Free Online Art Inspiration and Exchange Class

Hullo folks, 19onGreen and I are starting a new arts group tomorrow! The first class is free and online, you can link in on Facebook here. Or get in touch with me for the zoom link to join in.

It will be low pressure and fun. Set up some art supplies to play with or a work in progress. You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to, but you’re welcome to ask questions, get feedback, and hang out with some friendly arty folks.

These sessions are diversity friendly, if you have any questions or concerns reach out to me.

The next sessions will have a small cost and be run in person at 19onGreen in Brompton.

Ink Painting: Mother and child

Late last year I began this work after struggling through a day with Poppy when I was suffering unbearable depression and anxiety. We went to the museum in town together and she had a wonderful time. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and that her momentum was pulling me along while I tried not to drown.

I adore using UV inks to explore the idea of things that are hidden from sight or knowledge. That there are things that are only known in certain settings or visible in certain lights. This mothers movements make little sense until you can see the water flowing around her. Her context is invisible to most.

ID: line drawing with black ink of a mother and child holding hands. The child is walking along a low wall, balancing on top with arms outstretched. The mother is floating along behind, clutching her throat and watching the child. UV reactive ink shows a flowing river about the mother that is invisible in regular light.

My Creative Inks & Paints Classes

I am thrilled to announce I’m working with my favourite community centre 19onGreen to offer this series of art classes “Creative Inks and Paints”.

They will be playful and low stress with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion such as LGBTIQA+ folks, people with disabilities or sensory needs, mental health, trauma, and people who can find creative things make them feel a bit anxious or emotional. Everyone is welcome, and invoices can be provided for folks who are using NDIS funds. You are welcome to bring a friend or support worker, please buy a ticket for them too as we are keeping the groups reasonably small. The venue is fully accessible with access toilets, parking on site or in the street, and nearby bus routes on Hawker St.

Image description: An open journal showing watercolors and ink illustrations of flowers and a dog in a loose style, with pencil and brush on top and a palette of rainbow watercolor pans and mixing tray on the right.

We’ll be using inks, paints, and prints and can contribute to or make our own handmade zines and books.

There’s no stupid questions and no one who is ‘not artistic enough’ to join in. Whether you’ve been painting for years but are curious about inks, or if you have never even touched a paint brush or fountain pen, you’re welcome.

  • First Saturday of the Month, starting on Feb 1st, through to June
  • 10am-12noon
  • Tickets to each class cost only $10, buy here or contact 19onGreen
  • You may attend any one, or all of them
  • Here are the Facebook events

Any questions feel welcome to contact me through sarah@di.org.au or Michael at 19onGreen via (08) 8408 1860. Please arrange all tickets and booking details through 19onGreen.

Studio Opening Success

My Studio Opening was delightful. Thank you to everyone who came, brought gifts, sent messages of support, or signed up as a philanthropist, I feel very loved. It was a pleasure to share my space and I’m delighted to hear it was inspiring for others creative pursuits too. There’s something incredibly special to me about studios and behind the scenes peeks into the home and birthplace of art. One guest is even looking into renting a space themselves, and there’s several lovely Christmas gifts safely on their way to new homes. The weather was bizarre but the cookies were delicious and the company even better. 💙

Image description: non binary person with short spike brown hair and teal lips smiling at the camera in front of art sketches and photos pegged on a string.

I’m about to leave for a week, when I get back I’ll create a walk through video and share a few special embellished prints I’ve been working on recently. I’ll also send my first philanthropist only email and start my gift lottery for these wonderful supporters. You folks are the best and I’m excited by what’s possible with your help.

Studio Opening this Saturday

If you’re local, you’re welcome to visit my lovely art studio this Saturday 30th Nov, 10.30am – 12.30pm. Get your $5 ticket here, kids and philanthropists are free.

It’s extremely rare for me to invite folks into my precious creative space. It’s been a couple of years since my last studio opening, at my previous studio in the city.

I’ll have some lovely art work available to buy of course, but there’ll be no sales talk. It’s a celebration of my new venture over at Armchair Philanthropy. I have just set up my special mailing list for philanthropists and I can’t wait to send them the first message to say thankyou and share gifts and talk about the next project I’ll be working on.

Given it’s the silly season I think it will be a very intimate opening, so I’ll be happy to give art demonstrations, answer questions about my creative or community work, or just hang out together. You know me, I’m a ball of anxiety about selling my stuff but love to feel helpful, so come and talk to me.

There is a lift for those who need access help, but there is a small step to get in to the building itself at the front, through the art supply shop. Huge steps at the back! Let me know if you are concerned and I can send you a photo or short vid.

If you can’t make it but you’re keen, keep watching the blog or hop onto my mailing list. I’ll be sharing a little walk through video for all the readers from further afield. Don’t like you folks to miss out either, don’t worry.

Sashiko and visible mending

Image description a child’s long sleeve purple top, with a round green floral patch in the middle of the back, sewn on with many lines of blue stitches that radiate out from the patch. To the right is a small box of sewing supplies.

I’m healing well from the gallbladder removal. I’ve been hand sewing while recovering. This technique is called Sashiko, a Japanese form of embellishment or mending. I love visible mending, it’s a beautiful way to extend the life of garments and reduce waste. The little shirt above is Poppy’s and had a hole at the back. Below are some jeans I bought from a local op shop which are comfortable but not a colour I like to wear. It’s a very wabi sabi approach to consider imperfect and transient things to have great beauty, and to take an older, damaged article and elevate it through care and love to be considered more valuable than a brand new one. I find the concepts deeply soothing.

