a learning piece, so I’ll give it a go anyway.

Since I got a bit stuck with the linocut I retreated to my spinning wheel where I spun some frustrating merino (but oh so soft) and did some more cutting on a reverse applique piece I’m making (and I’m not too happy with it)

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Last night I Linocut ’til I couldn’t see straight. This is my progress so far

I’m at the stage now where I need to make decisions about the structure of the piece. I started out just doodling around the edges until the big leaf thingys happened. Now I’m starting to feel precious about it and I’m worried about stuffing it up… a sure way to stiffle my creativity.

I have also hit upon a brilliant idea (ahem!):

We had lots of things planned today; Car shopping, attending the Boolarra Folk Festival then going to an opening at the Cowarr artspace tonight. But it’s raining in a seductive kind of way, its 10:30am and Riscy is still asleep, I’ve got Cowboy Junkies playing on the Ipod…. maybe we’ll just stay home 🙂 Continue reading →

It was my 28th birthday yesterday. I’m now a hop, skip and a jump from 30, my main panic is that it is getting scarily close to the age I was sort of thinking about having children and the maternal urge seems further away than ever!

We spent last evening thus: Chris came home with flowers (lilies which haven’t opened yet) and a card (a naughty, but funny one), we had a very very long walk with the dog. A lovely steak followed with beans, carrots and potatoes (yay for meat and 3 veg) and my second piece of yummy carrot cake for dessert.

We then went to see a play called Odyssey, I really had to sell this one to Riscy as he preferred the movies… but I am SOOO glad we went, it was wonderful wonderful wonderful. A very personal show with one actor interweaving Homer’s Odyssey and the story of his parents’ migration from Greece to Australia.

My present arrived in the mail today:

I rang up the supplier and we are rectifying the problem, but I have told them to charge me for one of the big pieces so I can experiment this weekend. 🙂 I’ve already cut into it hehehe

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