Diary Of An Artist In A New World

Adventurers Return To Painting Class

Welcome back to Iain, Irena, and Vee after many adventures. Vee was in New York for a conference regarding her stage production called Mammapaloosa, then a couple of days in Paris to rendezvous with Irena who had been there six months already, painting, and getting herself on French radio. Iain meanwhile had been doing life changing things over in Balmain, and has a smile on his face due to a new Dutch girlfriend. The world is getting more international by the minute. Here they are back in the studio all starting new paintings.

Inspiration As The Model Returns To The Studio

A new term for Sketch Club. A cold night yet the artist's inspiration poses. Pure and essential beauty.  The gentle sound of the rubbing of the ink stick on the stone slab mingles almost imperceptably with the music. An almost inaudible movement of brush from water to ink. The brush raises, poised to follow the eye and the heart. It touches the paper. The artist is drawing again. The bohemian reason for life is in the air. Beauty and appreciation are celebrated. The studio comes to life.

Seonha Spindler's Celebration

It was a very special evening on Saturday evening. Seonha, with Meagan, Sarah, and all her very special friends found the warmth and music and food and wine in the artist's garret for a fun way to celebrate her hens night. I love to see people really enjoying themselves. Here are my photos from the event.

Sydney Skies

It amazes me how so many people do not see beauty in the city. Are they not seeing what I see? Not just beauty, but natural beauty, immense, and laid out like a gigantic artwork across the sky. When you grow up in the country, you learn to look into the sky, learn the habits of the clouds, watch the chaging face of the sky, seek its moods for clues to tomorrow.

The joy of the city is that the sky does not go away. Just as in the country the sky is so different to the hills, so in the city the sky contrasts with the buildings and puts the city into perspective as something insignificant compared to the power of a world that can redraw an entire sky in just a few minutes, and take such a small number of materials, just sky and clouds, and every day create a new artwork that is different from every other sky I have ever seen.

Here I am, able to look up and be amazed constantly. I love the little touches of color here and there, the mixing of yellows and pinks with dusky mauves and soft greys. The gentle changes in structure, the transience of substance, the moodiness - above all, the moodiness.

Swimming In Winter

Last night I went swimming again, the first time since May. It was so difficult forcing myself to the pool. It is about 10 minutes walk down William Street. It doesn't matter that it is a heated pool, the weather was wet and freezing. The whole psyche rebels at the thought of going swimming in that kind of weather.

I was surprised by how many people were there at the pool, it seemed just as busy as the middle of summer. Obviously they don't suffer the same struggles I do to get there. I suspect they mostly enjoy the process, at least those I talk to seem to. I, on the other hand simply never enjoy exercise at any time. I hate the time away from my work, I get bored moving through the water, and I intensely dislike the feeling of exertion and the feeling of muscular tiredness afterwards. Having said that i need to exercise, and swimming is the form of exercise I least detest. At least I don't have that horrible sweatiness to deal with.

I need to get back to swimming twice a week. I had allowed myself a break from swimming in order to get more work done. I hate that exercise takes away from working time. And afterwards I know I am not as efficioent in the mind as I normally am due to physical tiredness. I know people think I am odd, but I love working, and for something to take me away from that I must think it is very important indeed.

Afterwards I made a dinner for me and Pablo of salad. Salad is another thing I do not enjoy, except when i make the special dressing my mother made when I was a kid. It is really simple, but it is the only thing that can make a salad taste great. It is 2/3 fresh cream, 1/3 condensed milk, add pepper, and then brown vinegar to taste (around 2 teaspoons full for 300 ml of cream).

While we ate I was also making some caramel. It is an old country thing as well. Puncture a can of condensed milk, put it in boiling water then boil for a couple of hours. The milk gradually turns into a solid brown mass of pure caramel. It is a treat I make once in ten years or so. I made it once when I was 17 and sharing in a flat in Bundaberg. I forgot to check the water level, and it boiled dry. The can exploded and half caramelised milk was over the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. What a mess. It took ages to clean up. Now it is just a funny story to tell Pablo. I still remember the sound of the can going off, lucky no one was in the room at the time.

Exceptional Talent

Cecilia Kwan had her hens night party here in the studio and while they all said they can't draw, they drew wonderfully well. I loved their company and their enthusiasm for life as well as art.

The Starship Trooper's Birthday

Today is the 8th here in Sydney, but in Kansas City it is the 7th of July 2007, exactly 100 years after the birth of writer Robert Anson Heinlein. When he died of emphysema in 1988 I had one of those terrible moments. Besides feeling that horrible sympathy with his personal loss of life, I felt a loss in mine, and a feeling of neglect. For many years I had intended to write to him with a thank you for all he had (unknowingly) done for me. Then all of a sudden there was no possible way to thank him except in my heart.

Robert Heinlein was a very controversial author for many people but for me he was simply formative at an important time in my life. I must have been only 8 or 9 years old when I first read "Time For The Stars". Forever more I dreamed of being out there in space, a mixture of scientist and artist.