Embellishments also help me to see garments differently, they take on more detailed form beyond their use as clothes. I begin to appreciate the fabric itself, colors and patterns, the cut, and quality of the stitches. Not having to mend clothes is a luxury, which means when I do it’s pleasurable. I am not volunteering for anyone else’s mending however!

Image description a pair of pink 3/4 leg jeans, with two embellishments, one at the knee and one at the hem.
Image description a closer image of the knee embellishment. A circle of navy blue denim has been covered in many lines of thick white stitches covering a much larger square of fabric.
Image description a closer photo of the hem embellishment. A light and dark blue denim are patched overlapping with a rectangle of white and light blue batik cotton. A repeating circular pattern of stitches in red is binding them all together.

Art speaks for us when we are without words

A friend recently went through a huge ordeal, their kiddo had been suffering from debilitating headaches and was suddenly diagnosed with a brain tumor and scheduled for surgery.

I live on the other side of the world. You want to be there, to hold hands and make food and crack jokes and bring tissues. Everyone feels helpless and mute.

The surgery was a success and the long rehab is going well, albeit tough. I thought about the workshops I’ve run with people who’ve been marginalised and harmed and ignored, the power of a zine to bring together deep insights and bypass all the rules and blocks and limitations that inhibit us. So I mailed a gift pack. An example zine of my own, a brief set of instructions. And a zine I created based on online photos of the experience.

This is one of the simplest styles, a single piece of paper, cut along the middle, folded into a small booklet of 8 pages.

Sydney sent me a zine in return, which was beautiful and made me cry. These moments of connection are precious and healing. Art can help make it possible. I hope you find a way of reaching out too.

Making friends with failure

I have spent the morning in my local hospital going through pre-op assessments for my gallbladder surgery next week. I am nervous and excited and relieved and have that vague niggling worry that perhaps I’ll somehow not make it through the procedure and this will be my final week alive. Anxiety is so dramatic!

But I’m in good spirits, yesterday a friend kindly helped me move my things from the wonderful office at SHINE SA to my studio. I’ve been planning this since I moved into my bigger studio space, but needed moral support and assistance and every time I made arrangements something tricky happened at the last minute. Well, not this time! We packed up a whole lift full of art and project files and filled up a desk at the studio to be sorted through later.

Image description: very old style wooden lift half full of boxes and bags of canvas paintings, books, and stationary.

There were two major challenges to work through, the first is that I have mixed feelings about the move. It’s absolutely the best next step, having everything in one space will streamline my work processes and make life much easier. But I love the folks at SHINE and will miss them, and my failure story is easy to trigger with anything I’d hoped to do but couldn’t bring to fruition, like some of my business plans during the residency that took a back seat when I was needed at home.

Our second moving challenge became apparent once we finished unpacking everything into my studio. No keys. They were on the bench in the lift, which is collapsible and was bumped at one point. Meaning they dropped unnoticed into a bag or box. We eventually found them in the back of a magazine folder full of hand made book making instructions!

I alternated between packing and crying, which I didn’t particularly want to inflict on the lovely staff, hence the perfect timing of a public holiday. Fortunately my helper was an art therapist who was excellent at distracting me whenever I started to fall down the failure well!

If you’ve come through childhood adversity you probably have a failure story too, created from all the bad memories, dreams you couldn’t reach, times you let yourself down or were failed by others. Most people who’ve been mistreated or abused, especially by someone they cared about or looked up to, have strong failure stories about not being able to find a way to stop it. Unemployment, especially long term, can deeply grove a sense of social rejection, exclusion, worthlessness, and failure. Gifted people who struggle to feel they’ve lived up their potential, people who had plans derailed by illness, or who found disability or mental health struggles meant no one saw potential in them often have strong failure stories too.

My failure story is incredibly strong and like most people’s, very painful. For me it’s particularly around work, fueled by misplaced shame for needing welfare and years of being forced to apply for unsuitable jobs. It’s taken a very long time for me to understand my failure story means I need to mindful of certain emotional risks I might want to take, to gather support around me in some settings. And that it in no way speaks to my competence, capacity, or worth. It makes certain things very hard for me and fuels high anxiety and overwhelm in some situations, but in many others it’s a minor background noise, aquiescent as a sleeping cat.

Most of us have a failure story of some kind, but in work and business we are strongly encouraged to keep them hidden. This creates a toxic culture because if no one is safe to fail or even feel like a failure, no one can risk or be vulnerable. Without vulnerability or risk there’s little creativity, innovation, or human connection. Safety and failure are intrinsically linked.

Considering my art and community development work need creativity, innovation, and human connection, I’m learning I need to make friends with my failure story rather than ”recover from it” and put it behind me in work settings. It’s actually a valuable part of my history and the foundation of some of my skills – if you’re building rapport with someone is that easier to do with a human who has failed, or someone shiny and perfect? It’s such a common mistake to hire a shiny person for a job where you need a human. And such a common misunderstanding for people like me to think we need to be less human and more shiny to be professional. In some ways it’s actually a useful resource, a point of common ground to help other folks who are struggling to feel safer around me and to help me design and implement resources and engagement approaches that click with them. That’s hard to do for folks in strife if you’ve never been there yourself. Shame is destructive but humility is valuable, and we rarely learn it from our successes.

