Right from birth, Karen had never understood her creative, dreamy daughter, Matilda. A marine biologist, her entire world was classified into the natural order of things while Matilda didn’t fit into any category, and she couldn’t get a diagnosis!
“Matilda!” she screamed after stepping on a wet painting.
Battling long covid, now more than ever she questioned:“Why couldn’t I have a normal child?”
Karen fell into her chair, immediately leaping to her feet. The neck of Matilda’s violin had snapped like a dead man hanging from a noose, and Karen had become “The Scream”.
I was delighted to see this week’s prompt as I play the violin, although I stop well short of calling myself a violinist these days. Practice had dropped off before my lessons stopped during covid, but I’ve been picking it up a bit again lately and am practicing Peter Allen’s hit: “I Still Call Australia Home”. My mother used to play it on the piano and I’m wanting to play it with her and I really do love the words of the song.
The Scream by Edvard Munch
When I was growing up, Mum would occasionally lose patience with the eccentricity of the rest of us and ask: “Why can’t this family be normal?” Mum played things pretty much by the book but the rest of us didn’t even know where to find it. As it turned out, in my mid-20’s I was diagnosed with hydrocephalus and had a shunt inserted to sort things out. Being creative, I wasn’t exactly “fixed” but I was a new improved version of myself and at least I wasn’t falling over all the time.
It wouldn’t surprise me if my husband had told me not to leave my violin on a chair in case someone sat on it; and I’m probably lucky my violin’s still in one piece.
My goodness! Writing up these posts about our three week stint in Sydney seems to be taking longer than our holiday itself, a situation hardly helped by my knack of over-researching each and every step I take and even taking flight on the wings of numerous stories.
While some would consider delving into the past like this a waste of time or an escape from the present, for me these places really come to life when you find out more about them and their assorted characters. Indeed, even the multifarious fragments of stories I’ve been gathering are riveting and while they might not make a full story in themselves, I’m hoping to join them together into some sort of conglomerate or word collage. We’ll see.
New Zealand artist Francis Upritchard’s Here Comes Everybody
Meanwhile, heading back to the 19th January, I caught the ferry to Circular Quay and the train to St James Station and started walking towards the Art Gallery of New South Wales and it’s new development, Sydney Modern, which is located conveniently next door. Sydney Modern, which is its temporary name, only opened on the 3rd December, 2022. So, it had only been open for about six weeks and it was brand spanking new. Moreover, being our long school Summer holidays, quite a few of my friends had been going and photos were turning up on Facebook which motivated me to overlook the long walk to get there.
And I thought I had big feet…!
My thoughts about Sydney Modern are that it’s massive with vast amounts of space in between works and my feeling was they could’ve moved the paintings closer together and squeezed a few more works up on the wall and there would be more to see. Of course, this is coming from someone whose personal style is “cluttered eclectic” and I’m always trying to squeeze more books into overcrowded book shelves and don’t even talk to me about getting photos up on the walls at home. I have stacks upon stacks of picture frames and I’d probably be able to fill Sydney Modern myself given half the chance. So, I’m hardly one who would leave plenty of room or “pasture” around a painting on a wall. Being a public gallery, I might not want to jam it all in and I’m coming to appreciate the virtues of blank space. Yet, I did feel they could fit more onto the walls without it becoming less.
Darren Siwes: Jingli KwinMarlene Rubuntja: “Woman & Dilly Bags Hat 2019Grace Lillian Lee: Belonging 3Lin Onus: “Fruit Bats” 1991.
Before I developed these theories on gallery hanging space, I visited the Aboriginal gallery within Sydney Modern – the Yiribana Gallery, which actually takes pride of place in the new gallery instead of being shut away in the boondocks like it was in the old building. How could a country marginalise the art and culture of its Indigenous people? I don’t know and I guess it’s just part of a broader picture of things I don’t understand. My thinking is too simple. Anyway, I really enjoyed being able to immerse myself in Aboriginal art there and gain a greater appreciation, even if I have a long way to go. If you would like to explore the Yiribana Gallery online, click HERE
Just on this first visit, I didn’t really get a good feel for the new building and barely scratched the surface. However, if you’d like to read more about it, here’s a link: Opening of the Sydney Modern Project.
An awkward selfie of me with my lump of clay and contribution to the work.
Before we leave Sydney Modern, I’d just like to share one last thing which was more of an experiential or “participatory” artwork. This was Kimsooja’s Archive of Mind. Visitors to the gallery were given the opportunity to make their own albeit small contribution by taking a lump of clay, rolling it into a ball which was left on a large table becoming part of a a community of balls. We could choose from three different coloured clay and it was meant to be a bit of a relaxing, mindfulness type experience and there’s a brief explanation about what the work’s about:
“Each person has their space and time, but the work also creates a communal space. Working towards a certain state of mind creates a kind of cosmic landscape, a mind-galaxy
– Kimsooja, Korea 1957-
Personally, I found it rather exciting to go to the art gallery and make art or perhaps it’s more of a sculpture myself and to be a contributor and not just a watcher of art. I was also reminded of visiting the art gallery with our son when he was just shy of turning five. We were walking back home across The Domain after visiting the gallery and he found a great big Autumn leaf on the ground. Being a preschooler, he knew all about making leaf prints from Autumn leaves and wanted to take the leaf back to the art gallery so they could make one. He was so enthusiastic. I felt a bit too self-conscious to return to the art gallery with his leaf and explained that the gallery displayed art rather than making it there. Had we gone back, I’m sure the staff would’ve accepted his leaf with grace (unlike his mother) and there’s part of me now that wishes I’d turned back and had more belief in him.
