My first life drawing session!

My first time at a life drawing class. The model was a petite German lady called Bianka, an experienced artist’s model and a sunny, well-travelled, intelligent pixie. Of course it doesn’t matter how petite and trim a model is, when I draw a woman, she puts on 15 kilos just because, well, that’s how I feel about the pose. I am drawing on what I know, and the drawing is not Bianka, nor is it me, but a hybrid third of all those involved. Heh.

Worked with soft and hard chalks. Some pencil for the last drawings, because I was getting tired and knew that my “zone” moment had passed (but I was thrilled that, at some point, I found myself ‘in the zone’, if only for a brief 20 minutes or so) There are some tiny areas in these drawings that I’m happy with…I’m talking about a few inches here or there. On the whole, though, these are learning drawings, and of no value in themselves.

I threw most of the drawings away when I got home (and one of the better ones was picked up by the wind and whisked into the water…can’t even remember what it looked like, really, I never got a good look at it.) Only kept a few for these photographs, but will probably end up throwing all (but one) away, after I post this. It’s a tactic to keep me attending the drawing sessions: don’t get precious, don’t ‘collect’, don’t get smug, don’t keep anything…it’s the doing that has value, the finished drawings are nothing.

I am so happy I worked up the nerve to go. It was absolutely worth it. The thing I loved the most? The connection, immediate and visceral, that I felt because mind and cleverness were not involved. None of that “start by drawing an egg shape for the head” bullshit. Bianka=eye=heart=hand=drawing. Simple and powerful. There is sooo much work to be done. I hope I can keep the sessions up…to get good at anything, you have to be ready to commit to years of practice.

The Darwin Life Drawing sessions are presented by Shilo McNamee, with the support of the Darwin Visual Arts Association (DVAA). They are held Sunday mornings (check the website or their facebook page to be sure, though, and to tell Shilo you’re coming) at the Winnellie Art Space, 96-a Winnellie Road (next to the large Darwin Bakery/factory)

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Darwin, Australia, travel

Rock art :: Kris goes walkabout

Kris left home last Monday to walk and hitchhike his way to some river-and-sandstone country, 600 kms. from Darwin. Rocky climbing terrain, he decided to leave his bicycle behind, this time, or he’d end up carrying it on his shoulder for most of the way.

He traveled light…a jerrycan of water, a loaf of bread, a sleeping bag, a small Canon powershot. This let him walk further into the area than if he had a heap of gear, and transportation, with him, and he found this large cave, 50 meters long, dry and well-ventilated, flooded with sunlight, and full of ancient Aboriginal rock art paintings. Some natural disaster (locals say ball lightning) had wiped out the clan that lived here, and after that the place was abandoned by those people. The bones of the ones who died there are still spread over a square patch of ground at the cave’s entrance, although they have been picked over by the odd explorer, and the ‘good bits’ like skulls and tools are gone.

Kris estimates that the last time people lived in the cave was about 200 years ago. More pictures, as well as descriptions of the cave, are on his blog.

Rock art.

aboard the M/V sonofagun, Darwin, Australia, life

Surrounded by media whores…

Monday, 25 February, 2013: Dude and Kris pose together on the back deck of our boat for a photograph taken by Daniel Hartley-Allen, to illustrate a full page interview that was conducted and written up by Alison Bevege, and which appeared in the NT News’ last Monday Interview section. No promises, but I think this is the last of Kris’ capers in the media for a while, they seemed to be coming fast and furious for a while, there…but we’re lying low from hereon, nose to the grindstone, pulling our heads in, and everything interesting that can possibly be said has been said, now, anyway.

Really, the cat makes the picture…you can imagine what an insufferable princess Dude’s become since he appeared in the paper. It’s gone to his head.

Thanks to Alison, for a fast-paced, action-packed write up; and to Dan, for the awesome photo. XX Nat

P.S. Kris’ fourth and last book, Out of Census, was printed in Indonesia late last year; it’s about his escape from Czechoslovakia, and his vagabonding around Europe and India. We only have a few hundred copies of it. If it sounds like something you might enjoy, you can get hold of a copy via Kris’ website, monsoon dervish.

Darwin, Australia, life

Ex-tra! Ex-tra! Sailor stuck in seas off Darwin!

I got 8 phone calls at work last Thursday, everyone telling me “There’s an article about Kris in today’s paper!” Claire de Lune left Darwin Wednesday late afternoon, nearly four days after Kris sent word via Coastwatch that he needed help.