More importantly for me than dreams of being in a space ship, it was in Heinlein that I discovered my ideal of the strong and independent woman. She invariably had deep understandings of life and the unverse, a sensibility that men struggled to keep up with. For a boy on a country farm this was revolutionary thinking. "Space Family Stone" represented my boyhood ideals well, but his adult books like "Stranger In A Strange Land", and "Friday" were important as I worked out my personal journey in youth. I adored Friday and despised the publishing houses. "Friday" had a hero called Friday. Friday was like a science fiction James Bond. Heinlein describes this exciting figure with fast moving action. He allows us to like Friday and allows our prejudices to imagine the character. It is only when substantially into the book that you discover that Friday is a woman. Then much further into the book we discover that she is black. Heinlein could challenge prejudices and assumptions and he had several black female heroes in his books. His publishers, however studiously ignored the fact, and Friday, in cover art, was always white. Thats why I despised them.

I always loved the way Robert Heinlein thought outside the square. He never followed convention in anything. It is amazing how much convention is followed by most of those who consider themselves unconventional. If you are going to be left wing then there are certain things that you will always ascribe to. Same for those who are right wing. Heinlein, however invented his own path that was confusing for observors. "Stranger In A Strange Land" appeared to be anti war. "Starship Troopers" is claimed by others to be sympathetic to militarism. His philosophy, however, was always impossible to pigeon hole in neat categories like that. What he meant to me was a questioning of all conventional social ideas, a huge respect and love for women, a dislike of prejudices, and a love of individualism. Heinlein did things his own way so much that he constantly invented new words, several of them have entered the Oxford English Dictionary, like the verb grok (an internal understanding especially used in the computer world) and waldo (the name for mechanical arms that manipulate hazardous materials remotely).

My favorites of his story's are probably "By His Bootstraps", "Methuselah's Children", "The Man Who Sold The Moon", and "Friday". "Stranger In A Strange Land", however, while not my favorite, was one of those books that (along side books such as "The Catcher In The Rye" and "On The Road") was transformative for me as a young man. Thats why, I really should have written a thank you letter to Heinlein when I still had a chance.

Fire At Porky's "Brothel" In Kings Cross

I must be an innocent. I always thought of Porky's as just a low class sex toys and porno shop. A fire this morning showed it is quite a bit more than that and it has far more patrons than I would have expected. News reports say about a hundred patrons were evacuated due to a fire. Porky's is described variously as a night club, strip club, and a brothel. The fire was contained to just one room, although smoke damage was more extensive. The fire started at 4:25 am in a bedroom.

It appears there are suspicians that the fire might have been deliberately lit as the police are reported as saying it is "suspicious". I wonder if, in an age of smoking restrictions, a fire started by a cigarette in a bed would now fit the definition of a suspicious fire?

Two people are in hospital being treated for smoke inhalation.

My Little Mulberry Tree

Last night in the dark in Forbes Street I discovered a little treasure. Despite the cold, my little magic mulberry tree had opened a first leaf. There were two of them, tiny and fresh, about the size of a five cent coin. I noticed the  hint of something catching the dim street light above my head and drew the branch down low enough for me to run my finger tips over the softness of the new born leaf. It is very eager to come to life this special little mulberry.

It shouldn't even be here. I discovered it many, many years ago. It grows in a tiny space between two buildings and a few scraggly thin branches weep over an old wooden fence. On the other side of the fence is such a small dark space, that its only real life is in those few fingers that escape the confines. Over the years the property owners have tried to cut it down, but each time it manages to extend its tendrills over the fence once more and then suddenly produce a surprising mass of leaves. Later in the year it will fruit and I will have a taste of two or three delicious mulberries. I have the feeling as I eat them each year that the fruit is somehow just for me, as if the tree and I are having a clandestine affair in the street. it is that kind of special treat that has grown a life inside me beyond the fruit itself. It is as if when I am passing there, I can hear a whisper... "have you forgotten me that it took so long? I have been waiting, all alone, just for you."

One day, perhaps, I will see someone else enjoying a mulberry there in the street and I will wonder what sort of relationship they are having. Meanwhile, however, I prefer to believe that the mulberries were always just for me.

Meet Violetta

Violetta has been doing my hair for most of the last 10 years. She is a very special human being whom I would regard as a friend rather than just the person who does my hair. She works her magic creating the sort of haircut that suits me. Others have done my hair, but I have never been entirely satisfied, but Violetta always manages to get it just right.

She comes from Bulgaria, which is a long way away. She often talks about her mum who is so far away yet so close to her heart. The last couple of years she has gone for long visits with her mum. I think she misses her.

I think too that while she enjoys styling hair, underneath it all she secretly wishes to be an artist and poet living the bohemian life. Perhaps that is why she works in Kings Cross, because here she finds the kindred spirits who help nourish her soul.