beetle boy

Beetle Boy is another work for the eQuinox show. Isn't it curious when little children become attached, then obsessed with certain things? Ponies, fairies, pink, spiderman, trucks, bugs, etc. I think it's so interesting.

Thank-you all for your encouraging comments and compliments about this body of work, I really appreciate it. It's still almost impossible for me to tell if each work is good or not. Sometimes I like some more than others, but I still can't tell what they look like from the perspective of eyes other than mine. So your kind words are helping alot!

A few people have asked about purchasing the illustrations. I know Susan intends to put them for sale in the online store at Artstream. However, with all five people sending her a bunch of works this week, she is going to be soooo busy. Therefore, I recommend that if you're really interested in one, you could either keep your eye on the store (the show opens this week), or if you really can't wait you could email Susan directly to express your interest (susan@artstreamstudios.com).

In other news...
Last week, just as I was about to run out of money, an ex-client (from when I used to have a real job) rang me and offered me casual work helping her manage her website. I was so thrilled. It's flexible hours and I can work from home, so now I've got a bit of money coming in and I can stop worrying for a while. This notion of good fortune just seems to be following me around lately, I really find it hard to believe. It's wonderful, and I feel so grateful every single day.

Hopefully this string of good fortune will stretch out and weave itself into our never ending kitty-search. We went searching again last week, eventually found another kitty we loved, and again, of course, there was a "but". This kitty was picked up on the street, she is microchipped, but the owner never put any info on the chip, so they are untracable. However, by law the shelter has to keep this kitty for 2 weeks just in case the owners manage to track her down. Of course it would be nice for the kitty to find it's owners, but we are also hoping that they don't show. I feel evil thinking like that, but still, I just can't help but want this kitty to be ours so badly. She is just perfect.

We have put a deposit down to reserve her, and if the owners haven't tracked her down and claimed her by next weekend, then she is all ours. Her name is Tilli, she is 12 weeks old and she has little white toes.

We went to vist her in the shelter again yesterday, and I'm not sure if she remembered us or not, but she was giving us so many hugs and kisses, my heart turned to goo. I took a little video on my camera, and I'd show you, but Mr You has hidden the file (at my request) so that I don't spend the entire week watching it over and over, falling madly in love with a little lady who could still slip from our grasp.
My fingers are crossed so tighly I'm cramping up.

how would you describe music to someone who's never heard it?

Because it's Friday afternoon, and there's no better time to put on some music and jiggle out them blues...


3 Piece

Another piece for the eQuinox show.

I was happy to see that Susan had written a bio for me on the Artstream site, because the one I provided her with was rediculous! I didn't mean for it to be, I just can't write those things. I asked Mr You for help when I was trying, and his 2 oh-so-wise pieces of advice were:
1. "Don't ramble on with lies" (which, although sensible, got us into a tiff about him thinking that I ever would!)
and 2. "Try to sneak in the words whimsy blue-smoke" (??? Don't ask. I have no idea!)

So with that as my guidance, you can imagine what I sent... I don't know... something stoopid about Boy George. Anyway, thankfully I have Susan to sort me out.

camellia

Camellia

Another one for the show. Our neighbour has a little camellia tree in his back garden that hangs over into ours. It really makes our yard look so much nicer, and I can see the tops of the leaves and flowers out the window as I shower each morning. I've always loved it, and have been intending to paint or draw it one day. So here it is.

This one is another one about connecting with nature and getting back to basics (as all those crafters and knitters out there seem to be doing). Feeling more intune with the natural flow of things and contributing back in small ways. Living harmoniously and creatively.

I've always claimed I'm no hippy... but I'm starting to sound more and more like one, hehe. (I'll have you know I use deodorant - every day.) Anyway, it's important to all of us.

This blew me away when I read about how Creative Kismet has had their family car converted to run on vegetable oil!
What a champion! Inspiring!

here's to you

This is another of my paintings going to the eQuinox space at Artstream Studios for the illustration show in May.

This one is dedicated to you guys. It's all about the connections and friendships we find across the globe, via this tickley web of internet-y-ness.


Hands Across the Hemispheres

If you hold your hand over the left side of the illo (covering up that half), then you look at the half that is revealed, you can see me dangling from a gum tree. Then do the same thing to the other side and that's you, poking out of the trunk of a 100 year old acorn tree. SEE ?!! There we are being all sweet and friendly, not to mention agile!

I like the way this one turned out (the colours didn't come out too well in the scan though). But I really liked the idea of people linking across the world, reaching out and stretching to make that connection. Despite the distance between us, we all reach to get closer, get to know each other better, and form friendships with people we're unlikely to meet.
It's astonishing really.
I'm so glad to be part of it.