I am so relieved that the boat’s owner is under way. I wish them well, and hope the trip back is smooth and trouble-free. I also think the week at sea will do John a lot of good…he’s just bought a sailboat, and this will give him a good taste of what it can be like at sea, so he knows what he’s gotten himself into. I am deeply grateful to Paul, the unnamed skipper of Claire de Lune, who was ready to leave the very same night that Kris sent the message.

No more worries. I was given the number of Kris’ satellite phone, and spoke to him on Wednesday morning. He’s running a bit low on food, but has plenty of water and is fine…just sick of being out there, going nowhere, and wanting to get it all over with now. I hope to see him some time next week. Meanwhile, I have four days off starting tomorrow, and hope to use it interestingly.

Darwin, Australia, life, paints and pens

Red sky at morning

“Like a red morn that ever yet betokened,
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdsmen and to herds.”
—W. Shakespeare, from Venus and Adonis

Customs planes flying over the Kimberley area thought Kris was having some trouble because he wasn’t using his two main sails, just the mizzen, and there’s a low pressure in the area. The message he gave them was to “contact the sailboat’s owner and arrange to tow the sailboat back to Darwin.” I was a bit of a basket case, of course…my imagination took over and worried the hell out of me! Yesterday a plane managed to deliver a satellite phone to Kris, and they spoke to him.

He’s fine, plenty of food and water still, but with the strong winds (blowing in the wrong direction) he’s reluctant to use the boat’s sails. These have been rotting inside the boat for several years, and might blow apart. Also, the boat is taking on a little bit of water that, so far, the bilge pumps have been taking care of. Now that the monsoons are starting up and it will be raining more often, Kris is worried that the solar panels that charge the bilge pumps will stop charging, and then the boat will start to fill up with water. On top of this, the monsoon winds, once they are established, will be against him, anyway. It’s taken him a whole week to make 100 nautical miles…a distance that, with good winds and a good boat, you’d normally do in just over a day.

My guess is that, on the whole, Kris figures the best way to avoid this whole thing ending in tragedy (i.e. loss of White Bird) is to just tow the boat home. The sailboat, White Bird, had been sitting in Bali for years—unmaintained—after its owner died there. Our local bar manager, John, purchased the boat, and Kris was asked to sail it back to Darwin because it hasn’t got an engine.

John and some other guys will be heading out there with another sailboat tomorrow (or that was the plan last I spoke to him, though he also said he’d call me this morning and hasn’t). If they do go, it will probably take three days to get there, then they have to actually find him, and another 4 days coming back.

Was up at 6, and there was a vivid red sunrise quietly bleeding its way across the sky. It was so gorgeous that I fumbled for my camera just seconds after waking up, and photographed it while still half asleep. I thought of the old weather forecasting rhymes about red skies: “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning; Red sky at night, sailors delight.” *groan* I just want him home, safe and well. But I have no say in these matters, so I try to keep my mind on other things.

I started a painting, based on a magazine pic that I have always wanted to use. Basic lines are in, but if I keep going in this way, I will end up with just a pretty picture of two pretty girls, like the magazine photo. So today’s job is to fearlessly change what I’ve done…to kill my attachment to this pretty and conventional image, and do something brave and fun to the drawing. To make this canvas my own.

amazing people, Darwin, Australia, Inspirations, life

my new workplace!

I mentioned in a past post that I have a new job. The WONDERFUL news is that I work at Jackson’s Drawing Supplies in Parap! Woot!

I’ve been coming to Jackson’s for years (there’s nowhere else for an artist to go, really, in this small city) for paints, calligraphy nibs, brushes, silkscreen inks, colored pencils, and papers of every description. Every time I set foot in the shop I would think to myself, “I would love to work here!” My friends were behind the sales counter, and during their lunch breaks you would find them working on their paintings, lino prints, or ceramics in the back of the shop, the air charged with creative mojo and fun. The place was an Aladdin’s Cave of yummy art stuff, coveted tools, and major wishlist items like etching presses and large easels. Seven years later, I can’t believe I’m calling this art supplies fairyland “my job”, nor what I do, “work”! It’s just too wonderful, and on the days that I get to come here I jump out of bed with all the cheerful willingness of a 5-year-old going to a birthday party…and there’s going to be ice-cream, and a real unicorn giving rides.

Where to begin?!? It’s crammed with art supplies, tools, materials for printmaking, painting, silkscreen, ceramics, calligraphy, illustration and drawing, craft, technical drawing, paper craft, bookbinding…almost anything having to do with creativity and the visual arts. Staff pay wholesale prices for everything (knowledge which made me hyperventilate on the spot).

“Great,” Kris commented, his face crinkling into a big smile when I told him I’d got the job. “You’ll never bring another dollar home again, and the boat will sink under the weight of art supplies.”