Heading home, I decided to walk back to Circular Quay via the Botanic Gardens instead of walking back to St James Station. Transport wise, the art gallery is in a tricky spot and it’s a fair hike to a station. However, I planned to take it slowly, a bit at a time, and rest along the way and thought I’d be okay. I wasn’t and the walk back to Circular Quay was grueling. It felt like I’d been walking for an eternity and then I finally reached a map and it showed I was only a third of the way through and my legs were aching, exhausted, dead weights. However, I’d unwittingly committed myself to coming out the other side and everywhere I looked there were prohibitive flights of stairs. Tall trees towered overhead and there were moments where I was starting to feel trapped, and like I’d never make it out the other side. I also have a pretty poor sense of direction which didn’t help either and with such limited energy, I couldn’t afford to get lost and even take one more step more than required. Indeed, I was looking for the short cut out.
I guess this is what they call biting off more than you can chew. Moreover, the trouble is you can’t always spit it all out and make everything manageable again. Sometimes, you’re caught up in the flow and all you can do is keep breaking it down into smaller chunks, rest, recover and think about all those powerfully motivating words like resilience, persistence, perseverance, determination, never giving up. Another thing which also would’ve helped is planning ahead, and having some appreciation of not only getting to my destination, but also getting home. Sometimes you can push yourself too far, which is actually counter-productive and even dangerous. You don’t always need to be a hero, and some times being a survivor is good enough.
No escape from the Botanical Gardens for those who can’t get up the stairs lol.
Obviously, I made it out alive and didn’t get lost in the Botanical Gardens for eternity either. Yippee! Mind you, I can’t say that I really learned to be more cautious about pacing myself, but more of that to come.
Have you been to the Sydney and what did you think? Or, have you been on a similar adventure over in your neck of the woods? If so, I’d love to hear from you.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find a few sad Christmas trees around this year. After all, it’s been a tough year, and when you really think about it, Christmas trees are a mirror, or reflection, of ourselves and what’s going on both inside our heads, and in the world around us. A blank, green canvas, either real or fake, where we plaster bits of ourselves in the form of bright lights, jewelled ornaments, and perhaps even rustic relicts made when we were kids, along with contributions by our own kids and grandchildren, if we have them.
While our tree could well be described as “Rafferty’s Rules” or cluttered eclectic with loads of “character”, there are others who are clearly much more particular and their tree has to be perfect, and might, for example, have a very strict colour scheme. Of course, I admire these trees. Who wouldn’t?! However, I’m pretty sure these are the very same infuriating people who always coloured in between the lines when they were kids, and now throw out their own kids’ Christmas craft. It might not be perfect or ostentatious, but there’s nothing more personal and meaningful than anything handmade.
Anyway, I’m not here to talk about the best Christmas tree. Rather, I’m here to talk about the worst.
This wasn’t something I intentionally set out to do.
Rather, it was thrust upon me when I was out shopping, and I came across this poor Christmas tree parked outside Coles in front of the public toilets. While, as you can see, it did have a few decorations, there were no lights and it looks like it’s just been pulled straight out of storage, and stuck out on display without much spit and polish.
Geoff’s work Christmas tree was also a rather sorry sight.
I thought this tree had taken out the honours for the worst Christmas tree I’d seen in 2020. Then, Geoff showed me a picture of his work Christmas tree. It was a strong rival, especially when you know that they’re going through a difficult restructure and there are voluntary and not so voluntary redundancies, which is particularly hard at this time of year. Indeed, if this tree could speak, it could well sound like Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch: “You’d be a grouch, too, if you lived in a trash can!”
However, some are more particular than others, and have a rigid colour scheme. Personally, I’m pretty sure these are the very same people who always coloured-in between the lines, and didn’t scribble back at school. All the decorations have to be red, purple for example. On the other hand, our Christmas tree is “cluttered eclectic” like the house. We have always had a real tree. However, being able to go outside much at all last December due to the choking bush fire smoke, I was too late to get a real tree and was mighty grateful to pick up a fake one for $10.00 at the local charity shop. The tree looked bad last year, but it looks even worse this year. However, what with renovating the loungeroom and rumblings of Covid, we didn’t get the tree up until Christmas Eve, and it looks so bad, that it won’t be up long after New Year’s. Indeed, to be perfectly honest with you, our tree could use a huge, brown paper bag to stick over it’s head.
However, as much as our Christmas tree is visually challenged, as the saying goes, there’s always someone worse off, and I’m not sure whether to award the prize to Geoff’s work Christmas tree, or to a Christmas tree spotted outside the supermarket and the public toilets.
Meanwhile, there’s our tree.
Where’s a massive paper bag when you need one? This is our sorry Christmas tree in the raw.
Meanwhile, our Christmas tree is a case of people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Our family has always had a real tree. Over the years, my dad’s waxed so lyrically about the scent of the tree in his usually Basil Faulty style (he used to be a close ringer for actor John Cleese), that going fake felt like selling my soul to the devil.
However, the lead up to Christmas 2019 and 2020 hit us hard. Last year, we had the extreme Australian bushfires known colloquially as the “Black Summer”. Although we live well beyond the fire zone, the air here was choking with smoke and with my lung issues, I had to stay in the air-conditioned loungeroom or I couldn’t breathe. It was dire. There were some clear days, which finally allowed me to venture down to the local shops to look for a real tree. By then, however, they’d all sold out and we were excited and thankful to find a $20.00 fake one at the local charity shop. It wasn’t fantastic, and it certainly didn’t have that fresh pine scent which sends my Dad into a spin. However, at least it was green, and we could hang our precious ornaments from it.
Fast-forwarding to 2020, we had a different problem. We found ourselves hosting Christmas for the first time, and while it was only my Mum and Dad, I still wanted the house to be festive and somewhat “neat and tidy”. This was a very tall order, but it pushed us through all sorts of incredible levels of pain, sacrifice and frustration. After finally getting rid of the old piano in the loungeroom, what was meant to be replacing the dingy old carpet with a floating floor, ended up with guttering the room and a massive paint job. Also, with the piano gone, we’ve lost our convenient display and storage unit, leaving a lot of homeless flotsam and jetsam out on the loose. Moreover, while Geoff was working, I started what became a significant purge of books and the clearing of the back room to the point where we’ve moved tables and lounges around and it’s now got a couch and a teenager out there much of the time. The speed of this progress has been an absolute miracle!
