Diary Of An Artist In A New World

I Love How The Rain Turns The City Into Visual Art

 

 The walk from the studio down William Street to the city CBD is one I love at any time, but I especially love it in the rain. Tonight the rain was teeming down. There was no wind, and the rain was the sort of warmish rain that is the best. The rain was streaming past the streetlights. That is a special delight seeing the rainwater turned into a stream of cascading jewels as if it is a sparkling carnival necklace draped around the lights. 

As I walked past the Cathedral the bells were peeling and that itself gained a surreal quality as deep chimes of the big bells danced it time with the rhythmic plittering and plattering of rain in the street. Even the cars join into the chorus as the normal car sounds are modified by the swishes and sloshes of the wheels in the river of water on the road surface.

 

 

 

Ultimately, however, the greatest joy is the colors and the lights reflected from the sidewalks and street surfaces that turn the normal street view into a work of impressionistic art. Everything looks so different. The night rain increases the contrasts so there are more darks and grays so that the colors of tail lights and traffic lights increase in intensity and then are doubled as reflections mirror an up world with a matching down world.

I hear people complain about the rain and I wonder why. Can they not see the mysterious poetry that envelops the skyscrapers in the rain, the change that overtakes them as their tops disappear into the low cloud and they become like trunks of trees in a gray forest holding the sky up. Do they not see the softening of the world that occurs like some giant Pissarro had taken his paint brush to the city.

I think it is beautiful and I love rain so much I wish it rained like this often enough to satisfy the poet in my heart. Where I grew up in North Queensland in the rainforest near Ravenshoe it rained on average 120 days a year. That is one day in three and I never tired of the misty beauty that would come into the mountains and valleys and all the inevitable results like all the waterfalls, and the emerald green color of the grass and the way everything always had a luxuriant feeling of growth. Rain in the city has a different feel to in the rainforest and is much more about light and colors. It is a creator of a different kind of magic, and I love it just as much or more. 

Discovering The Protective Instinct As A Dad

Tonight as is usual on a Saturday night I went to get my boys for the night. Leif was working but Pablo was on his way and I went down to Woolloomooloo to get Gian, Ashton, and Anton. Thats them in a photograph I took while walking with them. As we reached William Street a drunk woman was fighting with her boyfriend and screaming abuse at him. Every second word was a swear word. He walked across the street through the moving cars and sensibly disappeared from view but she kept screaming abuse after he was gone and so I told her to stop swearing in front of the children. She objected to that and I was the focus of her abuse then but at least she crossed the road and I hoped that was the end of it.

I kept my eye on her as we too needed to cross. As we walked across she decided to come back enraged and attacked Gian in the middle of the street. There is no obvious reason for her going for him. I was the only one who had said anything to her and then it was only the not swearing in front of children comment. She was clearly not behaving rationally. She only managed to kick Gian but she was surprised at the speed with which I sprang at her. She managed to duck and ran and I fell to the road surface but was quickly up and after her and she fell to the ground on the footpath. I never touched her but I was full of rage and told her with my fists clenched in front of her face never to touch my kids ever again. I turned away dismissively and she fled.

Just then the police arrived. Fortunately they had been driving up William Street and had seen what went on. They took my details and Gian's as well and asked if we would make a statement if necessary when they caught up with the woman. They indicated that she is well known to them.

It was just a few seconds of drama. Gian was fine (I lost a little skin from my knee when I fell) but it is amazing how we can spring instantly into action to protect our loved ones and when our kids are threatened we can become like a tiger. At times like that there is no time to think just a necessity to act. I think my boys were surprised by my reaction and speed in the situation but I think they feel very safe and protected whenever we are out in the world and maybe now they know why. 

On Being A Digital Artist & The Lamborghini Miura

A lot of people seem to struggle with understanding what it means to be a digital artist. Sure they know that we work on the computer but apart from that they just don't understand. For people like that traditional media like paper and charcoal and oil paint and canvas are "real art" and everything else isn't quite the same. They are right you know - it isn't the same, and if anything, I look back at my time painting with paint as being a bit limited.