But my logic is impeccable: “My love, I already spend half my income at Jackson’s…I may as well go the whole hog and get a staff discount!”

The other staff members are friends, and amazing artists with whom I’ve exhibited before: Ingrid Gersmanis and Kate Fernyhough were in the Goddesses of Small Things Show…

as was Marita Albers, who has just left Darwin, and used to work here; in fact, it’s her job I’ve stepped in to do, now that she’s gone. It would have been magic to work here with her, but I guess you can’t have everything. I owe this happy change in my life to her going, so the elation is not without a pang of regret. I hope she and Ginger, likewise, have even bigger and better adventures, find themselves an Aladdin’s Cave of humongous proportions, rivers of glitter and sequins, zero-gravity trampolines, and frizzle chickens that croon Elvis songs.

Polish Frizzle Chicken

The shop’s big front windows are the most amazing in Darwin. The fabulous hand-cut paper filigree of flowers, birds and trees was made by Emily Hearn, another ex-Jackson’s character, Darwin artist, and ‘firework-in-the-shape-of-a-woman’ friend. Everyone who steps into Jackson’s for the first time comments on the work and creativity evinced by those windows.

Folks I haven’t seen in years walk into Jackson’s throughout the day (because they don’t buy salads, but they sure as hell buy art materials!) Lea came in on Friday…last I saw her, her hair was blue. It was great to see her again, and we might catch up for coffee next week. Half the people coming through the doors are good friends or bookbinding students. It’s lovely to wear a genuine smile of delight on your face the whole day. I feel like the host of a party, greeting guests at the door.

It’s air-conditioned (a welcome change, after four years in the shimmering heat of a small, non-air-conditioned kitchen!), there are two tea breaks, and lunch break is an hour long (I don’t know what to do with all this break time…bring in a canvas, I guess, and get busy with art!)

Also, the shop is located in Parap Village…nestled among some wonderful little boutiques; not one, but three, top-notch coffee shops, there is a good Mexican restaurant, and a great Indian restaurant, the best-stocked delicatessen in this city (Parap Fine Foods), and three or four contemporary art galleries. These are all ranged around a raised central courtyard, village-green-style, and the energy in the place feels so good, so positive. Every Saturday, the central courtyard fills with street food and craft stalls, and the place mills with locals and tourists, alike, come for their weekly laksas, shopping for clothes and jewelry, catching up with friends, and selecting a big bunch of ginger flowers to take home for the weekend. Kris comes every Saturday to the Parap Market, for his fresh banana smoothie fix and to buy me two or three ginger flowers. Our friends Mandy and Henning run the thriving Ginger Flower stall, and these days I often stop with Mandy for a cigarette and some gossip, before heading in to Jackson’s.

Just when it didn’t seem possible for things to get any better than they already were (I have been happy, at Simply Foods, despite the heat and the tiredness…the people are kind, and I was good at my job) Life has catapulted me into a waking dream. This is my dream job…art at my fingertips, surrounded by friends, in a beautiful part of the city. My work schedule is still just three days a week (the way I like it!) and I bump into beauty more often. Pushing my bicycle through the emptying Parap park on a Saturday after work, Henning often calls me over and puts a big bunch of unsold, impossibly-pink ginger flowers in my arms, telling me “It breaks my heart to throw the unsold ones away, it’s better you should take them home with you.”

With my hand over my heart, I give thanks.

amazing people, Darwin, Australia, Inspirations, life

Two ladies who will travel in beauty

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The last time I wrote about my remarkable friend Marita Albers, I didn’t include many pictures of her amazing, varicolored home because I was too shy to turn the visit into a photo opportunity (it was my first visit, I didn’t want to be intrusive!) But when Marita read my post, here, she laughed and invited me over a second time, this time inviting me to snap whatever I wished.

It would (should) have been a lighthearted and inspiring shoot of a fun and whimsical artist’s personal and creative space…had some sad news not surfaced in the meantime: in a month’s time, Marita and Ginger would be leaving Darwin.

The already-inflated prices of real estate in this small city have gone through the roof this past year, thanks to landlords anticipating big bucks from an influx of gas plant employees (and Darwin will be playing toady to a U.S. armed forces base here, too, WTF?!) The insane rates are driving Darwin’s long-term residents, and anyone who isn’t engaged in full-time moneygrubbing and avaricious acquisition—such as our artists, our greenies, our hands-on and quality-time parents with small children, our elderly and disabled, our young dreamers, our single mums, our FRIENDS, dammit!…and GOOD PEOPLE they are, too!—to other parts of the country. It has become nearly impossible for ordinary people to make ends meet and still have meaningful lives. It’s gut-wrenching to see the folks we love and care about tormented by fear for their futures, forced to give up the homes they love, to leave their friends, to uproot their children from the neighbourhoods they grew up in, all because a landlord has decided that he wants more than $2,000 a month for his ramshackle house of prefab and tin…there is a shortage of residences in Darwin, and even a concrete apartment box designed for The Sheeple will yield $500 a week, these days.

