my muse

This week Gwen from Muddy Yellow Dog shared photos of her bedroom circa 1980’s, and shared her idolisation of Martha Stewart, even back then! Soon after marvelling at the fact she even has photos of her childhood room, I felt a wave of embarrassment about my bedroom, and how unsophisticated it was compared to hers.

Instead of the pretty wallpaper and Esprit ad that her room had, mine was plastered in posters of boys. Yep, there must have been at least 80 hot sultry boy eyeballs leering at me as I slept each night. Then, as she confessed to me that she too had a poster or two (out of shot), I recalled that my hot-boy poster phase was in fact later, not until the early 90’s.

It was then that I remembered in the 80’s, before I was into hot boys, I was into… well, pretty ones. Boy George actually. In a big way! HEY – it was the 80’s okay! (And I was young; pre-teen). Again there must have been 80 eyeballs, but these ones were colourful, pretty, and immaculately made-up. I remember one of my favourite past-times was borrowing my mums eye shadow and copying Georgies various eye make-up art on my own wee lids. It was masterful I tell you. The way they got those multi-coloured rainbow blends was just genius. (Sometimes I even put a skirt on my head like a headband and pretended to have long colourful hair like his too).

Each poster presented a new rainbow to try, some even topped it off with the ever popular (in the day) blue mascara! Santa delivered my very own mega-spectrum eye shadow kit one year, plus there was blush so a whole new world opened up. Oh the joy!

Now, when I read people’s bios, you know the ones that say things like, “I’ve been drawing for as long as I could hold a pencil”, I always feel a little lost. I have trouble writing a bio for myself that sounds as passionate and “meant to be” as those.

Do you think “Since the first moment I saw Boy George’s eye shadow I knew I wanted to be an artist” makes the cut? Or how about “I’ve been creating art from the moment I could clutch an eye shadow applicator doobawacky in my tiny hand”?

I’m not sure what Martha would have to say about all of this, but I guess you could say Boy George was my muse. So, while he’s out there somewhere picking up trash off the streets, he can relish in the fact that one little girl was so moved by his rainbow eyes that she’s now all grown up and has even quit her job to chase the dream… Ah, red, gold and green, red gold and gree-ee-ee-een! (pff, sorry)