Like many leftie, university educated feminists, I have a secret penchant for the World Wrestling Federation. Unable to watch it in long bursts, I’m not that sick, I find the few illicit snatches I view thrilling. There’s something about the combination of steroids, bad acting, men in leotards, ripped torsos, comic book costumes and a blood hungry crowd. It’s Rocky Five crossed with The Dark Knight comic series, blended with some kind of primal Lord of the Flies kid’s game. I was catapulted even further into this delusional state by Mickey Rourke’s stupendous performance as an aging athlete in The Wrestler.

Anyway, if I had a million bucks, I would recruit a tall, kick ass, cross dressing Japanese wrestler and debut him in the WWF in full drag, hopefully somewhere deep in the American South (albeit with good personal protection and an efficient security team). Here’s his costume: silk kimono, white painted face, long black hair up in a bun with ornate clips, demure expression, dainty floral shoes.

Picture this: a dark stadium, a spotlight slicing down onto an empty ring, the swollen crowd pants with anticipation. In shuffles my man, head down, arms folded into the sleeves of his shining garment. He stands in silence in the middle of the ring. When the anthem to the Karate Kid blasts out, the six-foot geisha slowly unfolds his arms, revealing long red nails, and raises his hands like claws. Slowly lifting his painted face, he lets out a ghastly martial arts scream through rouged lips. The crowd goes crazy as the sound of shakahachi flutes trills the theme from High Noon. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ bawls the announcer over the loudspeaker, barely able to make himself heard, voice hoarse with emotion, ‘all the way from Toyko, please welcome….The Fascinator!’

It’s probably worth explaining why I want to do this. One of my former students, a quiet girl with flawless skin, had a passion for geisha. For her final assessment, she dressed her sister up in full geisha regalia and Photoshopped her into a range of different locations. I had tried, quite irresponsibly, to encourage this student to surrender to her obsession and spend a week going around Newcastle dressed up a like a geisha girl (this is only really funny if you know Newcastle). And document it: photographs of geisha in Burger King queue, kimino clad geisha at the beach playing volleyball with the bikini brigade, geisha attending lectures. ‘You could just refuse’ I suggested ‘to take the costume off: the anti-discrimination Act provides ample cover for this kind of thing’.

During the course of talking with this student about all things geisha, she enlightened me as to the meaning of the word ‘fascinator’. I had no idea that it meant a decorative hair clip with dangling bits and perhaps a jewel or feather or two. Very geisha (or rather very Western idea of geisha).  And so the dream of my Japanese WWF warrior was born. ‘The Fascinator: coming soon to a stadium near you!’

If another million bucks landed in my lap, I would be tempted to hire the Sistine Chapel for a night, empty it of people, and install a large, comfortable bed with immaculate white sheets. I would like to sleep in the chapel for a night, without any kind of electric light or other furnishings, and early in the morning wake to see the murals. I imagine light slowly coming in the arched windows, probably hitting the wall high up, and then gradually travelling down, the noise of Rome slowly building as the city wakes, the distant sounds of traffic and horns beeping. Cold air in the chapel, the smell of stone, old tiles under my bare feet.

I would like to be by myself. And in the morning I would like to stay in bed until about nine or ten oclock, and then have a beautiful Italian waiter bring me an exceptionally good cup of coffee in bed. No food, no sex, just waking up with divine art and fine caffeine. I would happily pay a million dollars for such a thing.

Another piece of art that will probably never get made, but something that I would like to do, is a short film set in a gym. Gyms are this weird cultural no-go zone where nothing interesting ever happens, it’s perhaps for this reason I have some of my best ideas while working out. The other day, I finished my Pump class, and like everyone else, staggered off to put my bar and weights back on the rack. Lifting weights causes this massive hormonal surge to tsunami through your system. Everyone’s body is different, but for me the effect is that I’m quite aggressive for the next hour or so: I’ve learnt to avoid conversations during this period.

I imagined this cute little film, which started just after the end of the class, when everyone politely smiles at each other, wipes their sweat off the floor and puts their gear away. What would happen, I mused, if someone shattered this fragile hormonal truce and started some kind of altercation with another person. Would everyone else join in? Would there be this sudden, Pump inspired crazy moment of communal violence? And wouldn’t it be even stranger if it happened in the weird sanitised environment of a gym?

I imagined this small Jerry Springer style dispute flaring into this beautiful choreographed martial arts session with people using their Pump bars like fighting sticks, a little bit Bruce Lee, a lot Kill Bill. Middle class girls in Lorna Jane apparel belting away at each other with gusto, screaming guys running at each other like pole volters, poles being hurled like javelins and sticking into the chipboard walls with a ‘twaaannnggg!’ Like all good martial arts movie sequences, no-one actually gets hurt, they fight to slow motion exhaustion, and the film ends with everyone at peace and passed out on the floor. I imagine the final shot panning directly upwards, up past the ceiling fan, right up to the ceiling, a pause, and then someone’s bottle of water falls over and the liquid spreads like a river amongst the bodies.

Back in the real world, I had some good news this week. I won a $2k grant to help make a piece of art in a local community garden. We’re going to do a public workshop to help generate ideas and imagery, and then paint a mural on a building next to the garden. I’m rather pleased about this as it brings together a number of things I like doing: gardening, art and doing stuff with teams of people. And it’s a pretty cool garden too.

As part of my ‘I’m-turning-fourty-so-it’s-best-to-freak-out-in-a-constructive-manner’ strategy, I’ve been pushing towards my ambition to earn a living solely from painting and writing (chorus of ‘she’s nuts!’) One of my targets is to try to write at least grant application and/or one published article per month. I started doing this in December, after I finished my book. So far I have three grant applications in the pipeline, one article that’s been accepted for publication by an American art magazine, and one article that I’m still trying to find a home for.

'sicko hawk', 20cm square, oil on canvas, 2011

Finally, the bird paintings I’ve used to illustrate this week’s blog are small paintings (eight inches square) from a series titled up against the bird wall. Eventually I hope to complete one hundred small canvases, and hang them in a grid formation on a large white wall, as part of the upcoming Year of the Bird group exhibition at Maitland Regional Art Gallery.

Initially I planned to paint all the birds on different shades of pink backgrounds, but I’ve since been thinking that this might look a bit sickly. Thematically, I was worried that the piece would read as being more about the colour pink, and it’s associations with cloying femininity and restrictive gender expectations, than the bird imagery itself. If anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on background colours, I’m happy to hear them.

I’m enjoying making this series. I’m trying to get sixteen finished by July (hoping to place them in an exhibition up in Queensland) so I’ll post images as they get done.

'wagtail with bound tail', oil on canvas, 20 cm square, 2011