On - "Are you Living Your Dream?" And some Exciting News to Share

So lately I've not been able to get these words out of my head -

"How many of us out there are actually living our dreams?"

Being a mother, I tell my children all the time to reach for their dreams

"dream big and work hard for what you want in life." 

But I must confess, though, that I am very hesitant to live my own dream.

Why dear reader you may ask...  am I so afraid.

I guess that I always figured that making art for a living 

would never be a real job -

you know one that paid the bills and all that

----------------------------

But I  do have some exciting news to share

and maybe it's a small step towards one

day reaching my dream

The Wild One (see pic below) 

is now hanging

in the recently renovated 

Cafe Lumos

Oh my !! How gorgeous is that colour on the wall.

And I am CHUFFED to bits that such a local icon

such as Cafe Lumos, wants to hang my painting on their

wall . So thank you Leon Strachan (owner) for giving me the
opportunity to showcase my art to a wider audience.


The Longest Journey begins with a single step - Lao Tzu

On the Evolution of Wednesday's Child

One of my favourite parts of making art

is the evolution part of it..

You start off with throwing some paper

and paint at a canvas

and it can look a total mess

cover up bits

with a bit more paint and start 

drawing in some ideas

cover up some more bits

change your mind about colours

sand some things back

and you end up with 

a finished piece!

So here she is

Wednesday's Child

16 x 30 inches

On Another Recent Obsession - Antlers

There are many many things that inspire me - I talked about a few in this post here and sometimes it's difficult to narrow down what I want to paint.. (I think like many other people I wish I had more hours in the day).. right now another thing that is really catching my eye and interest, is anything with Antlers

Antler Necklace via Etsy.com

via studiodiy.com

via wanelo.com

and another necklace which I WANT SO BAD

via etsy.com

These things above heavely influenced the above painting

Titled - The Wild One

On Being Entirely Bonkers - and a gift for my readers

as a gift to the people that take the time to read my ramblings, I've re-purposed one of my paintings and put one of my favourite Alice In Wonderland Quotes over the top of it. 

Feel free to download it, print it, frame it, cut it out and glue it on a card and give it to one of your "bonker" friends.... feel free to do whatever you want with it. 

Share it too (if you want)..

Love me xx

On drawing inspiration for art

Another question I get asked a lot is, "where do you draw inspiration from when you paint"

I would love to say "from my own creative mind", but that only happens sometimes. I will dream something or see something in my minds eye and I will be bursting to paint it.. Quite often however, it never turns out like I think it will, but sometimes it does.. and I kind-a like that. 

But there are lots of other places I draw inspiration from, but today I will just talk about my top 5 ... so here goes:-

No. 1 - Pinterest - yep good ole Pinterest... yes I spend way too much time on here than I should, but it has so much yummy stuff to refer too and I'm not just talking about food. I often will see a beautiful photo of a gorgeous glamour shoot and I love the dress or hair and then I paint the way I think it looks... here is an example -

and here is my version

No. 2  A few posts back, I spoke about my love for Frida Kahlo - you can read about it - here... so I draw a lot of inspiration from the colour's she was renowned for wearing and her beautiful face. And also her own beautiful paintings. 

No. 3 From the background of my painting. I just play away sometimes splashing paint here and there and then after awhile, I'll stop and say "now what does this background tell me it wants to have painted over the top of it?" Yep seriously, I really do let the background talk to me LOL

The above painting has layers and layers of paper and paint. 

No. 4 Colour's - sometimes I just want to play with a certain colour of paint, generally one that I haven't played with in a while. Like at the moment, I seem to be a little obsessed with Orange.

Last but not least.... No. 5 (and please note there are lots of other places I draw from, but I dont want to bore you with a list as long as my arm) is Nature.. yep that's right - tree's, bird's, poppies, flowers....

Below is an example of inspiration drawn from nature.

As always thanks for stopping by.

On How I Became An Artist

Last night a friend of mine (and you know who you are if you are reading this blog post) told me that she had just recently read my blog and was fascinated to learn that I had dabbled in Scrapbooking (which is what she does and loves). She then asked, how did you go from that to painting?

So I thought, "great question" and one I do tend to get asked a bit. So I thought I'd address it here.