All this work didn’t leave much time for Christmas trees, and the night before Christmas, the sad and sorry fake was brought down out of storage, and the teenager who’d once insisted on taking over decorating the Christmas tree (more precision and perfection required), now had to be coerced out of a “why bother” state of mind. I couldn’t blame her. In its naked state, the tree really could’ve used a bag over its head.
How’s this for a magnificent Christmas tree and Santa at our local bookshop, Book Bazaar!
Meanwhile, I came across a beautiful Christmas window display at our local bookshop, and wondered whether I should claim it as our own…
Covid 19 wasn’t on my list when I sat on Santa’s knee last Christmas.
No matter where you are, Christmas 2020 didn’t feature on your Santa list, but it’s been sobering, reflective and it’s got us thinking about what really matters and how we live our lives. What’s important, and what we can go without. So, in this sense as long as we have our nearest and dearest and community among and around us, the rest doesn’t really matter. Indeed, I might even appreciate mediocre attempts to create a bit of Christmas cheer and paint a smile on what initially appeared to be a couple of sad Christmas trees.
How is your Christmas shaping up? Ours is now done and dusted, but that’s another post.
Best wishes and a Merry and blessed Christmas,
Rowena
PS In hindsight, I should’ve covered our Christmas tree in toilet paper this year…a homage to 2020 and also to my youth.
Well, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve popped by for coffee. Of course, I’m full of excuses and, of course, they’re all very compelling. Top of the list, is the house situation. We’re having my parents over for Christmas lunch, which has somehow necessitated a major renovation of our house in just a few weeks. Fortunately, my husband Geoff has been working from home much of this year, or it wouldn’t have been possible. Not that he’s been renovating on the job. It’s just that he hasn’t been commuting around 2 hours each way to work, and is actually alive at the end of the day.
Geoff cutting up the old carpet. Good riddens, at last!
We’ve actually been trying to launch this reno project for the last six months. The floor boards have been waiting in the garage for us to find someway of magically caterpulting the old piano out the front door. In the end, it turned out to be a classic case of “divide and conquer”. We couldn’t give the piano away as a whole, but it ended up leaving the house in pieces. We’ve kept the keys and pedals, and our friend loaded up the rest on his trailer and disappeared into the sunset. Well, it hasn’t entirely disappeared and a friend did mention something about seeing piano parts outside his place. It does sound a bit suss.
Deconstruction in progress….
As any of you who have renovated will agree, one thing leads to another. Once we moved out the furniture and got the new floor down, it became pretty clear a wall needed painting and then the room. I wasn’t much chop on the painting front, and so I drifted out into what really should be known as the “dump room”, and steadily started making progress and soon I found myself swept up in a whirlwind. Or, more to the point, hundreds of books found themselves caught up in the whirlwind and swept out the door to the charity shop. I decided I’d disposed of enough books to send an entire bookshelf packing, enabling us to turn the dump room into a retreat and we’ll be moving a couch out there tomorrow.
While it’s very satisfying to be on such a roll, with three days to Christmas, it’s hard to know quite when to call it a day and start shoving everything back in, not pulling more of it out. Yet, I’m planning to drop another load off to the charity shop tomorrow and the car’s not full yet. What else can go? What else can I turf and release that bit more space? It’s a sort of mania once it gets hold of you, but while we need to get the house as clean and spacious as possible, we also need to cook and cooking requires ingredients. Yikes, how does a simple lunch become so complicated? I’m sure if Jesus was in charge, he’d just tell me to make them all Vegemite sandwiches and be done with it. Keep it simple, Stupid.
Anyway, what else has been going on?
Well, we were relaxed. Being part of Great Sydney, we watched Melbourne go into lock down and we were just a little superior about it. After all, we always knew Sydney was better than Melbourne. However, Melbourne’s got it’s revenge. Covid’s back with a vengeance with a cluster generated out of Avalon just down from Palm Beach. This general area known as “the Northern Beaches” is now in lock down and people will be doing Christmas at home, potentially alone. It’s pretty tough, especially when people do so much to prepare for the big day, and I know I’ll really be spewing if my parents can’t come up. Christmas is Christmas. It is more than sacred.
How is Christmas looking in your neck of the woods? Are you catching up with family or friends? Or, are you playing it safe, or possibly in lock down. It’s rough when Christmas gets cancelled. I think even the great Scrooge would complain about that.
Anyway, I’d like to wish you are yours a Merry and blessed Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.
Watching the setting sun perform its stunning grand finale, has become an irresistible addiction. I can’t help myself, and why not? Sunsets have an ethereal, transcendental beauty, which lifts us out of ourselves, the weight of our earthly beings, and into the ether.
Needless to say, the photographer in me just can’t leave all that colour up there hanging in the sky. Rather, I have to preserve it for eternity in 6 x 4. Take it home.
These boats are just bathing in golden light.
Of course, if you’re a sunset chaser like myself, you’d already appreciate that the sunset is a process, an unfolding drama. That’s especially true when you’re watching the sun set over the ocean or a body of water like we were last night. If you were an actor, you could compare it to a four act play. If you were a lepidopterist (collector of butterflies), you’d say it was like the most exquisite Ulysses butterfly emerging from it’s chrysalis and fluttering through the sunshine in all it’s dazzling splendour before its brief hours pass. Or, perhaps if you’re a gardener or admirer of St Expery’s Little Prince, you could compare it to an unfurling rose bud opening up into a magnificent flower. Again, it’s hour too is all too brief and over all too soon. It’s petals brown and fall to the ground, just like day becomes night.
A good sunset is all these gems in one.
Last night, Geoff and I drove over to Hardy’s Bay on the New South Wales Central Coast to check out the sunset there. Hardy’s Bay is about a 20 minute drive away, and to be perfectly honest, I can’t really tell you where it is in relation to anywhere else. I can only tell you how to get there from here, which probably isn’t going to help you at all, and you’ll end up like me when I first went to Hardy’s Bay a month ago…lost. So, I’ve been kind and here’s a link to a map. That way, you can get lost or found on your own merits.
