I'm sitting here with wet clothes on and it's raining hard outside. This is the storm season here, and we're all prepared, statewide, for whatever comes. This time of year they have adverts on the TV reminding us to make sure that we have torches with fresh batteries, candles, plenty of food in cans etc. The weather is so unpredictable... and can be violent. The sky has been rumbling for an hour or more and I just had time to clear the gutters (been meaning to for a couple of weeks or so... I tend to do it every 6 weeks, but more often this time of year. We have a tree immediately outside the front of the house that is legendary for dropping leaves all year round and sometimes for dropping the limbs themselves. They call it the '
widowmaker' (Eucalyptus). Bit of a worry that, I'll be honest, although they don't tend to drop whole branches unless there's a drought on.
Tracey and Rob and the kids have all gone away for a week or so to Melbourne and then to Tazzy, so looking at the sky and stroking my chin like the sage that I'm not, I thought I'd perhaps park two of our cars under their canopy, in case the clouds were bringing some of that nasty hail that I've mentioned a couple of times before. I couldn't get the Ute in as it's got a starter motor issue and Daile was out in the little-un. I picked up a tarpaulin that Matilda has been playing with and began to fold it up with a view to putting it over the bonnet of the Ute to protect it from whatever was coming. As I picked it up I noticed movement and saw a spider next to my hand that was almost as big as the hand itself... but it ran away like a rocket. It's funny to think how blase we've become about this stuff now. Four years ago that would have really freaked me out!
The weather had really closed in this morning. You can FEEL the temperature climbing prior to the storm... and your clothes start to stick to you. It felt all the more close given that today we had decided that we'd put up the tree... and call it Christmas. You go around the house opening everything that will open, never mind the mosquitoes, then when the storm comes, you have to rush around closing everything up again to keep the water from blowing through. The sound is awesome, especially in the garage that doesn't have any insulation in the roof, so it's just the tin roof and a sheet of plasterboard. I don't really know why corrugated tin roofs are so ubiquitous here, but it wouldn't be Australia without it. You get that lovely feeling when you're in the darkness of the garage with the roar of the rain hitting the roof, watching the sheets of rain overflowing from the gutters (even when they're unblocked). It comes down so fast that sometimes it can run over the inside of the gutter and across the soffit where it runs down the light fittings and drips off the exterior bulbs. It's a badly built house from that perspective, and some of the ceiling was damaged by this prior to our taking it on. It's been fine since we moved in, although in a really heavy storm we do get a river running through the breather holes at one side of the garage, across the floor and out under the roller door on the other side of the router. The kids and I get leaves and have 'boat' races across the garage at those times, with the sound of the rain for company and the release from the oppressive heat to make us all feel better. If there's beer in the 'Dad' fridge for me at those times and spare milk in the upstairs one for the girls, it's perfect.
We had the junior concert the other day, the one that I'd been making the hats for, and it went off a real treat. It was actually much better than the senior school version that Matilda had been involved in, as it was a really nicely thought through production involving the whole of the junior school in one big story with each class contributing a performance that was part of the collective.
Here's a few pics of some of them. I'd been lent a camera by Peta, and she's got a fantastic long lens for this kind of stuff... I didn't get brill pics of Phoebe which is a pain, (too busy trying to also get pics of our mates kids, but you'll get the idea anyway.
The flower girls...
Olivia...(My favourite little imp) she's SO cute!
one of the grass props...(from cardboard)
Feeb...
Aaliyah...
Natalia...
...the bugs. (Apparently the different expressions I'd painted on them, sort of corresponded with the character of the boys...according to Mrs George!) This is Jackson...
...more Feeb...
and with Kyla...
This week, I've delivered my first commission. He was (he says) 'Over the moon Brian'... but since he's American, he of course didn't use English footy language but said something like 'Wow' or some such gratifyingly impressed thing, which was nice... and a great relief as it's been a difficult little pic to do. She's a 'bonny wee thing' but the photo (the only photo I was given of her) was quite bland from a tonal range point of view. I'm not sure that it's quite THAT good, and to be honest, I feel that it's a bit of a shame. It's on the website if you know where that is.
I'll put up some paintings here when I'm a bit more sure of myself OK?
Meantime, I'm doing a larger painting of a guy that I've made friends with recently that's a sculptor and a lecturer at the local university (or one of them). It's being a bit of a struggle too, but I'm going at it diligently and I'm making some headway, even if it's only against my own personal ghouls. I really want to be able to achieve the kind of painterly skill that someone like John Singer Sargent had. He was pulling amazing paintings out of the hat by the time he was in his late teens and early 20's so I've got a bit of catching up to do eh! I've also been trying to find someone famous that I can paint for one of the forthcoming competitions (around March or April for submission). I'm not confident that I could win one of them, but art is so subjective, you just don't know, and you have to be in it to win it don't you. Obviously, the whole being an artist thing is a bit of a worry and stress, and Daile has been a real trooper about it, but I can say that when I'm painting, I feel 'in the zone' relative to anything else that I've been doing in the last few years, so all I need is a break I guess... and lots of practice. It IS possible to make a shit load of money if you can get a good style, get a good break, and are prepared to market like crazy. Winning a competition isn't the only way to make it of course, but it's a real crog up!
Dan (the guy I'm painting) is doing a PhD in the way that we interact from an aesthetic perspective to the touch of something. Beauty is in the touch of the be-HOLDER' being the operative idea I think. He's a very interesting and interested man... with a compelling manner that leaves you feeling privileged to just be hanging out with him - and since I don't normally resonate with people all that readily, this is a bit of a novelty for me.
Interestingly, I've met several people since I slung the hook, that I've had quite long and interesting conversations with. I seem to be having them in the street almost... with waiters or CEO's, shop assistants, and Professors. I met a guy at a do last night that is an academic at QU doing research in the way that animals perceive colour. A lot of what he's doing has a direct correlation to what Dan is doing.. and it's great to be hearing about it and seeing the potential connections. Justin (the bloke I met) was telling me that simple crustaceans such as shrimps, have 4 times the receptors that humans have in their eyes.. and that some of those receptors are capable of seeing ultra violet. His area of interest is in how animals communicate. Why do some fish have bright colouring and can afford to be brightly coloured even though that makes them easy to see, and others can't. He's been doing major research about this doing extensive long dives on the reef where he and his team are underwater for days at a time...without coming up... so that they become accepted as part of the scene down there. One of the things he's discovered is that the predators are not always equipped to see the same things that we can see, so that what appears to be a bright colour to us, may not be to them at all and could be camouflage! He's a marine biologist. Matilda wants to be a marine biologist, so I was particularly interested. He's also nearly 50 and a pom that wears a kilt. I love the wacky as you know.
So anyway, I'll finish now... the rain has stopped, the sun is out and the oil needs changing.
