Sense of Place

Yesterday I went to Tullycavan to do some work, which was basically the continued bracken  cutting. When I'd finished I was worn out, but the day was glorious so a walked around to survey the place. I don't think that I can capture the sense of place that this gives me. In summer the dragonflies wending their way in search of? I love the randomness of the way that the grass grows, its fecundity in season. Its variety and variousness. I love my sense achievement in knocking over the bracken, perhaps it's sad for the bracken, but it lets other plants grow free and says that in the future we will be productive here. When I walk to our wood lot I look at the fat blue gums and feel the danger that there would be in felling them to get their wood for the fire. From the cusp of the gully I look down at the waterhole and know the importance of its water through the summer of livestock drinking from the troughs it supplies. Lastly when I walk to the studio to collect my stuff I find a potent accumulation of memory, verdant with life. On this piece of land I feel a sense of being able to walk free in a way that I can't in other places. There is something personal about this place, an embedded relationship invested with emotion and sentiment, poignant with contingency because we may not hold it forever. Circumstances may call us to move too far away to hold it, to move on. I pray and hope that this isn't what we're called to.

A Walk

Sunday and I felt the need for a walk. First I took the dogs for a walk, but I wanted a meander by myself. So I brought them back home and headed off in the cold across the railway line to the north side of town, through streets that I don't often walk, to see what was there. On the edge of town the view is of Mt Baw Baw in the distance shrouded in cloud and in the foreground paddocks of grass that is green and low in the winters cold. In the middle distance the high voltage power lines rise and sag over the pylons. Along a roadside on the way back there was windbreak of cypress with most of them dead. I assume because of wet feet from this very wet winter. Later near home my eye was caught by the camellias strewn on lawns after falling from the shrubs. They are long past there best, but the carpets of flowers look so extravagant.

Out of focus, but it adds to the extravagance.

Adella

At the moment I have 3 surfaces for painting. 2 are stretched paper and 1 is box board that I've gessoed with a traditional glue and whiting because is gives such a lovely surface for painting. Work has started on the stretched paper works and I'm waiting to see what comes out of them before I proceed with the gessoed surface. Gessoing box board is a bit of an experiment and probably to flexible to last, but I have to try it. I have this hankering to paint on thin film like surfaces and have them hung so that they have a congruity with the wall surface, but this is just something a bit fixed in my mind. The picture below is of Adella the most advanced of the paintings.

Ten Days in the Hills

I just finished this book and enjoyed it. It took a bit of time. It's based on The Decameron with a group of people in the hills above Hollywood post the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Academy Awards. The house party goes on for ten days of living, eating, telling stories and sorting out relationships.

A Day of Finishing

Today I got to damar varnish 5 paintings that I now conclude are finished. I have been waiting for them to lose the moisture that they've gained in the damp weather and restretch themselves through drying out. 

Adelia was finished yesterday.

Adeli was finished today.