Ink Painting: There is no bridge

Image description: Blue, purple and black ink artwork depicting a dead elderly man in a boat full of flowers on a river, with a young girl on a swing anchored to the boat, and a woman mourning on the riverbank.

My Grandpa’s committal service was beautiful and painful, lovely and heartbreaking. I read a letter by Rilke exhorting the mother to embrace death as an essential aspect of life, part of a whole that is richer for it. Rilke was an astonishing poet and letter writer, full of passion and depth. Looking for a suitable poem to read at the service was good therapy.

We painted this today, with Robert Oster’s Blue Black ink. The text along the riverbank reads “There is no bridge between us where you are”. The ink is watersoluble so the brush and pen work is completed in layers, drying then reworking the water to create depth. The color is stunning, a dark purple that bleeds blue.

Inks have a language of their own

Watercolors are wonderful. Light fast, easy to transport, to layer, just such a good idea. I love them. But… my heart goes back to ink. I started with ink, when I was so sick I could not shower myself. I started when I needed something to speak for me instead of blood. I was too frozen with perfectionism to make art. But I could still write, poems with my fountain pen. So it was a smaller gap to leap to making art with it, little lines and dashes to sketch the shapes in my mind. Designs I thought were just place holders, capturing images that would later be done properly, at a larger scale, using a ‘real’ medium.

Yet I’ve learned to speak in inks, in snatches, small scale, moments between dreams, rough designs that somehow hold a little of the emotion I felt.

My week has been beautiful, heartbreaking sad, hard, choked. I took some time today to play in my studio, swatching my ink samples. I like to see how they write, how they handle in a brush, how water changes them. It’s unpredictable, colors can split into components, purple may bleed blue or pink, green may blush peach. My favorite ink, the teal I paint in most often is incredibly unusual. A combination of waterproof black and watersoluble blue, the lines stay black but bleed blue when touched with water. It’s spectacular. I’ve been painting with it for many years and I still adore it.

Swatching like this is like learning a little of the language of each colour. Its range of tones and value, how it feels. Some are watery, some oily. Some read almost black at full strength, others never do. When I’m working on a project I can lay these out and see who speaks to me, who pairs well.

Commercializing a creative process is fraught. Business is about something that can be replicated reliably. Finding the right kind of jar to hold a light in that won’t harm it can be such a challenge. There are days and weeks I am still frozen until I tell myself to create for myself and no one else, to make things that are useless for any purpose except the song and the sadness in my own heart.

Image description: Business card sized papers painted with inks in every colour

My New Studio

I’m part-way through the big move and it’s glorious. Twice the space, two walls for my own artwork and plenty of room for inspiration images too. A full set of windows, with a door that opens to a first floor balcony. In the evenings the sun sets to the right and casts golden light onto my glass art desk.

Carpet protects the floor boards and keeps me happy as I’m always barefoot here. I’ve claimed this red wool coat for art as I wanted something warm but with a little more romance than my practical camping gear. When I need to step into another world I set myself up on the floor with my brushes and a cushion and a cup of herbal tea. It’s essential to create divisions between admin and art, even between craft and art.

I do most of my study for public health here now, and I’m continuing to explore the monsters that sometimes wait for me here, and the nature of safety in a creative space. It’s complex and fruitful. Several times recently I’ve had bad experiences and run to the studio as a refuge. It’s never been that reliable for me but it’s emerging as a place my heart is at ease. There’s still monsters some days but I’m learning to check in before I get too naked and vulnerable. Some days are for craft, sorting, cleaning, the joy of using my hands. The monsters will devour me whole if I try anything else. Some days I can strip off and find that wild place, the other world, where the poetry lives. I’m learning to pick the difference, and that’s making me stronger.

Studio as a sacred space

Glorious studio days recently. Even by artist standards, I have a pretty intense relationship with my studio. Moving into this space, it took me a long time to let go of my previous space and fall in love.

I will be moving to a bigger, brighter, better space in the same building in July and I’m so excited about it. It will also mean I can integrate my office and studio spaces together and have everything under one roof. This should stream line all my processes considerably, mean I don’t need a lot of duplicate stationary anymore, and make it easier to move between admin and art on the same day.

In preparation I’m sorting, tidying, and planning. I have a pinterest board of studios for inspiration. I’m keen to create something both functional and aesthetic. One thing I’ll make sure to do is set my oil palette up on the right hand side of my easel, so I’m not constantly crossing over myself for new paint.

As part of this preparation, I’ve overhauled my watercolour and oil painting set ups. A friend suggested standing for my large watercolour paintings and I’m already noticing the difference; more confident gestures, better blending, and finally making progress on an image I’ve made 5 versions of that I wasn’t happy with so far.

This drawer beneath my glass desk keeps my palettes and paint protected from dust while I’m not there. The large white palette on the left was an op shop find, a flat porcelain plate which is is wonderful for watercolours and much cheaper than specialty art palettes. Watercolour handles so much better on porcelain than metal or plastic, it’s much easier to mix colours and shades accurately.

My oil paint set up is also much better now. This little glass top table was a steal from the local garden supply store. I lifted out the glass and backed it with a few sheets of neutral grey pallet paper for easier colour mixing. It cleans off while wet with a baby wipe, or once dry, with a wall scraping razor.

I had partly completed this artwork in a class last year about painting in the style of the Old Masters. It’s a copy of a painting ‘Arachne’ by Diego Velazquez. This week it was time to finish it.