So, bloggy friends, this one's for you!

care package from love

Holy Cow! Today I got a package in the mail for no particular reason. And MAN was it a package!
I felt like I’d just gotten a super-personalised Christmas hamper, with all the trimmings, all in a stylish black and white colour-scheme:
- Handwritten recipes for pumpkin pie, and pastry!
- A ready made pumpkin pie fill mix, to get me started, and fulfil my life long desire to try pumpkin pie!
- 3 (not 1 or 2, but 3) mixed CDs filled with super cool music!
- 2 amazing glass bead bracelets!
- A polkadotted head scarf! (which I’m wearing right now)
- An adorable illustrated book about entertaining for various occasions!
- A HANDBAG!
- And an incredibly sweet card!



Can you believe it? I can’t! How amazing! I love it all and I’m completely blown away…

All this from someone I’ve never even met… my dear bloggy friend Love Squalor.

Thank-you, Thank-you, Thank-you! I seriously cannot believe it. I don't know what to say. Thank-you!

(p.s. sadly my photo doesn't do it any justice. There's so much there, it just kept on coming out of the box.)

my quiet forest

I must say this is my favourite piece from all of the works that are going to the show at eQuinox. This one is called "My quiet forest".


My Quiet Forest

It's World Earth Day, so I thought it was poignant to show you this little cut-out work today. It's about feeling a connection with nature, understanding the symbiosis, the need for us to live more in tune with our earth, to respect it, honour it, and learn from it. I was really pleased with the way this work ended up having a sense of serenity and calm. I strongly believe that if we can find a way to stop taking so much from the earth, start giving, that we will remember how much the earth can give us in return, things we haven't even discovered yet.

Today, take a quiet moment to praise nature. Hug a tree in your garden, lay on the grass, smell a flower, examine a seed pod, listen to the waves, sketch the shape of a branch, breath in some fresh air.
It has soul, give it some love.


...detail

paper dolls

Here are some more works for the show at eQuinox. These ones are actual paper dolls, painted with watercolour and mounted in mat windows (ready for easy framing). A new technique for me, but one I love and am bound to do more of from this point onward.

I love the naive child-like idea of paper dolls, and also the old time folk craft memories that they rekindle. While making these I remembered a 5 day road trip back when I was only 4 (before my sister was born). We were moving to the top end of Australia, a long way away. I remember keeping myself and my soft-toys entertained for that long long road trip by making paper dolls. The backseat became crowded with tiny hand-holding people.
(Actually, come to think of it, that was probably a strange thing giving scissors to a 4 year old in the backseat of a moving vehicle! But, hey, that was back before seatbelts, bike helmets, and sunscreen!)

The theme of my body of work for this show is "connection": the various ways it manifests, and what it means in different circumstances. While these paper-dolls are literally connected, they can also represent a community, togetherness, a connection in place and background. A solidarity.



Dolls Dancing


...detail


This one is a little bit romantic...

Across a Crowded Room

how many times can a little heart break

Do you remember the story of Mr Possum Pants from last week?

Well it happened again.

We looked at another 2 cat shelters this week, and then today went back to the first one where we first met Mr Possum Pants. After 2 weeks we finally both fell in love with a new kitten all over again. This one didn't have a name yet, but that didn't stop her smooching us, and after some serious bonding time we invited her to come home and live with us. The carer at the centre (who remembered us from last time) prepared her carry cage, and was about to type our details into her microchip, when suddenly there was a distraction, and scuffle and the heartbreaking news that our newly chosen kitten had been reserved by someone else.

I couldn't belive it. I simply ignored her, in complete denial, thinking she couldn't possibly be talking to us. Then as it sank in, all I could say was "you're kidding...right?" She felt terrible and started passing us different kittens in a furious attempt to help transfer our attachment. But as terrible as she felt, I can assure you it was no-where near as bad we did. And you know what... we couldn't get the hell out of there fast enough.

I don't know what the lesson is in all of this, but right now it sure as hell doesn't feel like a good one. It doesn't bode well.

As soon as my eyes stop dripping I'm heading straight down there with a stack of sticky post-it notes to teach them that it ain't hard to write a quick note: "cutest tabby in the room, the one with the round face and white tummy, is taken" and stick it on the fricken' door! I mean how hard can it be?!!

fortune

Looking for Love


Sometime Soon

These little guys are my entry for Illustration Friday this week, theme "fortune".

