Pushing paint

I am pushing paint after a few days of driving around my old haunts, photographing the unchanged. Yesterday I drew and thought about it. Today I painted.

Very much a work in progress, but the feels are right.






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Adventures in Africa

I am in a borrowed studio, improvising when I find I have forgotten something, revelling in the new subject matter. The light is amazing!


I am wearing out my phone battery with the number of photos I am taking and I have to buy a new sketchbook already. I am too scared to open the iCloud in case I swamp my family's devices( we all share a cloud. I thought it was a good idea until I realise I hog all the memory space.sorry sorry).

Anyways, today I went to Stellenbosch and took a gazillion( actual number) of photos and sketched in my favourite al fresco cafe in the whole wide world, The Katjiepiering ( roughly translates to The Gardenia) at the Stellenbosch Botanical Gardens. That place is a treasure and has a place in my heart. I totally eavesdropped a courting couple . I sat in a sunbeam. I drank tea . All by myself. Too fabulous.

Now I am back in the studio, easy to paint this afternoon.or maybe I will nap in a sunbeam!!!!



My borrowed surface.


My drying work


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My warmup piece !

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Location:Somerset West,South Africa

ideas for new work and some travel.

Next year is my 30th high school reunion and this milestone has got me thinking. Actually, what I initially thought was " not a f%$& am I THAT old!" and hyperventilated into my glass of wine, but thats an aside. I thought about the significance of this event  some more and my overriding emotion was one of great excitement to see these women again (some I have not seen since that final day) and almost paralysing nostalgia.

I have been working the idea around my brain for a while, much like a sliver of popcorn kernel  wedged in a gum, unable to remove it without some investigation and a tool......and the tool I am using is my phone and specifically, the way I have been taking photos recently.

For those of you who need some backstory, I grew up in South Africa. I went to school in a town called Stellenbosch , at a school called Rhenish, for the whole 10 years from standard 1 till 10. I knew those girls well! Then, in my early 30's, I emigrated to New Zealand. Opposite side of the planet, same hemisphere.  I am at home here and at home there. i always feel like I am coming home, either way I travel, and that is sometimes great and at the same time, totally divisive. Sometimes I feel I belong both places, sometimes I yearn for one over the other and sometimes, I belong nowhere.

This feeling of belonging in two places which look and behave quite differently is hard to explain and so I have decided to do so with paint. Somehow, I am going to stitch these two homes together and make something totally amazing for myself, a place I create and is therefore mine forever. I am incorporating this into my next exhibition and, hopefully, will take work back to South Africa next May to show my old schoolfriends what I experience and how I have reconciled the experience of immigration with nostalgic longing for what is past.

To that mind, I am returning to home(Ha! see?!?) to reference very specific images that I want to use in this process. I am going to visit the places( oh yes! I have a list!) that are most evocative for me and do some sketching, photography and lots of writing. Then I am going to come home ( again! See? It's difficult and awesome at the same time) and , because I have already started the process here, start the process of stitching these two worlds together on canvas.

So, I have cooked the family MANY meals, the freezer is full, the list of daily tasks is pasted everywhere( feed pets, defrost dinner, get post, brush teeth..not in that order, but you get the gist), air tickets, insurance etc booked and I am almost on my way. My only problem is my gear. Whilst I have travelled locally with all my crap, international travel is different and I am taking 3 planes there and that means SIX different baggage handlers will have the opportunity to take their frustrations out on my bag ....and that's just the journey there! I have ordered some stuff there so I don't have to carry too much but I am going to have to make some plans and be inventive. I am working on drafting film whilst I am there and using Liquin to speed the drying up time. Rolled up with wax paper between them, the sketches should make it home (! again!) and I will always have some photos to reference too.

So, back in 3 weeks time, swamped in nostalgia and hopefully brimming with good material.

Landlines

110cm x 60 cm

New work

I am working on new stuff and painting over old stuff. I love painting over old stuff! The underlying paint make for some surprising marks that show through to the new work.

But first, a panoramic view of the studio!

Panoramic view of the studio

This one has cows underneath it!True story!

Acrylic on canvas

Acrylic on canvas

This also has cows underneath the new surface( NOT as mermaids!)

I reworked this and like it now

Oil on drafting film

This is a new project....shhhhhhhhhhh

oil on drafting film

So, now just working away and trawling the hardware store, looking at using new tools to create some excitement in my painting. 

I bought a sander a few months ago and it has been a great new tool. I sand back what I don't like or the whole things, sometimes, and start again. 

The dogs hate the noise. 

I converted my studio desk into a standing desk. My ratio of internet surfing to painting has changed quite radically! 