She still needs a few more glazes but I’m very happy with her.

It was fantastic to get back into oils, I’m looking forward to my next one.

I have a number of irons in the fire at the moment for my next projects and so far there’s promising feedback on a couple of them. I’m excited about starting the new financial year with a better working space to meet whatever comes. 🙂

Ink Painting: Flight

I have greatly enjoyed creating in a range of other mediums lately; white ink over black, watercolours, even posca pens. But there’s something deeply satisfying about coming home to my teal ink paintings. They are my oldest and most familiar medium, started back in the days when I could only afford one colour of ink, a fountain pen, and a single size 6 brush.

When I sit down with my ink, I don’t know what I’m going to create before I start. I create the opportunity and something emerges. It’s an incredibly precious process for me, a kind of therapy. I love that spark, the uncertainty, the sense of not being in control and planning it out but rather, letting go and allowing space for what comes. It’s reflective and magical and sometimes extremely painful, depending on how safe I feel and how well I can process what comes. Sometimes nightmare images take me more than 6 months before I can look at them. More rarely, I connect with the work right away. Often they tell me than one story and I learn more about them over time or find different stories in them. I usually work at night, often by moonlight or candlelight, in a space full of poetry, a kind of altered state. Sometimes I can see parts of the artwork in the white paper as I begin, not a true hallucination, but yet real enough to trace the path.

‘Flight’ builds on a theme about wings that was present in my work back was I was 16 and used to dream of myself walking alone in school with vast useless black wings trailing behind me. Too freak to fit in, but not freak enough to fly.

They remerged at points throughout my life, such as when I gave birth.

I’ve been exploring my giftedness lately, what it means to not be neurotypical but function differently in ways there’s almost no research on for adult populations. It’s taken me a long time to own it and acknowledge how much it impacts my life. Unlike other differences such as my chronic illness, speaking about being gifted brings with it a taint of bragging and a memory of making others feel threatened and rejecting me. It’s vastly misunderstood and surprisingly vulnerable.

There’s little to guide someone struggling the way I do. Speaking to a gifted specialist recently I asked about the adult population, where can I learn from others who struggle? Ah, she said, there isn’t one. Gifted adults who succeed don’t come to see psychologists. Gifted adults who struggle usually assume their struggles prove they were not gifted after all. We know almost nothing about the needs and best supports of the gifted struggling adult.

We know what puts gifted kids at higher risk, such as not having friends or peers, not being academically challenged and getting used to the feeling of being a student who must learn, bullying, perfectionism, performance anxiety, feeling valued only for their grades and skills… We know they are often emotionally intense, vulnerable to existential crises very young, sensitive, and asynchronous in development. But we don’t know much about how to reverse harm or support adults to thrive. I’m trying to figure out that pathway.

Wings, useless, broken, or bound emerge as a metaphor for thwarted desire and unrealised capacity.

I’m glad of my strange, wild art. It was important to me to protect it from college and other artists and the homogenisation that happens in exposure to others. It’s not the only way to make art, even for me, not the best or holiest. At is made in many ways and meets many different needs, it’s a form of mindfulness and intense observation, a emotional catharsis, a complex development of artisanal skill, a way to play, and more besides. All are real. I was speaking with a lovely artist recently who is going through something tough. I mentioned that I explore terrible pain at times in my art and suggested they could do the same. They gave me such a brief hunted look, a flash of anxiety and an absolutely closed door that I understood immediately: art is their happy place, where the joyful and whimsical live. It would be a kind of sacrilege to take their darkness into it. For me, I adore darkness and love in art, all the notes of the song and colours to paint with. Lightest to darkest pitch. It’s what feels authentic to me and it heals something in me that otherwise merely bleeds.

Podcast: Keeping Mum

I’m excited to share this project in which I played a small role.

This beautiful podcast sensitively explores the largely untold story of the experience of children of LGBTIQ parents. It’s a lovely interview of the now adult child of a lesbian mother who navigated raising her family in a conservative community. The marriage equality plebiscite in Australia last year often aired concerns about the effect on children of being raised by queer parents. While there’s excellent research that shows these families are just as safe and nurturing, it’s also helpful to hear personal experiences and accounts.

Produced by Suzanne Reece who conceived the idea, conducted the interviews, edited, and created the sound scape.

I provided a voice over for Suzanne’s poem, some of the background chatter, and the illustration.

First aired on Radio Adelaide, you can find ‘Keeping Mum’ here. Please feel welcome to share it.

Autumn

It’s late Autumn, cold and grey. The last sunshine is stunning, delicious and golden as warmed honey. Last night I snuggled down into my bed like a happy burrito. I’m creating daily at the moment, a flurry of painting, writing, sewing. Today I baked delicious chocolate chunk peanut butter cookies. I’m still buzzing from making it through my uni trimester despite so many setbacks. A wonderful win to soak up.

My beautiful mural is progressing, albeit unconventionally given the frequent rain. I’m lucky Rose is still a romantic and doesn’t mind ink on the bedsheets or unexpected murals in progress on the oven.

I recently found the notes I took at the beside of a sick friend following an awful psychosis. Back then we discussed an illustrated booklet to help people better understand how to support someone so vulnerable. We spoke about it again today given I’ve recently completed my first short ink illustrated booklet, and I think I’m ready to consider the next booklet project.

