Archives for posts with tag: #artist

First bookshop!

March 9, 2024 //
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Picture this. It’s a rainy day in Newcastle, streets awash, gutters overflowing. Mud everywhere. You’re driving an old black van with trade gear rolling around in the back. The rain is so heavy that you can barely see the road, and you desperately hope that other drivers can see you. Finally, you arrive at your destination and as luck would have it, there’s a carpark just across the road…

You pull a heavy cardboard box out of the back of the van, wait for a gap in the traffic and bolt across the road. You’ve made an attempt to look less scruffy than usual, but by the time you get to the other side your hair has gone back to its default setting of Mongolian Rat Catcher and the mascara is limbering up for a sprint.

This, however, is one of the most exquisitely liminal moments of your life…

Your destination is a bookshop, Betty Loves Books at The Station in Newcastle, to be precise. And the cardboard box contains 38 illustrated copies of your newly printed book, The Nights. For any writer, this is a proud, proud moment…

The Nights began life as a series of private journal entries way back in 2009 when I had a new born baby and was recently separated. It evolved over time, finding life first as an artist’s book exhibited at The Lock Up in Newcastle, then at the heart of a Creative Writing PhD at the University of Newcastle, an audio book narrated by the brilliant Kelly Burke, and now as an illustrated book. It’s been quite the journey!

Thanks so much to book designer Lucy Jones, and for these gorgeous illustrations by Abbey Hindmarch, Jacqueline Rheinberger and Phoebe McMillan, respectively. And thank you to Betty Loves Book for being the first bookshop to take my book x

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More boats…

March 1, 2024 //
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Heading off to Dangar Island soon to draw some more boats, so I thought I’d post some of the last images from Gosford Sailing Club.

Found I enjoyed drawing boats being prepared for launch just as much as ones already in the water. There’s the drama of the situation – a crew standing around watching their precious boat being slowly winched down into the water – and ample opportunity to explore the shape of keels and rudders. Thinking of getting myself invited to a boatyard as an artist-in-residence, as I’d enjoying drawing the organic shape of hulls against the more rigid horizontal and verticals of cranes, cradles and scaffolding.

This one was drawn from the club’s bar…

One of the things that I’m interested in doing is continuing to work on a coloured ground. Many of these images started with a quite traditional reddish-brown ground. Kind of nice to give the coolness of the blues and greens something to kick against.

For the technically minded, most of these are on watercolour paper or paper that is suitable for acrylic paints. The ground is gesso tinted with acrylic paint, sometimes reddish-brown and then blue-grey, sometimes just blue-grey.

They’re drawn with a soft pencil, painted with acrylic and left to dry. If I’m not happy with the forms, I’ll draw back into them with pencil, then add black lines with acrylic paint markers of various widths. Occasionally, I’ll add some highlights or re-paint and re-draw areas that need it (I re-worked the relative size and position of the keel and rudder on some of these images).

Looking forward to my excursion to Dangar Island!

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Gosford Sailing Club

February 29, 2024 //
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Last day of my residency at Lighthouse Arts in Newcastle yesterday. One of those days when you try to finish things, in this case some drawings I’d begun at Gosford Sailing Club the weekend before.

Normally it’s a bit of a chore trying to finish stuff in an environment that’s different to where you begun it (I once heard a painter talk about how she’d finished paintings started during her artist’s residency in Antarctica at home in the Northern Territory, and felt a mild sense of amazement: they were detailed images of ice layers).

Anyway, the Lighthouse residency made it easy. Whenever I needed to mix a particular shade of blue, I just needed to look out the window! And fortunately, just like the weekend beside the water at Gosford, yesterday was a lovely bright day.

One of the nifty things about working quickly is that it forces you to trust your instincts and commit to a mark. Just like a jazz musician improvising, there’s the exhilarating experience of a creative free fall. And, just like the musician, sometimes you play a wrong note.

Then, of course, when you look at the image afterwards it’s a question of whether you change the thing that you’re not happy with or just live with it. For example, yesterday I forgot to pack any yellow paint and I needed to mix a warm honey-coloured sandstone colour for some rocks. Stuffed around mixing some burnt umber, blues, whites and a naples yellow (reddish tint) but couldn’t get what I wanted. And one of the yachts had a lovely aqua coloured hull that I forgot to paint. So whenever I look at these images, I’m seeing some rocks that are too fleshy and a boat that would be that much better if it were green…

One of the nice things I’ve found about being an older painter is that I’ve learned to live with my mistakes. I used to destroy a lot of work – some of it quite good – in the interests of the illusive, slippery eel of perfection. Nowadays, I let the paintings have their own way.

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Tugs

February 25, 2024 //
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Coming to the end of my Lighthouse Arts residency in Newcastle. There’s something about this space – the constant sound of the sea, white walls, absence of domestic belongings, quiet, steepish trek up the hill to get there – that makes it a remarkable place to create work.

Being on top of a headland, overlooking ocean or harbour on all sides, has re-ignited my passion for the sea. In a previous life, I was a sailing journalist, and I’ve always loved boats and being near the water. I’ve spent a lot of time during this residency just watching the way the wind hits the water, and how sea and sky change colour during the course of a day.

At times, wind hits the headland with such strength that it seems like a living creature. On the day I drew these tugs, the air was taut, muscular, heavy. Everything churned – the sea, sky, trees and grass, whipped around like glitter.

Enjoying the challenge of drawing and painting from life in these conditions! It forces certainty – quick decision making and fast lines – to capture the energy of the moment.

If you’d like to apply for a Lighthouse Arts residency, here’s the link: https://lighthousearts.org.au/residencies/

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Keesing Studio

February 18, 2024 //
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Delighted to announce that I’ve been awarded Creative Australia’s Keesing Studio for Australian writers in Paris! I’ll be heading to France later this year to spend a month working on a memoir/auto-fiction about the year I spent dressed as Marie Antoinette (My Year as a Fairy Tale): can’t wait!

The Keesing studio was bequeathed on a 75 year lease by the late Nancy Keesing back in 1985 as an opportunity for Australian writers to work in a new and inspiring environment. It’s an incredibly generous gift and one which a former writer-in-residence, playwright Vanessa Bates, has described as life-changing. At any one time, the Cité hosts about 300 artists working across a diverse range of media and artforms, so the potential for creative and cross-cultural collaborations is rich.

Thanks to everyone who has helped get My Year as a Fairy Tale off the ground! The Centre for 21st Humanities at the University of Newcastle provided seed funding for the initial performance – thanks in particular to Hugh Craig and Ros Smith. The performance was documented a number of talented people including videographer Jess Coughlan, filmmaker Tyler Beckley and crew, photographer Lizz Mackenzie, with costume design and construction from Kadisha Patterson and Tamara Findlay, and a nifty logo by Caelli Jo Brooker. Many others helped with make-up, hair, locations, venues, photography, funding, encouragement and …. cake!!! After the performance, when I decided to write a book about the experience, acclaimed writer and writing mentor, Kathryn Heyman, suggested the memoir form.

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