For those of you wondering how the tidying up is going...splendidly! I even had a garden tidy! I thanked all the broken benches, chairs, ornaments trellises, pots (etc etc) for all their hard work, loaded up the trailer and off it went to the dump.

Still working in baby steps and staying far away from the studio and photo's, but each day I do some small category(  yesterday was garden, today is tupperware and plastics!) and it makes me feel so much better. 

The theory of creativity and space

So, this is my theory of creativity and space.

If there is too much crap around, the space and my life crowded with rubbish, STUFF accumulated on every surface, in every drawer, then there is no place for creativity to expand.

Problem: I am a sentimental pack rat. I attribute emotional connection to objects. For example.If my mother even so much as TOUCHED an object, I cannot throw it away because that object reminds me of her and throwing it away would akin to throwing something of her away. Yes, I am aware of the all -kinds- of -crazy that the preceding sentence sounds like, but that is what I am and how I exist. Another example.I have 6 years worth  of my kids art (ages 1-7) . No, none of it is even remotely good and yet it takes up a 4 drawer unit.The only good that unit might do is house some mice, for I have not looked in those drawers in 4 years. But there it sits, taking up space and my warped logic says" If you throw out those pictures, you are throwing away their childhood". See?! How am I supposed to throw stuff away with that kind of voice talking to me all the time?!

So, back to the theory. I have noticed that when I tidy up, throw stuff away and get organised, my mind quietens down,  I can think clearly and I can create and think creatively. All the STUFF that I own bogs me down in the past. So, I have been going through the drawers of my life, both physical and emotional, looking at what is accumulated, keeping some but throwing a lot away. When there is space in my head, my creativity flexes its muscles and starts to fill the spaces.

It's slow going but very cathartic. I spend a little time decluttering the house then toddle off to the studio. What happens after the cleanse is interesting. I just paint and solve painting problems with greater ease and the work becomes more interesting.

I have taken 3 carloads of stuff to the charity shop this week. My sense of triumph as I drive away, unburdened, is unexpectedly fabulous.

You will notice, dear reader, that I have yet to mention ANYTHING about a studio clean up. I know, I know. It will be the hardest one to do, so I am leaving it till last.  It's ok, the book said leave the hardest till last!

The zen of a rock on the beach.

After tidying up the pantry! 

Whilst someone else was tidying up the garden!

So the painting starts again

After a brief hiatus of 2 weeks doing nothing and being totally useless following my Exhibition, I have begun painting again. It has, however, coincided with a great need to get rid of clutter. I have worked out that in order to create, I need mental space and the physical space in my studio and home is filled to the brim with STUFF. I am a pack rat! If I continue like this I shall end up on television as some hag with a collection of mental illnesses relating to hoarding.  Cue an intervention from the universe by way of an Instagram friend ( Thanks Angela!) who started posting photos of her decluttering prowess . She told me she had read a book oddly titled "The Gentle Magic of tidying up" and it offered a foolproof ( it needs to be because I have a t-shirt that says I am a fool and it needs to go) system of decluttering and then remaining decluttered. Sell me your magic potion, let me plant those magic beans!!!!! I want! So, I badgered the book out of the library and got reading. I sat up one night and read the whole darned thing. It was 1 am when I closed the book and I wanted to start! I got up and then got straight back into bed because a) it's the middle of winter and damned cold and b) starting at 1 am will not please the rest of the household!We've been down that road before with my midnight antics. It was not well received.
Next morning, I began. I cleaned out my chest of drawers. Once I had done that, I came into the studio and began to paint, unfettered, mind clear, a spring in my step.

If that's what just one set of drawers does for me, by the time I make it to the next exhibition I shall be living in a shell of a house, partially naked with clear surfaces everywhere and some very nervous family members!

So that's my plan. Slowly but surely, I shall declutter my house and then, after an hour of asking myself if object make me sparkle or thanking them for their use and discarding them, I shall wander into the studio and throw some paint around. For the record, the studio is going to be next on the list. I have a shitload of crap ( the technical term, I believe) stuffed under the big table on which I store even more crap and varnish paintings. I think I shall singlehandedly refurnish the Hospice Opshop!

A 30 x 30 cm study

Working on the bigger painting

detail of a another painting finished today

The Glassmaker and the Painter

So, the thing is done. We have exhibited .

Working with Di Tocker( the glassmaker) has been a total pleasure. I am seriously genuine ( sounds fake, hey) when I say that but she is all things that the stereotypical artist is not: Organised, ordered, practical, measured and punctual.
To work with her is to be calm and relaxed.  She is the embodiment of the phrase" work smarter, not harder".

With the help of the incredible curator emily Rumney, we whipped the exhibition into shape in a day.

Would you like to see?