It’s evening. Poppy and I are at the park. She is a red smudge in her raincoat, dashing about the green in the fading light, blowing raspberries at me from the top of the playground. The sky turns from baby blue and peach to soft greys and yellow. Birds flit everywhere, looping from tree to tree and weaving a song all around us. The last dogs go home. Poppy falls and runs wailing to cry in my arms. When she quiets the birds have stopped and we can hear the wind sweeping in through the trees. Night gradually deepens and the trees wave slowly like underwater grasses. We find helmet and boots and belongings and cycle back home.

Art as Liberation

Charismatic and flamboyant local artist Fruzsi Kenez is running a series of illustration classes, so I’ve signed up. A couple of years ago I carefully broke down all my business expenses at the end of financial year and discovered that art lessons are one of my favourite things to invest in. Private art lessons rather than college art lessons are balm for my heart. I don’t need to prove anything or agree with anyone. I can come and connect and take what suits me and wrestle with it, love it, hate, reject it, refashion it. At no point do I need to parrot it to pass assignments or mimic it to graduate. Those running the classes tend to be highly engaged and engaging, they don’t have a captive audience they can denigrate or reject. Considering that my art was largely loathed by tutors in uni, this is refreshing.

These art classes are about illustrations in journals. Creating fast, loose, fresh illustrations of items and people around us in ways that bypass careful planning and tap into fearlessness and the joy of markmaking. It’s the artist’s version of automatic writing and just as playful and intriguing.

I used to art journal ideas in ink with the hope of one day having a studio where I could translate them into ‘real art’ – paint. I had the opportunity to show the journals to a couple of established artists visiting the shelter I’d stayed at one day. They were kind and encouraging and told me the ink paintings were themselves ‘real art’. It started a train of thought I’m still exploring today.

Recategorising my journal work as real art – and later cutting images out of the journals to display – was refreshing, a change of perspective that liberated me from restrictive ideas of what ‘real art’ is (large, painted, formal). It helped me treat my passion for ink and paper as a genuine avenue of exploration and has largely created my current arts practice. However there was also a downside, which is that my arts journalling practice froze up. If any artwork I made might now be ‘real art’ that I wanted to exhibit one day, it had to be made using quality materials and with that end in mind. Tension exploded into my arts practice. The combination of pressure to make each work ‘real’ and poverty meaning resources were so limited killed my arts journals. I couldn’t play or practice or pretend. Worse, I became bound up in a need for each artwork to be entirely individual and refused to allow myself to replicate my own works – feeling that this was somehow vaguely theft and plagiarism. How could I sell an original and then devalue it by painting something similar? Not that I could sell those originals, because the first years of artworks were made with inferior products that are non archival and I wouldn’t ethically sell.

There’s not much play in that space, not much riffing off themes or techniques, or even really learning. Art becomes a stab in the dark, sometimes coalescing into something amazing and sometimes falling far short. It carries my heart and rides those winds with so much vulnerability. There’s no second take, no confidence, no mastery. It’s like painting in the dark.

I love painting in the dark. It’s raw, wild, unpredictable, unsafe. It touches things I would never have consciously brought to light and tells stories I don’t know the end of. It is linked to my survival, my psychosis, my deepest self. I tell secrets, break rules, speak unspeakable things.

It is also painful. Sometimes sanctuary and sometimes hell. I have learned that some days craft is better, more what I need. I use my hands in something creative but without the vast emotional risk. I mend clothes, embroider, colour in. My arts practice has this vast gulf between the pleasure of using my hands and the taking of huge emotional risks. Journaling might be a third space for me – personal, playful, creative, mindful, safe. There’s more shades to explore than just palest and darkest.

Parenting with Trauma

Having our whole family sick together is an exercise in the logistics of rationing and portioning a tiny amount of energy to extract the maximum benefit. If I take her for an hour late tonight, then you do the morning, I’ll get you a nap at noon then you take her to the park for two hours so I can work on my assignment… The shifting priorities of dishes, doctors, meals, laundry, and mental health. It’s considerably more exhausting than being sick without kids, largely because of the difficulty of getting enough sleep to properly recover.

Monday Poppy and I went into the city. Rose had important appointments and Poppy was full of restless toddler energy. We had an argument on the bus about her not biting me which concluded with her screaming while strapped into her pram and me not making eye contact with a bus load of strangers. She got her own back by refusing to fall asleep for her afternoon nap. Usually she’ll snuggle down in her ‘cave’ made by covering the pram with a cloth, and knock off. That day she leaned as far forwards as her pram seatbelt would let her to fight sleep. 4 times she gently drifted off anyway as I paced around Rundle Mall rocking and circling the buskers. Each time she’d slip sideways as sleep relaxed her, clonking her head on the frame of the pram and waking up with a howl. Gently tipping the pram up evoked rage rather than sleep, and the fifth time she started to fall asleep I stopped and tried to gently settle her back which cued 20 minutes of hysteria.

I thought she might fall asleep in the art gallery but unfortunately that was the end of the whole idea. She talked to the other patrons, wanted to know all about the art, and once we found the kid’s studio space spent a happy hour cutting a sheet of paper into very tiny pieces.

The studio was set up to invite self portraits, with mirrors and oil pastels. This was mine:

I was glad of the space, it’s the most at home I’ve felt in the gallery.

