I drove up to Brisbane this morning from the coast to do a couple of things. One of them was to go to Eckersley’s Art Store to buy some art supplies… you know… paper paint charcoal etc. Can’t seem to go away for long without my art supplies. And if I find myself away from them for too long… I simply have to smoke out an art supply store and get my fix along the way!
I’m writing this from a little place called the Room With Roses. It’s a beautiful room in the middle of the city. A haven from the madness out in the street… and a quiet place to put down some thoughts.
[water not wine... remember it's lunchtime! grin]
I was just sitting here sipping my jasmine green tea and enjoying a yummy piece of passionfruit strawberry cream sponge cake and got to thinking about cake and life… and this is what I came up with.
PS I know… give me a piece of cake and I go and get all philosophical. Can’t help myself [chuckles]
PPS And yes… I know… it’s lunchtime… but hey… life is short… we eat cake first!
LIFE IS A PIECE OF CAKE
If life would be a piece of cake
with heart and soul and such to bake
the choice would be a simple one
We’d make it light and full of fun!
Strawberries cream and fruit of passion
pinkie poised… the height of fashion
we’d lift our teacup to our lips
and savour life in giant sips
If life would be a slice of pie
with pastry crisp and never dry
we’d slice it into giant bits
and let it go right to our hips!
Cherry pear or chocolate flute tin
No matter what the pie is baked in
We’d scratch our head in times to come
And wonder why we’d chosen… plum?
Just think…
If life would be a pie or cake
Oh what fun to negotiate
Imagine life upon a platter
Nothing else would really matter
So bake your cake and please don’t wait
there is no time to hesitate
then grab yourself a large cake knife
and enjoy right now your slice of life!
I fell in love with Sweet Addiction the first time I heard it.
It was a couple of days before Christmas… andLa Belle Femme was in the early stages of conception. I had received a commission for a large nude painting in landscape format. So not being someone who does things by halves… I decided instead to paint three! [I know... I know]
As I was sketching out ideas… and deciding on how I would approach the series… this piece of music dropped into my email inbox via Facebook.I had it playing in the background on my laptop… and listened to it over and over again. I never tired of it. Before long I was completely beguiled by the sound. It was indeed a “Sweet Addiction” [grin]
The making of the Music…
Sweet Addiction was created by Daniel Marolla… a young man who is definitely going places! He created and recorded this piece of music one afternoon in mid December using [keyboard drums and base guitar] an Mbox and Garageband… then shot his video for You Tube from the built-in camera on his laptop and edited it in Final Cut Studio. If all that sounds like double dutch… well… don’t worry. Just listen to the music… it will speak for itself!
The making of the Art…
The first in this series was initially a commission. The paintings were relatively large for watercolour at 76cm x 38cm – [that's 30" x 15"] with the figures approx. 1/2 life size. It was so much fun working wet into wet in the initial stages… just allowing the paint to flow and directing it where I wanted it to go.
It’s fast… it’s fluid… it’s free and wow… you just gotta love working in watercolour!
Willow charcoal of course… adds another dimension. It’s a style I have been working on for a couple of years now especially in figure and life work.
The pics were taken on my humble little Panasonic Lumix and assembled as a slideshow in iPhoto. I purposely kept the photos edgy and a bit blurred by movement with [perhaps] some “debatable” degree of success!
And of course… iPhoto is no precise science but that’s about the extent of my techie expertise at this time. I am however willing to learn. Note to self: Get Final Cut Pro… there has GOT to be a better way! [Grin]
By the time the three paintings were done… the music had weaved it’s incredible magic into them all.
Consequently… what you hear and see here is the end product of an [unintended] creative collaboration between paint and music. It was entirely unintentional of course.
Daniel could not have known that his music would so happily “belong”to these paintings that afternoon in December when he brought this music to life! He was afterall on his own creative tangent … and the paintings did not [as yet] exist! But somehow… still… the paintings and the music seemed strangely made for each other!
Enjoy the clip! Let me know what you think… leave a comment here!
“Dance like no one is watching.
Sing like no one is listening.
Love like you’ve never been hurt
and live like it’s heaven on Earth.”
— Mark Twain
To this end… I have recently been doing my utmost. But you know what? Lately I am learning that it’s often a case of “easier said than done”.
Let me tell you… people DO notice when you fall over on the dance floor. They DO hear you when you sing out of tune… even in the shower. You WILL get hurt along the way. And LIFE… you can be sure… often bears absolutely NO resemblance to heaven on earth!
Really sorry to break it to you Mr. Twain (((chuckles)))
But you know… despite the obvious risks… life CAN be a whole lot of fun. Even if you do sometimes get injured in the process.
Finally… after all these years… I am dancing again. And it is so much fun!
After the first couple of classes… with burgeoning confidence… I decided it was about time to invest in a good pair of dancing shoes. Why?
