Friday 28 June 2013

troublesome 'c - words'....

Contemplating some of my pet hates today......and selecting the ones that are what I call troublesome 'c words'.....................there are some that I chew over at times of repose.........
Conceptual art.....I am not anti conceptual...au contraire...I am an artist but please, please spare the ego-driven, self-promoting Crap of some artists who have no talent and are merely flopping out some unresolved toddler tantrum in ugly forms that waste paint, glass, stone, fabric, digital imagery, food, foam, plastic, paper and our time and energy......as we try to determine their point....etc....etc...
Colonisation....an interesting word for ethnic Cleansing or Corruption....think about how things may have panned out globally had people merely visited and communicated foreign countries without stealing and murdering.....
Commando boots....girls, girls....please.....
Crows feet....earned or not, what a Complete Catastrophy they have invoked around my eyes!
Cruelty.....I have had enough of the human condition here.....
Controversial media coverage......just give us the damn facts, you guys and leave the debates to the well-prepared debaters...
Can't....sorry, I forgot....no such word....
Cleaning.....it's Saturday....sigh....off to rid my floors of the fluff, dust, grit, grime and dirt....
So....
Which ones now, of these seemingly innocuous words beginning with the sunny letter 'c' are the Critical issues??




Tuesday 28 May 2013

Joie de vivre...creativity is a love of life....you ARE your art and style

It is a beautiful morning here in the country region where I live in Australia. It occurred to me as I read a post on That's Not My Age this morning that it may seem odd for my 'creative pursuits' blog to feature so many fashion or beauty connections. Check out the Blogs I follow and you will see a theme...French anything, (soignee!) Classicism, Bohemian, Personal Style and Art/Craft connections. I believe that what we wear or style is indicative of our creative personality. For some it is still evolving, or still someone else's idea of how it should look. It may be ecclectic or even ragingly rebellious. Like our artworks, poetry, stories and photographs, we will only be happy with their reflection of us when it is truly initiated by us. How do we know when we are authentically us? I would love to hear you voice your ideas ...it will make you feel good...bien dans sa peau....ca va?

 stage style
holiday style

Crafty arts

Get Crafty these last sun-kissed days of autumn and herald the cold. I am inspired by the slanting light of the early morning...for me that's 8am....sorry early risers...I'm not emerging before the sun is shouting loudly. Woolly, knotted and gorgeously textured stuff is what makes us feel like making our winter nest, so get collecting bits of wool, towelling, felt, feathers, spongy knit scraps and make a beanie, a bag, decorate an object or a create a wristlet.
 
                                                        

Saturday 25 May 2013

How is your brain behaving itself today? We know it is the source of our relating style and the 'animal' that shows our love/relating face to the world. How does this work? It is rather complicated but simplistically....this is what psychologists have told us...

The amydala is a transmitter of signals in our brain. It alerts us to danger in terms of how it was wired in our early years. Any situation that echoes an early threat experienced by us, will trigger our defences. Thus we attack, duck for cover, avoid, shut down or throw accusations at our perceived opponent.The flight response sends us looking for a cave....a place to hide....bottle of alcohol, drug addled view, new love, new house/shoes/jewellery/magazine or food. Our fight response swears, hits out, punches, smashes, abuses and destroys whatever is the closest thing or person at the time.

Often the original threat is now redundant, but our responses remain poised to act.
Apparently we can rewire this pathway and stop over-reacting if we aspire to work hard and be unrelenting in our disciplining of the delinquent fuse.
 We must penetrate to the cellular level and restructure the threadwork in there!!
How?? There are people who know.....it is not for the meek....has anyone had any success with this?
I would love to hear from you.....check out the work of +Marilyn Gordon.www.marilyngordon.com/.../train-your-brain-to-let-go-of-habits

But...we can prepare our brains for change by regularly accessing our creativity....

Wednesday 22 May 2013

softly, softly ...a gentle but insistent boom, boom, boom...time for a different drum...

Hey, let's change the world today! Let's creep around and move the furniture, straighten the pictures.
It's time we got serious about what is going on with the next generation of Australian teenagers. The current batch are about to discover that the Baby Boomers are reworking the middle-age exit plan and being as reluctant as they always have been to follow their predecessors. There is no way they will sit and be old when it is their turn. The horror of aging is not about plumping up the flesh for today's 50-60 year olds, but about not being heard. Our teenagers are very noisy themselves, but they don't know what to make a noise about. There is not much left to begin. They are left simply to reinvent, to recycle or in many cases to destroy.
ADHD,ODD,ADD......deficiencies, destruction, devaluing, defacing, desperate and downward....
How to get them to be creative?
How to give them hope that deconstruction is not their only lot?
Is there any merit it telling them to go back to 'truth to materials'?
I think it must all begin with going back to respect for the 'temple'...the physical body.
Friends and I were looking at photographs of ourselves in our 20's. someone commented on how 'wholesome' we all looked. (That's the attraction of Mad Men, isn't it?)
Yet we know that we were subject to eating disorders, depression, cancer, anxiety and mood swings BUT not at the age of ten, eleven or twelve. And it didn't define us.
Our youth are no healthier, smarter or psychologically fitter than many children of the Third World.
And they have a far less savoury regard for education, family values or their elders.
So let's start to fix it. How? Start the dialogue people. Begin to push back. Warmly, gently, quietly.
Grandparents.... redirect the values of the young...maybe, just maybe if we stop fussing about clothes, wrinkles, bunions and grey hair, bake something wholesome (get rid of those damn trans fats!!!)and turn off the news for a while, we can get them to stop comparing themselves in a frenzy of Australian Idols and just be kids.

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Loving London & all things Borough

I can't believe this was 2 years ago this week...

she'll be apples if I just keep painting...

a draft in acrylic wash
then work areas with the heavier acrylic with some flow medium
start to establish the relationships between the parts