I’ve realized that PTSD has interrupted our usually very calm parenting approach. Kids this age can be intense, they have huge feelings, test boundaries, and have way more energy than seems sensible. Poppy is fearless, explorative, passionate, creative, and stubborn. Generally Rose and I navigate these traits patiently and with appreciation of their positive aspects. But when she hurts us deliberately we’ve both struggled and the conflict has been charged and difficult to resolve. We’ve been worried about what it means and stressed by our own responses. I in particular lose patience and get angry, but Poppy isn’t easily intimidated which leaves me in a bind where I either behave in more frightening ways until she’s cowed and takes me seriously, or I find another way of approaching this. It speaks to the heart of parenting approaches to obedience and discipline. Do children follow instructions because they are frightened of us, or of the consequences? Or because they are connected to us and trust us? Is it appropriate to scare your child? If so, when and how much? Are boundaries about anger or love? Is breaking the rules or pushing the boundaries about immaturity, defiance, conflicting needs, forgetfulness (it’s easy to over estimate the memory capacity of a small child), or something else?

I’ve been starting to do a bit more reading on parenting her age group and it occurred to me that Rose and I are generally excellent at not taking difficult behavior personally, setting boundaries with warmth, and redirecting troubling behaviors. So when Poppy was getting into constant trouble for climbing furniture in the house, she now has a climbing frame outside for her to monkey around on. But when she hurts us there’s no such framing. We see no positive aspect to such behavior, no legitimate need looking for expression. We talk instead about her being mean, we privately discuss her sensitivity to our stress, her restlessness, her trying to get our attention. We’re troubled by a normal child behavior and framing it as lack of empathy. It’s triggering, evoking memories of being hurt by others and we both move into threat responses. Rose tends to freeze and withdraw, I get angry.

It occurred to me recently we’re misframing the behavior due to our histories. Most children this age want to roughhouse. Wrestling and tumbling and play fighting is a normal developmental behavior. Engaged with care it’s a place for learning about how to hold back and not hurt each other, how to apologise and caretake when accidents happen, and it satisfies the touch hunger and intense energy of very young children. Learning how to wind down into calmness following rough play is a key part of regulating such excitable and energetic kids.

Last night when Poppy started to get rough with Rose who was crashed out on the couch with a migraine, I didn’t get charged. I chose to see her inappropriate behavior as a need for rough housing and set a boundary with patience rather than frustration. I told her Mamma was sick and could only have gentle play around her. When Poppy kept being rough I removed her to the bedroom not as punishment but as an appropriate location for rough play. I gently with her permission threw her onto the bed, threw a big stuffed lion at her and told her this was where the fierce and grouchy creatures play. She was thrilled. She ran growling at me to the edge of the bed, waited for me to put my hand in the centre of her chest, then braced herself for me to gently push her back, screaming with laughter.

Later that night with Rose asleep and me exhausted on the couch with Poppy, she started to rough play again and I forbade her from getting on the couch with me. For the first time she was easily redirected into quiet play and spend a calm hour making complicated meals with her toy food instead.

There’s no problem with her empathy, Poppy is an incredibly affectionate and loving child. She’s not unusually aggressive or showing signs of attachment damage or deprivation. In mislabeling her normal needs as something that disturbed us, we introduced a charge into our relationship that she gravitated towards. Kids do this without knowing why, they can sense it and it’s irresistible. It’s why they do mad things like grin at an adult who’s already at the end of their rope and angry with them. They are still getting a sense of their own power in the world and what they can and can’t do. Navigating our own trauma as parents is about recognizing blind spots like this, paying attention to threat responses needlessly activated, and prioritizing basic needs like sleep, connection, and companionship so we function as best we can. For me at the moment on bad days I’m dealing with chronic irritability and low grade suicidality. Sleep deprivation and feeling isolated turn my world black. Over and over in a thousand little ways we choose safety together, celebrate freedom and autonomy, look for loving ways to speak about the unspeakable things, and link into the world around us. Without our wider networks of friends, family, therapists, without kids rooms in art galleries, and foodbank, and doctors who see trauma survivors rather than welfare bludgers, we couldn’t do this. But together there is so much strength, sufficient grace. Enough to let us all grow.

Community Mural in Development

At my birthday party last weekend, my friends started this mural with me. I’ve wanted to paint murals for a long time, and trying to think of something fun to host it seemed like a good idea. I bought a panel of marine ply, undercoated with Rustoleum, and we used house paint brushes and bulk size artist acrylics in a limited palette (blue, red, yellow, brown, and white). I mixed the colours people chose and gave a bit of instruction on using brushes but that was it. The design – children playing in a tumble of autumn leaves – I drew on freehand with a sharpie.

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Those who wanted to join in chose whichever part they liked and painted. It was cool to see people experimenting with textures and brush stroke styles. The limited colour range keeps it all cohesive despite many different hands, and the limited palette means all the colours relate well to each other. The only thing I’ve noticed so far is a tendency for not a lot of variation in value (darks and lights) which doesn’t matter so much in such a cheerful piece.

I was hoping to create something fun and heartfelt to display in our backyard. It will cheer up and add colour to the play area for Poppy, and remind me of my friends and family who’ve added to it. I know it’s often stressful to make art when you haven’t done it in a long time, so I wanted to make it feel safe and meditative. Creativity loves a bit of challenge, but too much is inhibiting and creates frustration. I also reassured folks that I will be going over the design when it’s finished and outlining everything so there was no need to worry about imperfect edges or the odd smudge. They really do add to the texture.