They are two of my 13 new illustrations that will be showing in the eQuinox space at Artstream Studios during the {Un}limited illustration show in NH, May to July. They'll be avaliable for sale through Artstream Gallery from the 2nd May.

unlimited

Far out! Another whole week! How does this keep happening? Anyway I should be more chatty from now on in because I've finished the big bunch of paintings I've been consumed by for the past 5 or 6 weeks.

There is an amazing exhibition happening at Artstream Gallery in May called {Un}limited. It's an illustration exhibition and features the works of Penelope Dullaghan, Ashley G, and Lisa Congdon. I wish I could see it, it will be sooo amazing!

Anyway, my big news is that I have done 13 works that will be showing at the same time in the eQuinox Gallery space at Artstream. So if you go to {Un}limited, don't forget to mosey on out the back and have a gander at my stuff too.

It all just kind of happened, I'm still not sure how, and I'm still having trouble believing that it's real, (I even double checked my email just before publishing this post, just in case there was a note saying "sorry, we made a mistake"). Anyway I think I'm up to about 843 in the count of how many times I have thanked Susan (from Artstream). I've never been very good at playing it cool. hee.

I'll be showing you the works I've done for the show this week... promise. All are based on the theme of "connection", and are watercolour on paper, mounted in mats, and some are even framed. All will be for sale through the gallery, so if want any you should get in touch with Susan, or check out the website (I'm not sure if they'll be for sale in their online shop yet). The exhibition starts on the 2nd May and runs through to 11th of July. Pl-enty of time to go see it.
Artstream is in Rochester, New Hampshire, United States, (a bit far away for me to go to for the weekend).

fake friends

It's been a whole week! I can't believe that time has slipped by that quickly. A whole week since I last posted. I've been extra busy; painting lots, Mr You's birthday, photographing a wedding, being a guest at another wedding, cooking for guests, and now back to painting lots. It's all been really fun (but a bit whirlwind at the same time).

It WAS loads of fun, I have to remember that because right now I'm feeling a little forlorn…

For Mr You’s birthday present I decided to turn Fake Casey into somebody real. I gave him a whole bag of cat things, a letter from our real estate agent giving us permission to have a kitty, and an invitation to join me at the kitty adoption place yesterday. I could hardly wait, all weekend I was jumping out of my skin at the idea of having a kitty around – a real one this time, not just Fake Casey.

So yesterday we went along for our adoption date. First we went into a room of kittens, small and soft and very very cute, but also intensely hyper. Then we went upstairs to a room full of slightly older kittens all the way through to fully-grown cats. They were everywhere! In the open cages, under the cages, leaping across the tops of the cages, playing on the toys and in the tunnels, sitting on laps, bouncing up and down the stairs, sleeping in the beds… They were everywhere! At first it was really overwhelming, and difficult to get an idea what each kitty was like. Mr You found one at one stage that he liked, but then it bounded off and we couldn’t find it again.

We spent about an hour there spending quality time with as many as we could, and then (as we had dreamed) one chose us. He was 6 months old, black and brown striped tabby, kinda fluffy with a very fluffy tail. He was playing with Mr You first, then he came and curled up in my lap. He was soooo sweet, his name was Mr Possum Pants, and we both loved him.

BUT as we told the girls that Mr Possum Pants was the one for us, they told us that he was reserved by one of the staff, (she is just waiting on permission from her landlord). I leaked a few tears, we put our name down for him in case she couldn’t take him, and we came home with empty hands and heavy hearts.

We’re hoping, unlikely as it is, that he still needs a home when we go back on Friday. Until then we’re trying to put him out of our minds and get on with all that we need to do.

So for now Fake Casey has a new friend: Fake Mr Possum Pants, and they’re the best of friends!

Update: We got the phone call today to tell us that Mr Possum Pants was adopted by the other girl. We are both so so sad.

ladyboys

I’m super busy working on a whole bunch of paintings at the moment (I’ll share them soon), but it has come to my attention that I seem to have trouble making boys look like boys. I’ve tried all sorts of things; short hair, flattening out their cheekbones, fuzzier eyebrows, squarer jawline, and there’s even a bit of man-nipple showing in the punk one! But each time they still lack that chromosome and are mistaken for ladies. The only failsafe is adding facial hair.

Don’t feel bad if you’ve mistaken my lads for gals, you’re not the only one. When I described these fellas as boys, Mr You was shocked.
“They’re not boys, they’re hot lesbians!”

Go figure.

Apparently I can’t draw boys, but I’ve got the minorities all worked out. Next on the drawing board are transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens! Stay tuned...

(…and with the keywords in this post I can sit back an watch my google search hits skyrocket)