personal

I've been in bed with a cold almost all week. Very boring. And in these circumstances it's the little treats that one must take pleasure in. Today the Personal Sourdough loaf afforded such pleasure.



It's from the Surry Hills bakery on Bourke Street, and its name caught my attention. The Personal Sourdough loaf.
It's small, and very tasty, crusty, but not dry or hard. Oohh no matron! It's a very perfect, very personal loaf.



And even though I've had a cold, I have managed to spend endless hours at the computer, trawling blogs and websites. My greatest recent delight has been to discover the talented Lou from art and ghosts. She has a separate blog too, full of lovely images and links.

moths and dragonflies

This past week in Sydney we have had our annual mass visitation of bogong moths. They arrive suddenly one day and stay around for about a week or two. For anyone who has never seen a bogong, all you really need to know is that they are quite big (although I just went and measured one and was surpised that it was only 3 cm long) Anyway they seem very big when they are flying around your living room at night, which they tend to do, because like all moths they are attracted to light. They are also pretty stupid. So if you go walking at night, as I love to do, they constantly bang into your head and face. Most disconcerting. The strange thing is that they disappear during the day, and I had never bothered to wonder where they all go.

I discovered the answer to this mystery yesterday, as I went into the garden to take the washing off the line. Everything I unpegged had about 15 Bogong moths hiding inside. And so as I removed each item from the line, there was a big flurry of activity as the moths flew away. I found this simultaneously fascinating and very very creepy.

I think the experience has stayed with me, because today I made these new bogong-inspired artworks, with a slight adaptation involving dragonflies.








I'm not sure if I've quite finished fiddling yet, but when I do they will go into the shop.

the wall

Lately I've been working on a commission. The brief is for a group of paintings (probably about 24 of them) which will be hung in the entry foyer of a large modern house in the country near Sydney. The owners want the group of works to be a focal point as people enter the house. The wall where they will be hung runs alongside a staircase, so it has an unusual shape, and the area is quite open - so it can be seen from an upstairs mezzanine, and also from the bedroom wing of the house downstairs.

I'd like the arrangement of the paintings to lead the eye up the stairs but also to have enough visual interest at eye level for when you are standing on the ground floor quite close. So far I have mapped out a rough arrangement of the images which looks like this.



I have in mind a theme for the paintings which I think will work as a whole. The stair is made of a warm wood, and so I'd like the paintings to contrast this with a subtle sandy coloured background which is slightly transparent - showing through ochre and grey brown textures. (I'm sounding like a wine label) And running through the paintings a grey and aqua steel blue pattern with a suggested shape a bit like a bean on a stalk. The people who own the house have said that they like this print of mine -



and so I've adapted this pattern as a draft for the paintings. Nothing definite yet. We are still very much in the planning stage. I've experimented with a few drafts, and like the idea of painting onto wooden squares. And keeping it all very delicate and minimal. I'm quite excited about how the squares themselves will look on the wall - even if they were just white, with their shadows outlining their form.