I have been doing some research in the local hardware store and I think for future murals I will consider buying exterior paint for the added UV protection to help it last. I’ve been making more artwork on board rather than canvas lately, which I prefer for indoor or outdoor larger scale artworks, so this was a fun way to explore that.

I’m looking forward to finishing this and fixing it in place. Probably another 2-3 arty afternoons will have it done, weather permitting.

My birthday was harrowing this year, I spent half of it crying and was horribly suicidal. I’m glad it’s behind me and I’m going to put some real thought into understanding how I can deal with it differently for next year. So far none of my approaches have been great.

But my favourite part of this was those small moments when I could see someone else disappearing into the art, the steady even brushing of paint, blending into paint. Those moments are a kind of meditation and they are precious. May we all have many more of them.

Many creative projects

I made it into my studio for a few precious hours today. I bought this lovely drying rack for hanging wet artworks, and worked more on my illustrated poem project. You can see some of the pages drying on the new rack here:

I have been often ill lately with high pain levels and have not had as much art time as I’d hoped. The top priorities I’m keeping up with: my time with family, my studies, work gigs of various kinds.

I was very pleased to collaborate recently with the Greens SA and paint creatures of the Great Australian Bight during a listening post. Illustrating campaigns that are close to my heart is a special joy.

I was also honoured to be part of a panel at Uni SA about alternative responses to psychosis. I spoke from my Psychosis without Destruction perspective. I gave a brief illustrated presentation using journal entries from my first two episodes, and the body painting I did during my second episode which resolved it.

I am keeping up with my public health studies and learning French. I’ve just handed in an assignment exploring the social determinants of health and proposing an intervention intended to reduce cardiovascular illness for people with severe mental illness.

I was planning an exhibition for my birthday but I’m going to push it back a month or so and see how my health goes. I’m happy with my priorities right now. Family, study, and work are all going well and art and other projects fit in where and as I can. 💜

Illustrated poem

I recently attended a book making workshop by wonderful local illustrator Sally Heinrich. Since then I’ve been working on illustrating one of my poems.

This is exactly what I’ve been wanting to do for years with my illustrated presentations, to convert them from PowerPoint slides and spoken words to beautifully books. I’ve been learning a lot about illustrations for print over the past 6 months and loving it. The synthesis between word and image just clicks for me. I’m very glad that art has been liberated from the requirement of narrative traditions, but I’m also glad to be finding my own passion for story.

The workshop and project has helped clear a mental block that’s come along with a great deal of sickness this year for me. I love good creative training and workshops, the best are safe creative spaces to fill in knowledge gaps that bringing some unattainable desire within reach. I adore being able to learn art for the love of learning without having to fit my work to a schedule of assessments or the limiting ideas of ‘real art’ of a supervisor. After some inspiration at Writer’s Week too, I’m extremely happy to be writing and painting between work and study. Public health has started up again and if anything I’m enjoying it even more than last trimester. It is such an excellent fit with my values and passion. I’m working towards an exhibition for my birthday this year again. I’ll keep you posted.

Painting: Silver birch tree spirit

Poppy and I spent the day together at one of our favourite parks recently. It’s a chance for me to not multitask and to be focused and present in a way I don’t often find myself doing. It was hot and dry and I found it took several hours before I adjusted to that and felt comfortable. The same for not working or cleaning or doing something on my phone, there’s always a restless period where it’s not comfortable or easy, until something adjusts and stills. Poppy and I bounce off each other and have fun in between little person big feelings. There’s often a time when we start to click together like fish swimming along side each other in a school. An attunement occurs that’s wordless and smoother. We don’t get in each other’s way so much, it’s more fluid and trusting. I love it.

We played on the playground and swings and explored the creek. Then Poppy made some art.

She was slept afterwards so we walked around until she fell asleep in the pram. Then I made some art in the shade of a huge gum tree, while she slept peacefully in the cool breeze beside me.

I wasn’t expecting to paint anything significant. I’ve just set up my travel kit with new watercolours and worked out a formula for teal, my favourite colour of ink. I was entirely focused on connecting with Poppy, not looking to fit anything else into the day.

Yet somehow, this beautiful heartbroken women emerged. It’s about the fifth time I’ve tried to paint her. She emerged without planning, starting from her open, distraught mouth and spreading into snow and trees. Painting intuitively like this is a sacred part of my arts practice.

Her hair began to resemble the tree branches and tangle around the babies and her arms. At the end I suddenly realised she was a tree spirit, which has never been part of any painting I’ve made of her. But it fits perfectly.

Colour matching watercolours with my inks

It’s been a glorious studio day after a week of illness. Endo/adeno misery turned into gastro and UTI horror, along with the rest of my family. Darling Rose was so unwell she wound up in hospital again, which was very helpful and mercifully brief. Poppy was hit the first and lightest with a bad sleepless night of vomiting and then bouncing back. I’m starting to feel better but it’s been a tough month. Vertigo and gout have also stolen a lot of time from me and I’ve found myself falling into deep depression at times and feeling isolated.

Today I was well enough to go into my studio and play. Among other things, I’ve now set up my travel watercolour kit with my favourite colours (mainly Sennelier with a Qor and a couple of Winsor and Newton).

Done a lot of colour mixing. This is completely different for watercolour than with oil paint and I’m having to learn all new combinations and techniques.

