A slow start

I am afraid I am rather slow at the moment. Slow to get going, slow to finish and slow to blog!My recuperation is going to take longer than I had anticipated, but I am looking for the silver lining to the cloud.

 I managed to paint these daffs in a wonderfull duckegg blue coffee pot that I rescued from the dump.I did not set it up as a still life but just painted them in situ, on the dark sideboard, where they were placed by myself so I could view them as I lounged on the sofa.Lazy girl! It shows you, you have to put a little effort in to get something out!!I shall do better next time but still lifes(still lives?) are not my thing at the moment.

The silver lining of all of this is that I am slowing down and learning to say NO to some things.I have put so much ahead of painting this last 6 months or so, that it is nice to have a legitimate excuse to now be able to put some days aside to just paint. Tomorrow is such a day and I look forward to it...today I am looking at reference photos and reading art books.....indulgence again! I am in the mood for a landscape.....

BTW, I entered 2 little paintings in the Thornton Gallery 10x10 One size Fits All exhibition and sold both! I am so pleased and I was proud of my contribution to the wonderfull wall of art that was dispayed.

With thanks to Sir Alexander Fleming

Whoops! Sorry about the sudden disappearance, but .....I was distracted by illness.
The children and the lovely husband all fell foul to a nasty flu strain and required quite intensive Florence Nightingale treatment for a while. Up till that point, all was well with the world. Then I forgot to be extra cautious with my own health and suddenly found  myself up Swine Flu Creek, sans paddle,braying like a mad donkey and obviously well in the throes of a complicated pneumonia.

But , to make a sad story sweet and short, thanks to the marvels of modern medicine, lovely doctors, nurses and such , I am now home and on the way to recovery.
This is the second time in 2 years that penicillin has saved my life. Thank you Sir Alexander Fleming and his happy accident.

The nice bit is that lots of lovely friends brought me flowers and I have been itching to paint them for days now.Expect daffodils, folks!

When I grow up I wanna be a studio.

I promised earlier I would post a photo of my studio. So, now you know, STUDIO is pushing it a bit. It is the diningroom, complete with 8 seater diningroom table that I have commandeered. It is chaos, much like the rest of my house, but for now, it is MY space. We are renovating soon and, if lucky, I might get a seperate space to paint /craft/sew (wow! you should see my sewing room...that is such a dark hole of untidyness right now that I shudder and close the door.Out of sight, out of mind). So, with what I did to the spare room in mind, this is actually quite ok.

I wish it was summer..............

I am now in the depth of winter. The light is so dreadfull in my house that I have to resort to a motley collection of cool and warm artificial lights, dangling at precarious angles  from my easel, across my canvas, to try paint. The effect is quite scary to work in (I have singed my hair twice) and my colours are sometime not what I remember painting when viewed in natural light.I will post a photo so you believe me!

I want to be here, above, lying on the grass , listening to music or maybe just resting.I had this idea from our last family trip to WOMAD, the world music and dance festival held in New Plymouth/Taranaki each March. It is a total hippyfest I we love it. The kids go AWOL with a huge crowd of other kids(very shades of Lord of the Flies), we listen to crazy and fabulous live music and eat more legumes in one weekend than we do in a year.We stay in tents, camping with other mad hippies. It's fabulous.
I want to be the guy in red, asleep or passed out, take your pick, under a huge oak tree,warmed by the sun. Sigh.
Back to the reality of sick kids and winter.I think I shall go walkabout with my camera today and find some winter warmth and inspiration.Either that or sniff my turps.Hey, don't judge me!!

The comfort of doing what you know best

I am doing my own head in with attempting a self-portrait.I cannot "see"myself clearly. So, I have decided to approach it differently by painting something that I am comfortable with and then going back to the self portrait with a hope of some clarification. Above is a painting of Bourbon, beloved pet of my schoolfriend, Fiona.I enjoyed painting this lovely doggy portrait.
I am now trying to get a good 3/4 pose of myself on film so I can paint form a photograph . Perhaps distancing myself from the immediacy of "me"staring back from a mirror wil allow me to see past the familiarity to the basic shapes of my visage. I am suffering from a classic case of "can't see the wood for the trees"!!
Now, to get a decent photo......