1. To keep me motivated.
2. So I could try to achieve some of the fancy footwork demanded of a budding ballroom dancer [chuckles] on a slick and slippery dance floor without sliding over and hurting myself trying to attempt any/or all of the above in stilettos, sandals or joggers.
and lastly… [but not "leastly"]
3. Because I found a lovely pair of gold Pasodoble’s that I simply couldn’t resist.
You know… boys and their toys… girls and their shoes… [grin]
Besides… my thinking has always been that you should always arm yourself with the appropriate tools for the job in order to achieve the best results. [That's why we artists buy good brushes right?] Okay… it sounded like a plan. And so it was.
I bought the shoes.
Can’t tell you how pleased as punch I was with my purchase as I twirled around the floor… my beautiful new shoes carrying me hither and thither across the floor. But then… just when I was getting the hang of a step… and attempting to execute the perfect turn… those beautiful shoes all of a sudden got a mind of their own… went their separate ways… and I crashed down with an almighty wallop in an inglorious heap on the floor.
Fortunately I went straight down… crashing on one knee first then landing flat on my you know what… and not the alternative… [ie] flat on my back with my legs out from under me. A girl I guess… can be grateful for some such small mercies.
Oooo… ouch… now that hurt! In fact… everything hurt as I sat there in a crumpled heap shocked and unable to get up. [The last time I felt like that was a few years ago after hurtling down the driveway with my son on the back of the billy cart - read the story here]
Finally after what seemed like an age… and would have been less than a split second… someone [have not a clue who] hauled me to my feet and with the music still playing the dancing continued. Now that’s what I call professionalism (((chuckles))) And heck… what stamina. I quite surprised myself. Grin.
Later however… much later… my knee came up a beauty. A huge bruise the likes of which I had not seen since my days on the vigoro pitch in primary school. And my back hurt. But only just a tad. Ahem. Okay then… maybe just a tad more than a tad. At the end of the night I limped sheepishly to the door… my pride tucked neatly in my pocket…. got home… took some magnesium and lay down perfectly flat for the next eight hours (((chuckles))) Next day… all good. And so far… so good.
As for the shoes… well… they will live to dance another day. I took them straight into Theo’s Shoe Shop from whence they came and had the man rough up the soles on whatever the machine is that they “rough up” soles of shoes with there. I made sure that those beautiful shoes were going to stick like glue to the dance floor from that day on.
Do not be desirous of having things done quickly. Do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents them being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished – Wilson Mizner
I have felt terribly impatient to be getting on with my life this week. I really can’t say what has prompted it. But perhaps it is that a few of the doors that had opened with such promise earlier on… have now revealed themselves to have only more brick walls behind them. So I guess the next lesson must be… open the door by all means… but be mindful that there may be “little of substance” on the other side. That’s life. But perhaps the bigger lesson here is that there may be a greater purpose to the sum of all the many smaller experiences strung haphazardly together across a lifetime. Knowing this doesn’t help… but it does remind me that I must be patient!
Anyhow in the spirit of the past year… I have bobbed up yet again this week [like the proverbial cork on the ocean]… and yesterday knocked out my second art clip just for the fun of it. It was a good thing that I did this yesterday because today it is raining… and more and more as the wet season approaches we shall have fewer sunny days like this one.
It was however windy as anything… with a 25 knot sou’easterly blustering in and putting paid to any ideas I might have had about setting up to paint! I am still learning heaps in iPhoto and haven’t quite figured out how to speed sections up (which would have been good for the bit where the wind picked up my board and I had to chase it down the sand dune!) I had hoped to film a watercolour work in progress… but in the end it was all I could do to keep things nailed down long enough to get a couple of photographs! Consequently most of the pics are of me… and lately I reckon it would take more than a gale force Category 5 to sweep me off my feet! (((chuckles)))
It was a lot of fun running up and down the sand dunes… jumping waves… and being silly all over the place. But it was extra good though because despite the hot fine weather… there was virtually no one else on the beach and I was free to do whatever I liked. It doesn’t get better than that!
There were a couple of people way off in the distance further off down the beach… just enough company to make me feel quite safe at least. But no-one at all to get in the way… or [thankfully] ask what I was doing! I did however garner a good humoured wolf whistle from a car speeding by [which I stylishly ignored]… but was secretly grateful for in the grand scheme of things! [insert riotous laugher here]
Anyway… take a look here… and let me know what you think in the [Comments] below. Feedback is essential to the creative process… so don’t be shy… speak up… even if it’s just to say hello. And I reckon if I can do what I’m doing… YOU can do absolutely anything you like. But I do want to hear about it okay!?
I would also like to acknowledge with grateful thanks the fabulous music of The Beach Boys. The single Do It Again was released way back in 1968 and continues to DO IT AGAIN… over and over again! You can purchase Do It Again on iTunes or at your local music store. That’s what I did. [I know I should probably have better permission than that... so I guess it will be here until someone asks me to take it down] I do think however that sometimes it’s a good idea for older music to get a good modern day airing. The record companies may not however agree… but I reckon good music… like good art should be out there circulating for everyone to enjoy.
[water not wine... remember it's lunchtime! grin]
Artwork & Images © 2010 Jean Burman
Artwork & Images © 2010 Jean Burman