The Jetty at Hardy’s Bay just before sun set.
Anyway, Hardy’s Bay has a really lovely feel to it. There are some fancy food shops across the road from a long, wooden jetty which I’m sure was put right there in front of the sunset for the benefit of sunset chasers, photographers and meditators alike. Oh, and perhaps a few folk who might actually make it out on the water. Indeed, a large yacht came in and offloaded some passengers. We were sitting with our legs dangling off the jetty at the time, and while I was a bit cheesed off about having my serenity disturbed by having to move, I wasn’t about to sacrifice my legs to make a point.
Yacht pulled into Hardy’s Bay at sunset and dropped off some merry makers.
Naturally, it was just amazing to be there watching the sunset and feeling myself merging in and almost becoming one with it. However, we were also there to take photos, and after photographing so many sunsets, and we’ve become just a tad fussy. We’re now looking for points of difference… the spectacular, the unusual and quirky. That said, although we’ve seen those more mediocre, sunburnt-orange skies and their corresponding clouds of pink marshmallow before, we’re still left awestruck. Still take the photos, but just might not print them up or post them on Facebook.
Pointing your lens right into the sun is a no-no, and it is intense but I love the fullness of sunshine in this one. It effervescence. A massive glowing orange shining in the sky right in the middle of Winter and in the midst of Covid’s doom, gloom and despair. It’s pure magic.
What I particularly noticed about this sunset was the range of colours both in the sky and also in the photos, and that these didn’t necessarily correspond with each other. Although I have a Nikon D3500 and it’s a lot more sensitive than a phone camera, there were instances where it had a mind of its own and the colours were much more intense.
What sensational colour! This was what the camera saw – quite different to the naked eye.
I’ve fiddled with the post-processing, but I didn’t make significant changes to how the lens perceived and captured what was there. As I took the photos, I fiddled a bit with the ratio of clouds to water to see how that panned out, and managed to get some beautiful colouring in the water which wasn’t visible to the naked eye. Of course, there are no complaints. The effect was quite beautiful.
A precious Rainbow Lorrikeet nibbling away in barren Illawarra Flame Tree.
In addition to the incredible cloud coverage which became a feature in itself, and the obvious structure of the jetty, there was also a row of Illawarra Flame Trees along the shore line. It’s Winter here, and the trees are void of leaves and nothing but a mass of tangled branches. Yet, I took a second glance at the bright patches of bright rainbow colours dotted here and there, and pick out a smattering of Rainbow Lorrikeets. How special is that, AND I managed to get a few half-decent shots. They’re so pretty and so Australian!
Don’t those striking branches of the Illawarra Flame Tree look extraordinary!!
However, as I said at the outset, while it’s so easy to be caught up and fall under a sunset’s magical spell, part of its intrinsic nature is its transience…its passing. Indeed, perhaps something so beautiful, so moving, so awe-inspiring could only be fleeting. That it it would somehow blow a fuse if it went on forever.
I don’t know.
Besides, nothing that is seen, lasts forever.
Only spirit.
Goodnight to the Sun
Anyway, I was just pleased to get outside after being cooped up. I’ve had a cold which rended me infectious and out of circulation. That’s cleared up now, just as cases of coronavirus spiral in Melbourne. Not to the levels experienced overseas, but I’m quite annoyed because we had the chance to get rid of this virus and it’s looking like we blew it. Well, in the case of Melbourne, they’ve tracked that outbreak to security guards “mingling” with guests in quarantine. How stupid is that? Some times, I wonder whether dumber & dumber are going to rule the world. Or, perhaps they already do. I’m still social distancing and just keeping out of circulation, but even I slipped up the other day and hugged a friend when she popped in the other day. I’ve been rigidly strict, and then I did that. Well, the one good thing about that is that I’m still human. My self, a very huggy, extroverted people-person, is still alive and well underneath this hermit’s skin.
Anyway, my apologies. I digress.
Do you have any great sunset shots you’d like to share? I’d love to see them. Just leave your links in the comments below.
Best wishes,
Rowena
PS Seeing these photos inspired a message for during this time of the coronavirus where we can’t travel…Make the most of where you are. I know it might look easy for me when I live on the coast and our Winter’s are pretty mild, but you can find a bit of magic everywhere you go and everywhere you are. You just need to open your eyes, your ears, your senses to the exquisite possibilities.
Nancy was an artist and a dreamer. After visiting Monet’s garden, she was determined to transform her slimy, mosquito-infested pond into a masterpiece. Harry Hemsworth, reputedly a cousin of the legendary Thor, was doing the work, and naturally Nancy had to supervise.
Finally, the first lily had opened, and her art class was coming in the morning. The cake was just out of the oven, when her grandson burst through the backdoor clutching her precious lily: “Nanna, I brought you a flower.”
Nancy was dying inside, but tried to smile. Hopefully, Harry could sticky tape it back on.
“Creativity is not just for artists. It’s for business
people looking for a new way to close a sale; it’s for
engineers trying to solve a problem; it’s for parents
who want their children to see the world in more than
one way.”
-Twyla Tharp
Welcome back to my series on Motivational Quotes for writers and creatives. When it came to choosing a word for C, it was a toss up between commitment and creativity and perhaps I should’ve gone for a different quotes from choreographer, Twyla Tharp:
“Creativity is a habit, and the best
creativity is the result of good work
habits.”
Twyla Tharp
Of course, commitment would be a good work habit.
Personally, I feel creativity also needs to involve some kind of spark, flair, magic. Of course, we all know that person who is as boring as bat shit and can suck the life out of even the most fascinating subject and conversely those creatives who take the most mundane and ordinary people and everyday processes, and zap them with some kind of magic wand which truly brings them to life. Produces gripping fascinating stories out of nothing. In this sense, creativity involves finding a kind of twist in the story. A perspective which is unique and breathes new life into something we’re head before…a little lateral thinking or honing in on an obscure detail or fact.
