Christmas Day

The altar after the service in Thorpdale.

Atekumbo begins

This the beginning of Atekumbo. It's on rabbit skin glue sized box board with a bit of whiting, what I had around, in a second coat of sizing. I've transferred a drawing onto the surface and plan to pencil in some tone. In the new year? I like the look of it now. What will I make of it when put paint on it? 

Tullycavan

Today I drove to Tullycavan to work. It was a lovely day for work, not too hot. I finally got the boundary fence, that had been broken by a falling tree, back together. It is a sort of temporary job though because the tree is too big for me to cut up, so the fence dodges under a branch, eventually the tree will fall apart and affect the fence again. I enjoyed the work though, riffling through my mind to work out the best way to approach the fixing. After the satisfaction of the work I enjoyed the drive home along the Grand Ridge road to Mirboo North then to Thorpdale and Trafalgar. The hills look lovely in the early summer green. I drove home at sedate pace with the window down and a Neil Young playing enjoying the curving left and right.

It's Advent

It's Advent and pretty busy with the celebrations of the end of the year for organisations and community carols. These have gone well, but supporting Athena in the background wears me out. In Thorpdale the music was provided by a family band. They were very good. They are leaving the district and going back to Melbourne for their children's education. Leavings and partings add complexity to life with the change and adaptation. I suppose the trick is to grow through the process. Coming up are the Christmas services.

Painting

Shapes and colours dancing. Trying to live. Where will they go? What will be their stasis?

With Aderine I keep looking and well I need to keep looking.

Cleaning up palettes after a kids program

Aderine, drawings & anonymous

Aderine close to stasis now.

Adeyn begins its journey

4 drawings

Looking into the Valley

 From Trafalgar South looking down onto Trafalgar with Baw Baw enshrouded in cloud in the distance.

On Saturday I had to go for a drive through the hills to collect something. On my way home I took the opportunity to take a byway which I knew had great views in order take these photos. The paddocks are green on the cusp of hay making season.

More Aderine

Little Thing

Last night I was watching some of Ewan McGregor & Charlie Boorman's Long Way Round on DVD and to do something constructive I started to do some sort of drawing. Just triangular and rectangular shapes meshed together and today I decided to see how it could work out in ink and water colour. I think that it's alright. Perhaps it just needs the linear stuff and just some colour. As to the DVD very much 'boys own adventure and humour', but having been 'on the road' before it starts the itch again. I love that sense of waking up in the morning and not knowing/wondering where you will be in the evening and that even disasters will be ok later. In fact highlights when you're not living through them.

The Well at the World's End

I've not long finished reading this. It was an enjoyable book. I think that the idea of moving without air travel is nicely romantic. As is making it up as we go along. A certain naiveté about places, the existence of Laos,  a little bit bemusing to me. In the end though it is a book of curiosity, learning and dreaming and we grow through reading it.

A Mosaic of stuff

A few things have happened recently. I've been ripping old LP's to the computer. It has been a trip down memory lane. Some forgotten things from the past have been resurrected. I've really enjoyed hearing again the work of the Zombies, Larry Norman, Golden Earring, Bruce Cockburn and Woody Allen.

I love the jazz influence of their own work and the covers that they did. I think that they are completely underrated.

As challenging and poignant as ever.

I don't know how well known they are apart from Radar Love, but powerful, if often dark songs that a friends Dutch cousins introduced me to.

Woody Allen was one of the first film directors that 'I followed'. Beginning with Annie Hall and dribbling into silence with the arrival of our children some time around Hannah and Her Sisters. I remember by horror watching Manhattan and the characters self centredness destroying the relationships they loved. My Sister bought this back in the '70s and it's a treasure.

&

Larry Norman as biting as ever in his questioning of complacency.

A 'drawing' done on box board. Small and 'playful'. I sized the box board with rabbit skin glue and then put another surface of egg tempera and whiting on it. The image is done in ink and albumin tempera.

Some Drawings and Sugru

I bought some Sugru because I wanted to hack my old desert boots. They are pretty old and the heels have worn away as you can tell, but you don't find red desert boots everywhere so I'm going to see how it goes.

mucking around

Subtle changes to Adella and others to Adelyn

I've done a little bit of work on Adella just incrementally adding to and inching my way towards stasis.

Larger changes to Adelyn including a bit of patterning. I have have a trouble with gold and silver and have to hope that I don't use it too much.

Something new. A as yet unnamed on a piece of masonite that I've gessoed with traditional gesso.

Aden finds a home

 Arion took Aden home after his visit for my birthday and put it in the frame it was made for.

I've also done more work on Adelyn

It's feeling a bit better.

More on Adelle

I've been pottering away on Adelle. It's my intention just to keep going until my unconscious and conscious tell me I've reached stasis. I'm also working on Adelyn, but it fills me with despair at the moment. It looks alright as a photo, but the reality is different.

Warm weather at Tullycavan

I went to Tullycavan today to finish the first round of ragwort spraying and I spent some time cutting up a Blackwood that has come down over a fence.

The Pawlonia is flowering.

The Blackwood. They are not a long lived tree and having a load of mistletoe didn't help it.

This little worm was hiding out among the wood. I presume that the colour is a warning not to eat.

Hmm Something

Creeping dissatisfaction caught up with me. So I I've done more work on Aden.

There's more to do on Adelle as there always is I suppose, but I enjoy the process of working my way through the suggestions the painting makes to me.

Is this too sentimental

On Thursday we had a family get together, for those of  us who could we had a barbecue and tree planting, which  has become a family tradition. We plant trees in remembrance of those that have left us and those living. Our father loved trees and therefore his influence continues when we plant them as well as I remember my grandfather saying something along the lines of the greatness of a culture that plants trees that it will never sit under the shade of. There is an amount of sentiment in family get togethers that is sweet, wonderful and sustaining. Not weighed down with unrealistic expectations. I draw from its sustenance.

Basically the same except for some of the nieces are looking in different directions.

More on Adele and Aden

Adele slow working towards a resolution.

Aden a quick blast of a painting.

From This to This

I reached the point where I felt completely uncomfortable with the first version of Adele because it was too regular or rigid or something. I left Adele out in the rain for a while then scrubbed the paint off, restretched the paper and started again. The beginnings are above.

Artists I like

Artists that I stumbled upon wandering through blogs and that I really like are

Lars Norgard http://www.larsnorgard.dk/

Clark Goolsby http://blog.clarkgoolsby.com/

Tremain Smith http://www.tremainsmith.com.new/

Jonathon Oxlade http://jonnyapplehead.blogspot.com

Here I am

Here I am

hidden within myself

opaque yet transparent

A pillar on the horizon

standing in the wind

arms by my side

clenched hands

in waiting

yet still, waiting

for

the moment of epiphany

Some Queensland Photos

Near Gympie

Bushfires started by lightening

From Carlo sandblow looking out to sea with shadow from smoke

Bundaberg Rum Factory

In the Whitsunday's

Shute Harbour

Sugar cane train

Magnetic Island from the Strand in Townsville

Blackdown Tableland National Park

Carnarvon Gorge National Park

I don't know