Journal page says it all

I don’t always find time to work in my visual journals, but I should make it more of a priority. It’s good for me to get my hands dirty, create something from scratch, and download the day’s emotions. I suspect today’s page speaks for itself…

Full moon

Tonight it is full moon, but not just any full moon, it’s the biggest full moon of the year. Spectacular! ABC News says “It happens because — despite what our senses tell us — the moon does not orbit us in a perfect circle. It follows a slightly elliptical path every month. At 11:35 p.m. EDT, say astronomers, it will come within 221,802 miles of us — coincidentally about one minute before it’s at its fullest. The result: When the moon is closest to Earth, it appears 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than when it’s farthest from us. Two weeks from now, on the opposite side of its orbit, it will be about 252,000 miles away”.

I love the full moon and am often *very* wakeful – I can sense the full moon and need to paint, often in the middle of the night. My friend Sandra Robinson, whose passion is photography, sent me this amazing photo:

Here are some paintings of the moon that I have done over the years; there might be more by tomorrow!

Getting other people into scrapbooking

We’ve been celebrating heroes this month at our LibraryPlus. As many of you know, I love to scrapbook – paper, scissors and glue for adults. I decided to make up a ANZAC / Heroes scrapbooking kit for our customers to try as part of our ANZAC events. Lats week a few ladies gave it a try at Patea and tomorrow they’ll be doing the same in Waverley. We had a wide range of ages and abilities in Patea that morning and they all did so well; going home with a finished page they could be proud of.

This is the basic layout they made. Each brought along a photo for us to copy for them, and we handed them a kit with  a page of step by step instructions. The packs are random colours, but all pre-coordinated so they just have to put it all together. This is my Dad, in 1945, as a young man in the Navy.

Excited!

This year I entered Dale Copeland’s International Collage Exchange after a break for a couple of years. You send off collages, Dale does a huge amount of work to swap them round, and you get a package of collages back (bit more to it than that, but anyway…). I opened my package, looked at one of the collages, and went “Oh my god, I don’t believe it!”. I was 99% sure straight away that the work in front of me had been done by Carol Staub, an artist whose work I have admired for years. And I was right! So excited. So grateful. The image below is not the one I received, it’s the one that was for sale on the Virtual Tart site, but shows the style of work.

Just. So. Happy. 

More on the Freezing Works

Last night was one of those nights where all I wanted to do was paint – not sleep, work, or whatever – just create something. Turns out it was the full moon. Along with many other creatives, I suffer from “full-moon-itis”! About 10pm I gave in and opened a packet of A4 size Hahnemuhle watercolour paper. The 300gsm is heavy enough that I can work on it without needing to stretch it; perfect for doing mixed media at my desk, and it’s a lovely surface to work on.

I have done a lot of works inspired by the old Patea Freezing Works over the last few years, and since going to Italy in 2010 I’ve also done a lot of works that involve poppies. Last night I combined the two and depicted the freezing works site regenerating, with poppies growing where the land has been disturbed, just like in Cassino, Italy. I kept one derelict building at the far right, and a few ‘ghost’ buildings along the horizon, where they still exist in my memory. I used Golden airbrush acrylics, a super fine Sharpie pen, Faber Castell aquarelle sticks and Caran D’Ache Neocolors, then added text in Photoshop.

Crusade 61: end of an era

I’ve been doing the Crusades off and on for years now. Michelle has enriched our lives in so many ways; thank you so much. The sense of community is huge. Michelle’s taking a well earned break. So this is my final Crusades entry for a while – the writing says it all for me. By the way, the challenge was to “show restraint” – to leave some space and let the work breath.

More collages

The only thing I have to show this week is more of the collages I made for Dale Copeland’s International Collage Exhibition, so here we go. I have done lots of study for my Museum paper, and quite a lot of work towards next month’s newspaper already (in my own defense!)

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A storm and ICE!

Ten days ago we had a massive storm come through South Taranaki; Patea, where we live was the epicenter. Scary stuff. 600 power lines down, more than 50 homes badly damaged – roofs ripped off, walls collapsed, power poles snapped in half, two houses have to be demolished.

As a Council worker I was involved in things such as going door to door checking on people, and then my two libraries provided access to social services for people. I’ve worked two weekends in a row, so have a couple of days off now just to chill out a bit.

 

It’s hard to imagine the scale of destruction, or the noise at the height of the storm at about 4am. We were lucky; my car has some damage, as does the car shed, spa pool roof and aviary. Compared to others we were so fortunate.

And speaking of chilly, have you heard of ICE? It’s the International Collage Exhibition, which used to be called the Baker’s Dozen. You can read more about it here. I wasn’t supposed to be doing any artwork this year, but this is one I have entered before and I just couldn’t resist. I made 10 collage in the end, and they’re heading off to organiser Dale Copeland tomorrow. Here’s a couple of the collages:. 

 

 

Do you support other artists?

One of the things about being an artist  in New Zealand is that we’re all practicing our art in small country. We may not all know each other, but when we do meet we’re generally a pretty supportive bunch. We blog each other’s work, support each other’s exhibitions, chat online … and generally bolster each other to keep at it. And some of us buy each other’s work – not just because it is a fellow Kiwi;’s work – but because we have a genuine love of their work. There are only a very few artists worldwide whose work I collect, and I have talked about them before.

There are a small handful of Kiwi artists I have work by and only two I actively collect. Tanya Dann is one of those. I am lucky to have three of her stripe paintings, one of which was done especially for me. Last year Tanya had to make a decision about the direction of her PhD and that led her to a series of work on the Damselfly. That series isn’t complete yet and she is thinking about its future. But the interest in the series was so strong that she decided to do a small work each day throughout February. I have been following with interest and this weekend decided to branch out from her stripes – and am now the proud owner of three of her Damselfly works. Why three? I thought they’d look amazing hung together. Here’s one of the works that will be winging its way to me this coming week. So happy…

Crusade No. 60: Honor what you love

This month Michelle, over at the GPP Street Team site, said “This month’s challenge is inspired by Valentine’s Day.  We get to celebrate the love we have for partners, family, and friends.  I hope you also indulge in some self-love…like taking a day, or just a few hours, to enjoy some creativity time.  I’m thinking it will be interesting to reflect on all the things we love.  People in our lives, things we like to do, places we like to visit, food we love to eat, art supplies we can’t live without – that kind of stuff.  You can make lists of favorites, or focus on a singular subject.  You can be serious and sentimental, or simple and sweet.  You choose.  Make some declarations.  This will give us a chance to get to know you better, and maybe we will learn about something that we will love too.”.

I thought about all kinds of things I could honor; pets, family, art supplies, work, travel. But in the end it had to be Tony. Why? We’ve been together 20 years this year and love being a couple. When we were in Italy in 2010 one of the artists we traveled with said “You two are so devoted. Every time I look round you’re keeping an eye on each other. You really support each other”. Yes, we do. We are each other’s biggest supporters, most loyal advocates, best friends…