Acclaimed author, Elizabeth Gilbert also sees curiosity as an important stepping stone towards creativity. This is a lengthy quote but well worth reading in full:
“I am a big advocate for the pursuit of curiosity. You’ve maybe heard me talk about this before? We are constantly being told to pursue our passions in life, but there are times when passion is a TALL ORDER, and really hard to reach. In seasons of confusion, of loss, of boredom, of insecurity, of distraction, the idea of “passion” can feel completely inaccessible and impossible. In such times, you are lucky to be able to get your laundry done (that sometimes feels as high as you can aim) and when someone tells you to follow your passion, you want to give them the middle finger. (Go ahead and do it, by the way. But wait till their back is turned, out of civility.)
But curiosity, I have found, is always within reach.
Passion is a tower of flame, but curiosity is a tiny tap on the shoulder — a little whisper in the ear that says, “Hey, that’s kind of interesting…”
Passion is rare; curiosity is everyday.
Curiosity is therefore a lot easier to reach at at times than full-on passion — and the stakes are lower, easier to manage.
The trick is to just follow your small moments of curiosity. It doesn’t take a massive effort. Just turn your head an inch. Pause for a instant. Respond to what has caught your attention. Look into it a bit. Is there something there for you? A piece of information?
For me, a lifetime devoted to creativity is nothing but a scavenger hunt — where each successive clue is another tiny little hit of curiosity. Pick each one up, unfold it, see where it leads you next.
Small steps.
Keep doing that, and I promise you: The curiosity will eventually lead you to the passion.
And that’ll be the end of boredom.”
What are your thoughts on creativity? Is it something which comes easily to you? Or, more of a struggle? If you are taking part in the challenge, please leave a link to your posts belong.
Me on the campaign trail outside the Holme Building in 1990.
This week we’ve entering in a time tunnel and heading back to 1990 when I was running for election to edit Sydney University’s student newspaper: Honi Soit. Our team was called the Antonymns and the ant as our logo. Indeed, our intrepid leader was a massive 6ft black papier mache ant, which was hoisted up on top of a car and driven around campus. In retrospect, although we didn’t win, our campaign was actually pretty good and devising slogans, posters, t-shirts, stickers, cars mascots and then trying to convince the masses to vote for us was a massive undertaking. While some more astute politicians ingratiate themselves with key interest groups and hope the mob of sheep follow the leader, I went round speaking personally to masses of students. This included interviewing students about the New Age Sensitive Guy or SNAG around campus and producing my findings in the university magazine: The Union Recorder.
As you can see, Graffiti Tunnel is a brutal, temporal place a lot like building a sandcastle on the beach, which is washed away before you’ve even stuck a feather in the top. I gather the Newshounds were either short or didn’t bring a ladder and that black ant does seem to be peering down and poking out it’s tongue at its miraculous survival.
Although election day probably should’ve been the pinnacle of our campaign, for me it was actually painting the tunnel. A friend of mine picked me up in his Dad’s station wagon and we must’ve got in there about 4.00-5.00am. It was pitch black, Winter and freezing. That’s what I remember…the cold. Yet, strangely I have absolutely no memory of any safety concerns. Seriously, who was going to knock a pair of mad students over the head during the middle of the night and run off with their tin of brown paint? Well, you can’t be too careful because our rivals, the Newshounds, had started sticking their posters up at the other end of the tunnel and they certainly were out to get us (and the feeling was mutual. The campaign had become rather heated.)
Anyway, getting back to our mission, we’d decided to turn Graffiti Tunnel into an ant tunnel. The plan was to paint the tunnel brown for that authentic look and then we stenciled Antonymns and blank ants over the top. In hindsight, I’d probably go for something more stylised using lurid colours to make more of a shocking impact. However, you live and learn.
Anyway, as I mentioned, while we were risking frost bite painting down one end of the tunnel, our rivals the Newshounds were sticking posters up at the other end of the tunnel and sometime long before dark, we met up. I don’t think the Newshounds thought too highly of the poo brown paint and the Antonyms really weren’t too sure that their intensely bright orange chalk quite conformed to election guidelines. From memory, their compliance with budget restrictions also seemed questionable. Minor things like this can flare up like a gangrenous wound during an election campaign and I lost a few friends during the course of this campaign, which I’ve regretted.
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Anyway, as you may be aware, I revisited Sydney University last week and thoroughly inspected and analyzed my old haunts through the lens. This included returning to Graffiti Tunnel and feeling quite a sense of accomplishment that I’d actually painted that thing in my youth. That I was really living life to the fullest and seizing the day.
However, while I was photographing Graffiti Tunnel this time, I was surprised to find many doors inside. As I photographed them for Thursday Doors, it never crossed my mind that they might actually lead somewhere. That there could indeed be a secret world behind those doors. I’d only ever seen it as a tunnel and never delved any further. However, that all changed on this visit and some of the doors were open, revealing corridors, labs and lecture rooms. It all felt rather macabre.
I guess places are very much like people. You can think you know someone rather well but then you see them in a different light and figuratively speaking a door either opens or closes and they’re not who you thought they were.
By the way, there’s a very strong part of me which longs to return to Graffiti Tunnel and paint it again. Update it all. I’d like to paint something which really gets the students thinking about what they’re doing. Where they’re going and finding more connection and a more optimistic outlook. I have a few ideas but I fully intend to express them in paint before I confess. Intentions don’t count. This will be my Nike moment…Just do it!
This has been another contribution to Thursday Doors hosted by Norm 2.0. Why don’t you come and join us and share a few of your favourite doors. It’s a lot of fun and helps you see parts of the world you’ll never get to visit.
“The eye, the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding can most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of Nature; and the ear is second.”
Leonardo da Vinci
After spending April cavorting round the world with a ramshackle gang of dead artists, yesterday I was stealing the eyes out of the living. Well, not exactly the living artists themselves, but rather their portraits. Or, to be exact the portraits they’d submitted for the Archibald Portrait Competition, Australia’s Premier Portrait Prize.