Summer Rain In Kings Cross

Yesterday was wet with strong winds. It was difficult trying to take these photos, keeping steady against the wind on the umbrella while shooting one handed and trying to keep the camera dry. As always I love the rain, it is a visual feast of altered tones and harmonies of Grey, and the reflections are always beautiful. These photographs were taken while going to the supermarket and returning to the studio in William Street.

This first photograph is of the walk up the hill to the supermarket. It is on 2 levels underground beneath the Coca Cola sign. It is about a 3 or 4 minute walk from the studio front door. These views are what I see almost every day, although, of course, with ever changing weather and moods.

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.

The Yellow House

There are lots of reasons I fell in love with this place when I first discovered it, but my first impression was of the bright yellow color. It is such a sunny and warm little building nestled amongst the bigger brown and grey drab of the business-like buildings all around. It is warm and inviting, it has personality. It is like the little red engine that could - this is the little yellow house that could. It is my little magical refuge from all the grey of the world.

Of course there is the other thing. No feeling artist could help but love the hopes and dreams that Vincent wrapped up in his little yellow house in Arles all those years ago. It was his magical place where he could invent the artist within, safe within a nest the color of sunshine. So to find this place of the sunshine here in my Kings Cross was to find a place that spoke to the deepest levels within my psyche.

This place is a place of special stories. Downstairs is the oldest business in Kings Cross. It first opened its doors in the 1880's just down the road before this building existed. When you look into their shop you see the values of an older world in which the latest electronic products sit side by side with something old and well used. They are like a family to me. They are proud that they have the mad artist upstairs I think. They have stories of other artists they helped over the years, other studios in the garret. Some names that are now famous but were then young and poor dreamers.

The building came into existence in 1923. All the buildings along this side of William Street are no older than this because back then William Street needed to be widened and all the buildings on the south side of the street were demolished to accomodate a wider road. The city fathers paid fore the work by selling off the buildings they owned. This was one of them. It was sold on condition a 3 story commercial building be built. This is it. In the floor I see evidence of machinery that was once used here. I do believe it has been a printery. Another time there was a photographic studio. The walls have the feeling of happy times and many lives that enjoyed the warmth of the winter sun through the big window at the front.

Now it is my turn to make good things in this special yellow house. I hope to always do honor to its memories.

Music And Rainforest In William Street

When travelling from place to place I variously use my iPod or mobile phone. On the iPod I listen mostly to podcasts and audiobooks. When I only have the phone with me I will watch TV news, or play a game if on a train. Walking, I will listen to fm radio or my recorded music.

Tonight walking up William Street I was listening to a mix that had favorites from the 60's to recent. As I walked The Hollies singing "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" came on. Every time I hear that piece of music it instantly transports me back to a certain bit of road in North Queensland many years ago. I was hitch hiking, going to the Zen Colony down Sluice Creek Road. The cars were few that day and I had been walking for a few miles. The air was warm and clear, the grass an emerald green, the rainforest rich and dark. The smell of things growing was thick like honey in my nose. It was a long straight strip of bitumen grey and warm that showed the tired cracks of thousands of wheels since it had been laid back in the War. It was a long storyboard stretched out before the dirt road that lay ahead. To my left was a farm that my father used to own. By then he was a thousand miles away, but I could feel my family presence still in things like the fence I once helped fix, the paddock where I dug the ground. A gate that I could then, and still do, remember driving the tractor through, and the old black dog who was on the other side. There were the places I escaped to for a quiet time of thinking, and looking deep into the sky. The places where my imagination could turn a country loneliness into a fantasy land of my choosing. This was land that was in my soul, and a little of my soul was in the land.

I always return to that piece of road when I hear that song. It's not that I could physically hear it at the time, but it was playing in my head. The problem with having near perfect recall for  such moments is that it fills the head with so much stuff. It can be hard to get to sleep unless I totally exhaust myself, because there are so many experiences that flood my mind constantly. That day back then was no exception. I only heard that song once before that beautiful day yet I could play it in my head with perfect fidelity, and so as I walked I  played the song on my internal MP3 player, and liked it so much I played it a second time. By playing it twice I burned it into the brain so much that I often rewalk that mile or two of road from that idyllic morning so long ago.

This evening, as the cars of William Street whizzed past me they became cows in the field, the cold of winter drizzle became tropical warmth and the buildings became dark green rainforested mountains, and along that country mile as I walked, The Hollies started to sing... again.