Monthly Archives: March 2007

85_365: still tired, but needing to create


A bit thanks to fellow artist Sandra T who emailed me today to check if I was okay. She was worried about me not blogging. Check out Sandra’s work at http://www.dreamswork.blogspot.com

What I do know is that when I stop creating something changes in me – slowly I get more tired, more worn down by the day to day stuff of my life. I need to be creating something, almost anything.

So today I got back into it. It’s a piece I have done before, and will no doubt do again. Using up old watercolours, playing with the composition, messing round with glitter glue. All good fun 🙂

81-84_365 : time out

I have been so tired I could not face uploading anything. I think when Mum has been very sick, then gets better, I relax and it hits me. Watching someone dying slowly over years is not an easy thing; nursing them at home is emotionally draining.

Would I change it though? Not on my life… This time with Mum is precious, and it is not an opportunity every daughter gets.

78_365 : sending down roots


Last night I watched on the news as dozens, maybe hundreds, of trees flooded down the river with the mud of a lahar from Mt Ruapehu. What a tentative hold life sometimes has on the planet.

If only we could put down deeper roots … hence the roots growing in my latest painting.

12×16″ acrylic inks on Fredrix watercolour canvas. There is no need to frame; just hang and enjoy.
For sale on Etsy – see link at right.

76_365 : summer floods


This is in response to the weather we are having at the moment. It’s 21 (69) degrees – so very warm for here – and it is raining solidly. I live an hour from the mountain and they are predicting 5 to 6 inches of rain this morning on her slopes. It is raining very hard here as I type…

I was thinking about how the warm earth gets covered over with water – and this painting is the result.

It’s 14×18″on stretched canvas, done in Atelier acrylics.

75_365 : photographing Mum – capturing the moment

For me photography is a way of recording a scene so I can paint it later, recording my life so I can scrapbook it, and capturing day to day activity in our house so we can celebrate it.

Today’s photo has a story behind it —

We live with and look after my Mum full time; she’s 82 and very ill, but also strong-willed and determined. Nurses either love her or are terrified of her! She loves ‘good’ music and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
Two days a week she goes into the local rest home during the day, to get her out of the house and give her some different people to chat with.

Judy, the home’s manager, invited Mum to the rest home’s St Patrick’s day morning tea and lunch – to my surprise Mum agreed to go. Into a lime green t-shirt and off she went. They had scones with green topping, Irish Stew for lunch and apple cider. The place was decorated and so were the residents – Mum came home displaying newly painted green fingernails.

I went along to drop her off, and take some photos. When the visiting singers started up Mum obviously thought they were murdering some Irish lyric. For just a second, long enough for me to click to camera, Mum had her “oh god they’re going to sing badly” face on!!
She recovered herself well and put on a polite face. I left and she sat it out with good humour…

Gotta love her.

74_365 : reworking old favorites


The base image of this piece is an ‘old favorite’ – there is something about a huge moon seen through grass that fascinates me. In fact, I can be quite obsessive about anything to do with the moon!

I have a series of similar images which I go back to time and time again – reworking the colours, contrast levels, cropping … constantly playing with the images and what they mean to me.