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I’m not sure exactly what drew me towards zooming in and photographing the eyes on a number of portraits. However, as a person who wears glasses and is considered “high myopic”, I am perhaps more conscious of sight. As a creative, I’m also aware of this intangible thing called vision, which seems to involve seeing the unseen. Or, even having magical x-ray eyes, where you can somehow perceive the hidden bones of things. As a photographer, I also became aware that I see so much better through my camera lens, than my own eyes. That I’m seeing with a conscious gaze, instead of being on auto-pilot.It makes such a huge difference to my powers of observation. Have you found that?
“Now do you not see that the eye embraces the beauty of the whole world? It counsels and corrects all the arts of mankind… it is the prince of mathematics, and the sciences founded on it are absolutely certain. It has measured the distances and sizes of the stars it has discovered the elements and their location… it has given birth to architecture and to perspective and to the divine art of painting.”
Leonardo da Vinci
Recently, my awareness of sight and the eye was expanded further, while researching Leonardo Da Vinci. Once again, I was reminded of the special and very intensely detailed way he saw, analyzed and even dissected the minutae around him. Indeed, fueled by his insatiable curiosity, he also studied and dissected the eye itself. Clearly, you don’t need to be Einstein to figure out that Leonardo Da Vinci was an inspirational role model. Someone we should at least consider worthy of emulation, or in my case, it would be thrilling just to touch the hem of his garment.
However, what particularly concerns me is the impact that screens are having on our vision in the contemporary world. Eye contact is being superseded by people staring deep into their screens, as though they contained the meaning of life. So often, I see people who can’t get through a conversation without checking their messages. Indeed, they react with all the excitement of Pavlov’s dog when their phone beeps, rings or tap dances (if they have a smart phone), and place any face-to-face interaction on hold while they jump for the phone. There are people walking their dogs along the beach while on their phone. People walking through the park glued to their phones sending text messages. Cafes full of people sitting alone nattering away with their fingers, instead of doing what we always loved to do…people watching. Or, heaven forbid, actually having coffee with a friend.
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision”
Helen Keller
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What is the meaning of this loss of eye contact? What are the ramifications for our communities when our eyes are glued to our screens, instead of observing and even absorbing the world around us through our own eyes? Is humanity, and not just those with a diagnosis, losing our people skills? Will we soon reach the point where robots could replace humans, not only because the technology’s there, but also because our quintessential humanity has been switched off?
I write these warnings as though I’m immune from the screen. Yet, I’m frantically typing these words into a screen myself. However, it is a conversation I’ve had in person many times, which might’ve first started five years ago when we were my grandfather’s home town of Hahndorf, in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills. It’s a very picturesque, historic village with original German Fachwerk cottages dating back to the 1850s or so. Of course, locals live there who are caught up in the normal day to day and aren’t going to gawk at the historic features everyday like someone whose just seen them for the first time. However, I think it was while we were sitting in a cafe in Hahndorf, that I heard my very first warning about mobile phones replacing human interaction. Indeed, the proprietor pointed out this Mum who was talking on her phone while out walking with her child in the pram. From an older generation, she couldn’t understand why she wasn’t talking to her child instead.
I see oceans and wondrous lands looking in these incredible eyes.
Of course, mother’s are an easy target. I’m one myself, and I can appreciate the serious difficulty of trying to get any time to yourself. Moreover, I’ve also know the difficulties of trying to run a business and work from home while juggling a baby and seemingly dropping each and every ball. Yet, as much as we might need to make a dollar and have some intellectual and social stimulation, perhaps we could also pay more attention to where we are, even if it’s purely from a safety point of view.
Anyway, I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you, that the screen invasion isn’t just about mothers. It’s everywhere.
Fortunately, I’m not dependent on my mobile phone for work, and am one of those non-conformists who can be difficult to reach. Moreover, somewhere along the way, the phone went from being a source of connection, to becoming an irritation. I’ve rushed to the phone too many times, only to be greeted by a telemarketer. Or, it’s just getting to the climax of a show or I’m in the flow writing, and the phone rings. Indeed, it’s becoming increasingly rare that my phone rings and I’m excited when I answered it. Of course, for me, actually getting to the phone can be quite difficult, as can talking with my lung issues. So, I’ve reached a bit of a stand off with the phone. “Leave me alone”, and now we’re getting along just fine.
That said, I do have a mobile phone and when I haven’t left it at home, it’s very helpful for touching base with the family when we’re out. We can each go our own way and meet up again quite easily and there’s always that backstop. On any family outing, there’s usually somebody who wanders off.
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Anyway, getting back to the Archibald Exhibition, my interest in photographing the eyes of paintings was piqued a few weeks ago on my last visit to the Art Gallery of NSW. I zoomed into one of Sidney Nolan’s iconic Ned Kelly portraits, and photographed Ned Kelly’s almost googly eyes inside his helmet. They were rather freaky to be honest. My son had posed next to this painting as a five year old, and instinctively mimicked Ned’s gaze and it made for a funny portrait of our then “Little Man”. I might be his Mum, but he was just gorgeous, especially when he wasn’t walking into ancient statues, threatening to decapitate them.
“A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he’s a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there’s great value in that.”
Edward de Bono
Yesterday, I just found myself drawn into the eyes of many of the portraits, and zooming in and photographing just the eyes seemed like a natural next step. Indeed, it’s actually inspiring me to try to draw eyes myself. Seeing them all zoomed in like that, has actually made it easier to see how i could be done.
I don’t know whether anyone else has gone through a gallery picking the eyes out of the paintings before. However, that’s where I finished up yesterday and I’d like to go back and take it further.
How do artists recreate the eyes of their subject, especially when the eyes are the window to the soul and should be reflecting more than the reflection of a photographer’s flash?