This might be a long and hopefully not too boring post, so I'll try and keep it to some small dot points:-

• I loved doing art all through school, but in my last year of high school, I had an awful teacher who scarred me for a long time. 
• Eventually I had children and so had a little bit of extra time on my hands and just at that right time (because as they say, things always happen exactly when you need them too) I received a few hand made cards from my sister in law (who is very arty and crafty - here is her blog - http://discoversu.com/ she is a Stampin Up Demonstrator). I thought, ooohhh I'd love to give this a go. So bought some card stock, some stamps, punches and a few other bits and pieces and set about making cards for friends and family
• Eventually I joined a few online groups and discovered different techniques and eventually worked out that I LOVED LOVED LOVED working messy and making backgrounds with mixed media and  paint.

Here is an example of very early work

and another

• Then I dabbled in some scrapbooking, but decided it wasn't really my bag

Here's another early example - 2007

• Wanting to continue and develop  my love for working messy and playing with paint and mixed media, I did a few online courses and made lots and lots of mistakes. One thing not many people know about me, is that I have taken a hammer and a knife to a few canvas's I hated the site of!! ***whoops*** now I know that most of the time I can just paint over it..... but that took me a few years and a few more tears to work that lesson out!

One of my earlier paintings that I've smashed up!

• More experimenting, more play, I have finally discovered that RIGHT NOW at this VERY MOMENT the things I REALLY REALLY love to paint are: 

Beautiful Girls

Trees with birdies in them

Poppies

and a bit of f abstract every now and again. 

These things make me blissfully happy. 

So thank you for sharing my journey. I hope it wasn't too painfully boring and I've managed to sum up about 11 years worth of play and making mess, into a few short paragraphs. But that's it. That's my story and I would love to hear your story if you want to share. 

On A Work In Progress - The Wild One

So I thought I would share a little

visual journey of one of my paintings

from start to finish.

Hope you enjoy :-)

Above are the beginnings of getting paper down on to canvas. 

She is a big one at 60 x 40 inches, so the easiest way for

me to work on her, was to lay her down on my kitchen table

(yes that is my pooch underneath the table sleeping)

after applying the paper, I drew out what I wanted her to look like.

And then started applying colour to her face and body.

(note photo taken inside with an iphon)

then some texture (paint) in the background

tweaked her shading and coloured her hair

after adding some flowers to her hair

this is a close up of her finished face.

and this is her lying flat on the lawn outside, 

so I could take a photo from a different angle

and the finished product.

She is titled

The Wild One

As always, thank you for taking the time

to pop by. Please feel free

to leave a comment xx

On Having a Studio Space that does NOT look like something out of the pages of a magazine

One of the questions I often get asked is - "where do you create".

I would love to say in "my gorgeous and fabulously large studio" ......

but the honest answer is - 

 in my lounge room. 

My art space area,  which also doubles as a work-out area (note treadmill)

and from another angle you can also see that it also works as  

an office space (see far top right of the picture) and an entertaining area (tv)

A little background about me and my family -
my husband works for a mining company in a fairly remote town  in Western Australia
and so therefore we rent a house from the company he works for.
We have a 3 bedroom house and two children, so we don't have a spare room.
I have a little storage room attached to the side of the house where I store all of my supplies,
but unfortunately it is very dark and a bit too small to create art in.

We are lucky in that our lounge room/kitchen/dining area is all open plan,
so we manage to all fit into this one little area quite comfortably
and the lighting is pretty good in here (which I am very thankful for).

So after all of this waffle, I guess the point I'm trying to make here is this -
don't let space hinder you from not living the creative life you want to live.
Sure when people rock up to my house, they see my crap lying around everywhere
and my house never looks like anything out of a Better Homes and Gardens Magazine,
but I guess for me, I've never been about that sort of living anyway.
I would much rather live an authentic life, doing what makes my soul happy,
 than have an immaculate house that I've spent all day cleaning.

And I have to admit it's kind-a cool too, that when people do pop around for a cuppa,
 they can see straight away what I'm working on and
quite often will give me their feedback (good or bad lol). 

I could also talk about making time to create
on here
but that is a question for another post on another day.

 So for now I will leave you with these images of a few famous creatives and their studio's. 

Roald Dahl - Children's Book Author (photo courtesy of the guardian uk)

Virginia Woolf, Novelist (photo courtesy of the guardian uk)

Nigella Lawson - Food Writer

Ok Ok I'll admit it, if I could,
I would give up my second born to have a studio like the one below
(especially if it was overlooking water)

Willem de Kooning’s studio – East Hampton, New York

Swoon!!

On Being Authentic

Nuff said.