Jean Burman

The rain took up and the sun peeped out… if ever so unconvincingly!  It’s difficult to explain the significance of the weather for this event… especially when for all intents and purposes artists were high and dry and painting in relative comfort indoors.

But despite the cool winter days… the rain has kept humidity high… making it nigh on impossible for stuff to dry!  Given the process we were attempting… working on cartridge paper and reworking the paint… recycling unsuccessful attempts by collaging ripped up bits it into new works etc… and generally evolving and morphing paintings into new ones… a healthy preoccupation with the weather was not an unreasonable obsession given the circumstances!  If I had to describe it… the air feels like soup… and not a good rich minestrone either… more like a thin reedy broth!  Okay… rich creamy pumpkin then… cos that was the only photo I could find!  grin LOL

“eek… waiter there’s a line in my soup!”

However… weather aside… Day 4 kicked off in a very productive way.  For my part I knew I only had a couple of hours to work before heading off to the funeral of a very dear friend who passed away on Monday night after a long and courageous battle with cancer.  The funeral was set down for midday… so I attempted to put aside all other thoughts and just focus on making the most of my morning.

We had a male model today.  A nice young man with a very calm aura and centred attitude.  I love it when life models possess this quality.  They are so easy to paint.  The female model from the day before was way more difficult to capture with her predilection for “challenging” and unnatural poses.  My preference is for easy relaxed poses with plenty of “emotional content” for the artist to work with.  And for those who may be wondering… painting a nude model is not weird at all.  In fact… I give it around two seconds before most people forget altogether that the model has no clothes!

These three examples are early stage works… but I loved the rawness in them.  The first one looks like cro magnon man!  The second… in all its simplicity (I think) captures the sitter’s zen quality.  The third looks a bit like Ned Kelly… not sure what the significance of that is but hey… (!)

It’s odd… but I found this morning to be my most relaxed and productive time so far.  Pressed for time and kind of distracted by the fact that I would have to leave half way through didn’t seem to hinder my progress at all… in fact I think it helped keep the focus going and hurried me along.

The funeral was moving and very beautiful… (if a funeral can be described as beautiful)  It was a fitting tribute to a woman who had lived a full and meaningful life… focussed on her family and her garden… and the people she walked the planet with and touched along the way.   The fact that there was standing room only in the church said it all.  We gathered afterwards at historical Whitfield House (a stone’s throw from where we were painting at the Tanks precinct)  The setting was simply beautiful and I couldn’t help but wonder what Kate would have thought of the lillies.  The air was filled with them.  It was all very lovely.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under That's Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.