I adore my blue black ink, but it’s an unusual ink and one of its qualities is that it doesn’t keep when diluted. So for my ink paintings with gradients I must try to mix small amounts and accept the waste if I don’t use them all. I hate this so I have been practicing a two brush Chinese ink painting technique that blends ink on the brush in one hand with water on the brush in the other directly onto the paper. It works very well for some techniques but I find it difficult for others.

So I have been hoping to blend a similar colour with my watercolor paints, that keep forever between uses. Today I achieved that with a mix of Quinacridone Red and Phthalocyanine Turquoise. I tested it by making two tiny artworks. This one is in inks, with outlines using a dip pen with black ink:

This is in watercolour using only a brush:

They are extremely close in colour! I’m very pleased with this result. There’s a quality to the ink I still prefer, a clarity and depth I don’t find in watercolour but that may well be simply that I’m less experienced with them, and possibly because my current mix has several pigments in it.

Either way, I’m very pleased and the black dog feels eased and soothed. We’ve celebrated everyone starting to recover with a fresh change of bedding and a delicious light meal. I’m going to borrow some new books from the library and take it gently this week while I’m recovering.

Kano ink painting: Blackbirds

I recently attended a workshop about Kano, a Japanese art form involving painting over gold or metal leaf. Inspired by the work of Kawanabe Kyōsai, I painted this scene in ink.

The image is of a knotty tree with small leaves and black birds, and high mountains in the background. They are painted in black and teal ink over gold leaf.

One of the difficult but beautiful things about Kano is how impossible it is to replicate through prints. Photos give you only a sense of the glow of the real work. I can embellish prints where I’ve gilded on top of my painting, but not where it’s used as the substrate and worked onto.

Which brings me to one of my big plans this year: making originals available for sale. In some cases my original artworks were created using substandard products as I was very poor at the time. These I intend to remake so I can offer them confident in their longevity and archival quality. Currently I’m learning more about creating and illustrating books, and working through a collection of orders for embellished prints. I have an eye to create several exhibitions this year and things are off to an excellent start.

My art infiltrates the world

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Art sales from my Etsy Shop or in person continue to tick along, and happy customers leaving positive reviews is always a delight. I especially love it when I’m sent a photo or description of the art in its new home, that’s something special.

I was sad to have to withdraw from my FEAST exhibition this year when Rose got sick, but I think it will be all the better for it next year. I’m excited to be presenting a popup exhibition for Vanguard in Melbourne tomorrow called Smooth Seas never made Skilled Sailors, reflections on mental health, adversity, and resilience. Some works were first exhibited in She Dreams 6 years ago, which was a sampling of art documenting key experiences in the previous 10 years of my life, such as homelessness, mental health struggles and identity. About a third of the works have never been exhibited before, and I’m so pleased they have a home now.

Capture

Selling art is like I’m leaving little traces of my soul in other people’s lives, all around the world. My buyers and collectors are an unusual cohort of oddballs and doctors and patrons and poets. Sometimes they seem to have nothing in common except for resonating with my art. My work is in hopeful government offices and artfully decorated living rooms and bedrooms steeped in deeply private pain. And the art itself is like sea glass, tiny coloured windows into the world. People look not just into it but through it, at something they care about. It snags in the net of their story, brings something to light that’s meaningful and difficult to put into words, whether joyful or painful or so often a little of both.

It’s like sending messages in bottles out on the tide. The world is precious and beautiful and full of darkness. We are each of us alone, and yet not so alone or different as we fear. There are many worlds and wholeness cannot be found by walking only in any one of them.

I curate exhibitions carefully and their location with equal care. It’s simply not okay to exhibit works on such personal topics carelessly. My collections are chosen like a work of music, with a range of light and dark. They have variation in tone and voice. I understand entirely that some of the most painful are both the most resonant and those that sell the least often. That’s okay with me, when I first paint these, I often can’t look at them myself for many months. I understand why there’s some art you love, but couldn’t put on your wall. But when they are grouped in collections, they all link up to each other in a kind of web or net. The lightest and the darkest become linked, like lights and shadows. They fit together to create wholeness in a way no single image – or single story – could ever hope to do. Complexity and contradictions are rich in meaning. So even if most people take home the most hopeful and uplifting (which isn’t always the case), I am quite content because I know that linked in memory are the other works in the collection. The lights and shadows fit together even if only one is visible at a time. The dark and the light of the moon.

Last week I stepped up to a podium in Sydney, looked at the timer and realised my talk needed to be shortened by 1/3rd on the fly, and I didn’t rush. After 8 years of speaking I’ve finally come to understand that more important than what I say is how people in the room feel. If they feel safe and connected, my message speaks louder in the subtext than all the abstract explaining in the world about dignity and compassion. I illustrated that talk and there was such a buzz about the art afterwards and online I was inspired to learn more about the world of illustration and art that engages and communicates alongside text. It’s been a joy and I’ve found much that I am inspired by. I’m looking forward to learning more.

It’s been a long, strange, wonderful and tiring week. We have arrived in the hotel now and it’s calm and peaceful. Tonight we walked the streets in the rain and watched the lights in the river. My family are bundled into clean soft sheets in a comfortable bed and I’m typing on an old oak desk, thinking about tomorrow. Life is very beautiful. I’m hoping to create a sense of safety and meaning tomorrow, to give buzzwords like resilience back their grounding in sorrow and adversity and love. Art will be part of that, hopefully speaking when words are not enough, a silent presence when there’s too much noise to hear.