This summer has been good to me. Good for me. It’s been a time of resting, a time for clearing out the cobwebs and a time of preparation. I’m feeling rejuvenated, more myself. I’ve enjoyed the company of many beautiful individuals and seen some very moving things.
One of the small pleasures I have in life is to journal my innermost thoughts, my sketches and my songs. Things that move me get written down in some form or another. It’s messy at times (I have many an active book lying around) and doesn’t always make perfect sense, but it can also be quite surprising and productive… particularly in hindsight.
I captured my friend Von, also a wild journalist, in the midst of one of her entries here:
Sometimes it’s good to just sit and take in one’s surrounds. I’ve done a lot of this over the last few weeks. Drawing this is also good because it tunes me in to the details I might not otherwise pay much attention to. My time in the Grampians involved soaking in the surrounds of two places in particular.
The first was the natural rock pools, the Venus Baths, which provided a well-needed retreat from the soaring mercury levels. Here we sat, sometimes moving from one pool to the next, gazing at the darting dragonflies, the overhead formations of cloud and the brilliant reflections. We even found a beautiful blue freshwater yabby in our favourite sitting spot on one day.
The other place that beckoned us to sit and just be was the back porch of the old house we use whilst visiting. It was also a place to chat and to eat but we often found ourselves quietly sitting and taking it in. After resting there so many times a day I began to see new things – such as the random flight paths of the passing butterflies and the changing colour of the overhanging eucalypts. Apart from the obvious visits of emus and deer, the smaller, more humble, but equally beautiful occurrences slowly came to the light.
I’ve just spent a week in a favourite place of mine, the Gariwerd. This is the Aboriginal name for the mountain ranges also named the Grampians National Park in Western Victoria. I’ve been fortunate enough to call this place my second home ever since I can remember and have experienced multiple treasures of the Australian bushland throughout my visits. In the last week alone I have seen countless Kangaroos, Lizards and Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos whilst also spotting a rare Powerful Owl and its mate on a hike up the Chautauqua Peak. These owls are AMAZING. They grow to about 60cm and can catch and eat up an adult possum (not a trivial task). The one I found was sitting at head level and wasn’t phased in the slightest with our staring and pointing. After searching for the partner we found it high up in a nearby tree feasting on one of the big cockatoos I mentioned previously. Uggh. But amazing.
So I’m feeling quite refreshed and ready to take on this new year. I’m excited about 2008 and how it will pan out. Hope is a good thing.
I also had the time and headspace to do a little sketching in my brand-spanking-new sketchbook (a well thought out Chrissy present) in this holiday time and will probably post a couple of them over the next few days. This one is a view I saw a lot of as I rested on the porch of the house we stay at when visiting.
A happy and hopeful new year to you blogger friends.
So it’s been a while since I’ve graced the pages of the blogosphere. It’s not been intentional, just coincidental. I have the best of intentions to come and write and comment. Then I get to the computer and hesitate, I slightly consider the enjoyment of sharing thoughts and ideas, before I jump into the online job applications (which take forever), or get distracted by the plethora of people congregating in this study, one of the smallest rooms in our house. On the rare occasion that I do contribute to a post of another it’s often misunderstood anyhow.
Enough of this though. Now that my course has come to an end I intend to write a bit more online in one way or another.
Today I had the freedom to draw all day. Well, perhaps this is a slight warping of the truth. I do have certain pending matters to deal with – such as finding a job and cleaning for the arrival of foreign dwelling brother and sister in law. But today, the beautiful wet weather called for green tea and letter writing and the pleasure of mark making. My drawing ventured to subject matter once very familiar. As a kid I drew a truckload of fairies and small folk. Sketchbooks and computer paper overflowing with them. I loved their delicacy, their inconspicuous nature and their playground. I think it was their dwellings that seized my imagination best. That and the ability to fly. Tiny people living among the natural wonderland of my wild garden. I vividly recall my neighbour creating a tiny structure out of the thinnest twigs and grasses to provide shelter for the little beasts. I was captivated.
Anyway, these days I don’t tend to spend much time thinking about such things. But I was sketching a face today and this one just jumped out at me. So this goes out to the winged folk.
Filed under: art
As some of you who regularly drop by notafigment territory will have noticed, I’ve been getting into working with charcoal on a more frequent basis this year. I love the malleability of charcoal on a paper page. At times I get frustrated with my lack of control over its mark making, usually when I’m on a quest for detail, but on the whole it’s my favourite medium. Even the telltale black fingerprints that manage to make their way all over the intentionally clean parts of the page; it’s all part of the coaly goodness.
I don’t usually like talking about my art in a big way. I prefer the concept of people taking what they want from it as they reach different milestones in their own life journey. This piece is the result of a few drafts from of a wealth of thoughts that have swum their way through my mind for some time now. I’m intending on making it the first within a series of works.