Well, I have no idea. I can’t even pull of my doodle of a cube and get the perspective right. Indeed, after seeing the Young Archibald collection, I thought I’d better give up an an amateur doodler as well. “I can’t draw. I can’t paint. I’m hopeless.”
Yet, I’m not.
Art is intimidating, and doubt that artists even feel they’re good enough.
That they’ve arrived.
Anyway, I found myself drawn into the amazing eyes of so many portraits.
So, after viewing the Archibald finalists, I wandered through the older portraits looking for eyes to photograph there, and didn’t find much to inspire. Many of the subjects weren’t looking out at the viewer and were turning away. Few, if any, of these eyes captured me in quite the same way as the modern portraits. Indeed, I know they didn’t. I pondered that a little, and would’ve liked to speak with someone more knowledgeable about art and get their opinion. It’s not that I don’t value my own opinion and observations, but there are no embellished gold frames around my opinion, only my glasses.
I guess when it comes to appreciating your sight and not just taking everything around you for granted, that losing your sight would add an intensity, an urgency that most of us lack. The same could be said for myself. I’m already living on borrowed time, and I know what it means to carpe diem seize the day, and not let it fly off into the ether…get lost into the screen of a mobile phone.
Best wishes,
Rowena
Ned Kelly’s eyes clearly popped out. However, he looks like he could be watching TV.
PS For those of you who might be somewhat artistically inclined, I found it interesting cropping the eyes out of the faces. While I’d zoomed into quite a few faces while I was at the exhibition, there were others which I cropped tonight at home and I was having to decided whether to include or exclude noses with each set of eyes. The whole process did seem rather strange, as is my current desire to try to draw/paint the eye, when the eye kind of needs a face to nestle into.
That brings me to another question. In preparing yourself to tackle something like the Archibald and pull off a portrait which gets hung, do you practice drawing all the bits of the anatomy on their own first and then try to amalgamate it all as a whole. Or, do you just go for it and hope to pull of something vaguely human which might, if you’re lucky, capture the essence of the person?
What I can tell you, is that I could really feel myself being drawn into the eyes of some of these portraits and that they truly were leading me beyond the face, the canvas and a journey deeper into their soul, or goodness knows what or even during a bit of a U-turn and heading inward. After all, there’s some sort of energy or connection bouncing back between the artist, the subject, the canvas and the viewer, although I have no idea how you’d plot that out diagrammatically, or even if you could.
I’ll be coming back tomorrow to add references to all the artworks and the artists tomorrow. It will be quite a job in itself.
Welcome to my series of Letters to a Dead Artists, which I’ve put together for the 2018 Blogging A-Z April Challenge. For the past month, I’ve been steadily moving through the alphabet and after writing to Leonardo Da Vinci yesterday, today I’ll be writing to Andrew Newell Wyeth, an American realist painter.The music I have chosen to accompany Andrew Wyeth is Celtic Woman singing You Raise Me Up
Wyeth was born on July 12, 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and passed away at the age of 91 on January 16, 2009…a very long way from Sydney, Australia.
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”
Andrew Newell Wyeth
Prior to setting out on this challenge, I had never heard of Andrew Newell Wyeth, and to be perfectly honest, I only found out about him on a Google search trying to fill up the vacant letters. It’s a problem I face every year, where I’m forced to leave something out because certain letters are bombarded with choice, and I’m left desperately scrambling to find anything for others. However, my criterion for choosing every single one of these artists, whether I knew them before, or whether they popped up in the Great Google Lucky Dip, was that I needed to experience some kind of emotional, psychological and even spiritual connection. It couldn’t just be a case of: “She’ll be right mate”, or any artist will do.
As it turned out, Andrew Newell Wyeth’s iconic painting Christina’s World (1948), grabbed me by the throat and almost stopped me dead. This artist I had never ever heard of before, had never met, and lived on the other side of the world, had miraculously captured my suppressed, desperate, clawing frustration of battling against the muscle weakness brought on by dermatomyositis.
“To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me. If I have an emotion, before I die, that’s deeper than any emotion that I’ve ever had, then I will paint a more powerful picture that will have nothing to do with just technique, but will go beyond it.”
Andrew Wyeth
When I first saw the house on top of the hill, and Christina groping her way up through the grass, I could feel her struggle in my own body. Yet, it didn’t occur to me straight away that Christina also had some form of muscle loss. Rather, I thought the painting simply portrayed human struggle, and that clawing desperation to make it up the top of the hill. Indeed, I felt a sort of chill or goose bumps, as soon as I saw the painting. There was that instant recognition of myself, and of course, it helped that I also have long dark hair and there could well have been quite a likeness once upon a time. Of course, it helps that he painted her with her back to the world and we can’t see her face.
Andrew Wyeth, Christina Olden 1947
Indeed, seeing Christina’s World, I was swept into a horrific vortex of memory, reliving when I simply tripped over a broom at home. Much to my surprise, I was literally swept into a blood-chilling nightmare, when I couldn’t get myself up again.
How the camera lies. An everyday photo of Mum and kids, except I was in Mt Wilga Rehbilitation Hospital and could barely walk or get myself up off the ground. That was just over ten years ago.
There I was a 36 year old Mum home alone with my two young kids. Mister was about three and a half and at an age where, like a scene out of Dead Poet’s Society, he’d climb up onto our back shed to get a better look at the “mountains”. He was somewhere when I fell, which usually meant mischief, danger or a combination of the two. Meanwhile, Miss was only 16 months old, and Mummy’s little shadow. However, that also meant that when I fell, I knocked her over on the way down. She was crying and this was no ordinary cry either but had that same chilling sensation of fingernails scraping down a chalkboard, which travels right under your skin. Of course, I’d normally pick her straight up. Comfort her. Kiss it better. However, I was weighed down like a sack of lead potatoes, and couldn’t move at all to reach her and just had her cry in my ear.