These two are so deeply beloved of Darwin’s art and family scene that for a few weeks after Marita told me the news I didn’t really believe it would happen. Leave this coconut town that’s crazy about you? Leave all of us? Surely something will come along…a solution, a godsend…someone will see that Darwin, more than ever, also needs its fabulous, vibrant, fun painters, its wacky single mums and precocious eight-year-old redheaded daughters? Surely someone with influence will decide that he is making enough money, as it is, and that losing one of our happiest Poets of Color and Childhood would deprive this town of so much more than the $$$ he stands to gain?

But nothing happened…mother and child were pushed out of their home, and I put my arms around Marita and Ginger for the last time today.

And what would have been a post full of wonderful stories about these photos from The Funhouse on Pandanus Street is just a rant, now, because I don’t feel like saying much else…

aboard the M/V sonofagun, amazing people, blogging, Darwin, Australia, Inspirations, life, photography

Here I am…

Stop Press!

I heard this crane (egret?) walking around on the roof of our boat just as I was about to start this post. Not impressed, it seems, by rumors of a fierce and fat orange cat aboard? I climbed halfway out the window, camera at the ready, looking for the animal walking overhead…when this long neck snakes out from behind a pile of plastic tarpaulin, and I got this clean shot against that gorgeous wall of sky. Yessss!

☐☐☐

I was up late last night, reassigning new categories to my posts, and then making a rather overfull menu to replace my lost widgets.
I am so sorry if your feed readers are swamped with several dozen ‘UPDATED’ posts that—apart from the way they’re categorized—haven’t changed one bit.

Wish I could say it’s all done, now, and I certainly thought I was doing very well—bleary-eyed and squinting till 3 a.m.—but I’ve just worked out that there are some 200 posts left to sort! Blarghhh…

And yet I can’t just leave them…it’ll drive me nuts knowing the posts aren’t under their correct headings! So please, please just bear with me another week!

☐☐☐

What else has happened? I have a new camera; my lovely little Finepix S7000 had one fall too many and broke into 5 (“Plastic? No wonder!”) pieces. I’d been talking about getting myself a grownup’s camera for years…the time had finally come. The Nikon that I’ve bought is my very first DSLR: can you believe it’s taken me this long to get one? I’ve been grappling with it for three weeks, now, feverishly studying how to use it and trying to get comfortable with all its buttons, dials, and functions. I really miss the familiar feel of my old Finepix, and I’m desperate to build a similar relationship with my new one.

So I took the Nikon for a walk last Saturday to the Parap morning markets, where I very shyly and self-consciously took a couple of shots of my friend Jan’s market stall—her own gorgeous photographs (which made me very embarrassed to be holding a camera), as well as jewelry, gifts, and novelty items, all centered around the theme of the sea—and then met up with Darwin’s happiest painter, Marita Albers, and her daughter, Ginger. They took me to their home.

I love artists’ homes, don’t you? Paintings EVERYWHERE, shelves groaning under the weight of art and children’s books, stuffed and painted pillow creatures crowded on the lounge, homemade toys, little sculptures, and installations sitting on every available surface; mobiles of color, light and sound hanging from the porch roof. Marita’s playfulness suffuses the rooms and garden of her home; there is none of the sterile, minimalist interior decorating you might see in magazines and, importantly, no television in this creative home. It was a large playhouse for mother and daughter and their friends. It was so personal and unaffected, I didn’t even ask Marita if I could take pictures; I didn’t want to invade that fun-filled privacy.

Ginger was happy to have her picture taken, though, with Mrs. Feather, one of her pet chickens. Ginger LOVES chickens, and the chicken theme is everywhere in her drawings and paintings. Hurrah! for precocious and ferocious little girls who read, and paint, and build pink cities in the garden for chickens, and love to travel overseas, and think eating is better than television, which is “boring”.

– ✄ – ✄ – the smallest forest – ✄ – ✄ –

Express yourself. It is later than you think.

Category Archives: Darwin, Australia

My first life drawing session!

Rock art :: Kris goes walkabout

Surrounded by media whores…

Ex-tra! Ex-tra! Sailor stuck in seas off Darwin!

Red sky at morning

my new workplace!

Two ladies who will travel in beauty

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

Here I am…

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