Instead, there I was lying face down on the tiles and couldn’t get up. Moreover, at this point of time, I didn’t have a name for the horrific monster which had invaded my body and my bloodstream. Not having a diagnosis, in a way, meant that it didn’t exist and that I was just “tired”. It was just part of being a Mum with very young kids… having a baby. Sleep deprivation and utter exhaustion are par for the course, aren’t they? However, this was different…something nasty, sinister, a monster. While I hurt my knee in the fall, why couldn’t I get up? For somebody with normal mobility, this was so surreal and strange. Quite unlike the sort of panic that comes, when you can’t feel your legs. As far as I was concerned, there was no reason I couldn’t get up. I was just tired, rundown although there was something funny going on with my blood tests. Eventually, I was able to lift myself onto my bottom and I shuffled into the kitchen. For once, the cordless phone was there when I needed it and I rang my husband who was at work a two hour train trip away. Clearly, he couldn’t just pop home and magically save the day. Meanwhile, my call filled him with a sense of dread, absolute powerlessness and horror. Clearly I was very unwell and needed immediate help, and he couldn’t do a thing. In fact, I don’t think either of us even considered calling an ambulance. That was for emergencies and I’d just simply fallen over…
All he could suggest was levering myself up with a chair and that worked. It took a further six weeks for me to finally receive a diagnosis and then I was in a combination of hospital and rehab for about 8 weeks.
“There’s a quote from Hamlet that is my guide… He tells the players not to exaggerate but to hold a mirror up to nature. Don’t overdo it, don’t underdo it. Do it just on the line.”
Andrew Wyeth
So, while it was sensational to find Christina’s World and to see my struggles depicted and represented on canvas, there was also an enormous sense of sadness. You see, like Christina, despite pushing myself beyond breaking point so many, many times, I still haven’t made it to the top of the hill. I haven’t made it home. Not only am I adrift, but there’s also that intense frustration better known as angst where I can see where I want to go. Where I’m meant to be. Yet, I’m constantly clawing through the mud and getting nowhere.
“I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future-the timelessness of the rocks and the hills-all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape-the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”
Andrew Wyeth
Yet, ironically there is also great strength in persevering through weakness. Indeed, there’s that old adage: “what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger”. That’s so true and these days they’ve even called this fighting comeback…resilience. Indeed, resilience is now considered one of the key ingredients for getting through life. So, for those of us who received more than their allocated glass and a half, we must be powering all the way to the moon. Well, if only we could make up that darn hill.
By the way, after spilling my guts about how Christina’s World touched me so personally, I had to laugh as these prophetic words of Andrew Wyeth’s:
“I get letters from people about my work. The thing that pleases me most is that my work touches their feelings. In fact, they don’t talk about the paintings. They end up telling me the story of their life or how their father died.”
Andrew Wyeth
I guess it’s not surprising that Wyatt knew and had experience intensive suffering and loss himself. In 1945, Wyeth’s father and his three-year-old nephew were killed near their home, when his car stalled on railroad tracks and was struck by a train. Wyeth has often referred to his father’s death as a formative emotional event in his artistic career. Shortly following the tragedy, Wyeth’s art consolidated into his mature and enduring style, characterized by a subdued colour palette, highly realistic renderings, and the depiction of emotionally charged symbolic objects[1].
Christina’s World was painted a year after his father’s death.
Although this introduction is very rushed and feeling incomplete and inadequate, I’m going to get moving and start writing my letter to Andrew Wyeth.
A Letter to Andrew Wyeth
Dear Andrew,
For the last month, I’ve been trying on the shoes of so many artists and tried to see the world through their eyes, before I take a huge, audacious step and actually write them a letter. As much as it’s been a lot of fun in a heavy research searching for the meaning of life kind of way, it’s also been very challenging, especially as it seems that almost every artist without exception, has experience incredible suffering. I don’t know whether it’s this understanding and empathy with suffering, which has given their paintings added depth and emotional insight, but there’s definitely that common thread.
Do you think artists suffer more than others, and their grief inspires their art? Or, does their art become more of an antidote, a way of releasing the anguish trapped inside?
I have asked God myself why there’s so much suffering, especially at one point where I felt he’d channelled centuries of wrath in my direction and afflicted me with the dermatomyositis. However, ever faithful, he replied and said: “if it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for you.” I didn’t challenge him on that front again. He’d made his point.
Anyway, I’d like to thank you for giving us Christina’s World. While everybody who sees the painting could well have their own interpretation, her story obviously has a very personal connection for me. Trying to get up hills is particularly hard for me these days. Not so much due to the muscle weakness but due to the associated problems I have with my lungs, which are currently not much over 50% capacity. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, but you seem like the sort of people I could simply talk to. That you care. That no one’s experiences or struggles are too small or insignificant. Each of us matters.
Before I head off, I’ve enclosed some leftover egg yolks, which I thought you could use to make up your tempura paint. I made a pavlova yesterday and I hate wasting the left over yolks. By the way, I’ve attached my recipe for Betsy. I understand she made a lot of meringues in her time.
Best wishes,
Rowena
Andrew Wyeth: Wind From the Sea.
A Letter From Andrew Wyeth
Dear Rowena,
Thank you so much for your letter and the egg yolks. I’ve already started on a painting. This one depicts Andy Warhol’s reaction when I received your letter and he missed out. Dad, ever out to compete and do things bigger, bolder, brighter has splashed oils all over the biggest canvas in stock. Mine is more subdued, but you’ll have to wait.
I was rather taken aback to read that you have lung troubles, my friend. You see, I had lung troubles from a very young age and even had one of my lungs removed and the other one wasn’t that good either. So, I was living on less than half a tank never expecting to grow up, make it through middle age and it was the most confusing things after being so terribly ill, to actually see most of my friends pass away before me like Autumn leaves.
So, my friend, there is hope for you yet.
Sorry, I forgot to thank you for the Pavlova recipe. Betsy loved it and everyone’s grateful for a change to meringues!
Best wishes,
Andrew.
By the way, I highly recommend Dan Schneider’s Video interview with three experts on Andrew Wyeth:
Beyond the Flow 