Thursday Thoughts...

"Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands".

Pico Ayer 

Oh yes, here we are again with the idea of silence and quiet, and solitude. 


Pico Ayer has helped me think about silence in different ways; and to find different ways to accommodate it in my life. To explore what I think I mean when I use the word, and how it can be applied to parts of my life. 


I love this description of silence as an enchanted place where space and time are set aside and the horizon itself expands...it feels like silence enables growth and increase; that silence enables us to see more and to see further, that silence is a huge enabler. 
I think it is.

And deserts. Arizona 2013 - that horizon expanding in the silence...

Thursday Thoughts...

"I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of quiet life stimulates the creative mind" 

 Albert Einstein

These words seem so apt when we live in the time of fake news and opinions being weighted equally with expertise or facts.

Part of this made me smile and think -monotony?!??! And part of it made me think oh yes, the solitude of the country can really and truly stimulate the creative mind.

With regards monotony I am not so sure I can agree - life where we are hardly seems monotonous; but I can empathise with the notion of solitude and quiet encouraging creativity.

I find my best creative times come not when I am full of buzz and energy and fast moving; but rather when I am sitting quietly with my thoughts and my space around me and things are able to emerge - gently, quietly and flowingly.


Insights can appear from nowhere and appear not as the result of any process that I am conscious of; but I tend to only hear those ones when I am quiet and calm.  Solitude also feels right for creativity for me - no distractions, a sense of withdrawal from the world of others for a bit to spend time with the inner workings...


Who knew? Me and Einstein almost at one (or at least at a half!).

A different kind of solitude to our country solitude, but still, a glorious solitude...

Tweed Gallery

Travel time is upon us again and I was reminded of a recent trip to the Tweed Regional Gallery. Stunning gallery.

The main reason for our visit was to see Australian painter Margaret Olley's interior of her terrace house, recreated in the gallery space where it now has a new home.

I love this idea - of painstakingly and carefully removing every item of Margaret's rooms, building a replica house and then re-placing each and every time as it was in her house in Sydney on the day she died.  What a remarkable memorial and gift.

This wouldn't necessarily work or be of great interest if it was just some run of the mill person's house with average this and that. Margaret's home was a veritable jungle of art and flowers and still life and paints.

It wasn't possible to get brilliant photos but I am sure you will get the idea of just what her home must have been like. Astonishing!

This pair of photos is a bit blurry - but what caught my eye was the kitchen - the sink, the oven, jam, fruit an apron and ...several paint palettes and tubes of paint. As you do.

Glorious.

I've been thinking of collective nouns for the rooms - a glory of chaos? an overwhelming of gorgeousness?

I loved the chest of drawers - clearly type drawers or paper drawers - the perfect piece of bedroom furniture.

And then to a few other pieces in other parts of the gallery that caught my eye.

White Owl by Joshua Yeldham

 A detail of a piece Interior with Poppies (Margaret Olley's house) by Cressida Campbell.

Michael Cusack Archive (13) Curragh

And on the way back to the car - these guys. Pursuit by John Petrie.

I immediately wanted to go home and see if we could find a couple of great boulders and make some of them. We haven't but I'd love to have a few roaming the block!

Thursday Thoughts...

“The books we read answer questions we didn’t even know we had” 

 Axel Marazzi

Well ain't that the truth? I am often surprised that a book I have read has taught me stuff I didn't even know I needed to know.

I can sometimes be spooked by the timing of a book- that somehow this book fell into my hands; or that it had been sitting on the shelf for ages and I gathered it up to read at just the right moment.

It makes me smile to think there might be book-whisperering fairies somewhere who sit on my shoulder and say "this one, you need to read this one, now..."

Maybe they left this sign in a garden in Tyalgum as well.

White on white workshop

On Sunday I taught my Quietly and Gently workshop to the Calligraphers of South East Queensland.  They are such a talented bunch and always so open and enthusiastic that it is always a pleasure to head down to Brisbane and spend a day with them.

They very enthusiastically engaged with the ideas of white on white, the possibilities and the messages the techniques convey.

They all made loads of samples and we all decided that a pouch was the way to go to store them.  The book would have ended up eating into our time to make, experiment and create!

With thanks to Susan, Marg, Donnie, Desma, Ally, Christine, Barb, Lynne, Robin, Jo, Kay, Sandra and Jennie; here are some of the beautiful samples they created...

And samples alongside pouches...

At the beginning of the workshop we spent some time talking about the vocabulary of white, what it says, how it makes you feel and so on.  Here is the list we came up with in pretty quick time.  

We worked on themes that reflected these types of words, and if we had had another day; we might have gone on to write a verse or poem, inspired by these words, and then created a finished piece of it.  That could be the two day version of the original 5 day version of this workshop - so many options!

Here is the small verse I came up with based on these words.

clean, cool light

purity of shadows;

absence is clear,

uplifting, spiritual serenity.

Thanks once again to CSEQ for having me - it was grand.

Inky peace

Barry's dear friend Jeff had a love of fountain pens and ink beyond compare. When his widow Evi visited through the week, she brought with her some of his inks, just in case I might like to use them.

I fell in love with the bottles straightaway - so elegant - and wondered if perhaps they should just be things of beauty and not functional.

But then I got out a few nibs and did a few trials to see if they would work with dip pens and nibs, rather than just in fountain pens.

Fun was had.

The bottles are gorgeous. And also all full!

I put them to use making covers for a few wee journals. Overwriting on large piece of paper.

Then cutting the sheet down to make three covers for three small books.

Whilst in experimenting and playing mode I went and got out my fine-tec metallics; which I bought a year ago and have never touched till now.  I wrote imagine peace in a  large gothic style, and again cut the sheet up for a couple of wee journals.

The gold really shines

 All journals are hand stitched with a chain stitch style along the spine.

 We are heading away for a bit soon, and I will take these along with me.

Thursday Thoughts...

“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” 

 Carl Sagan 

These words seem so apt when we live in the time of fake news and opinions being weighted equally with expertise or facts.

I try to be open-minded, open to new and other possibilities; open to the notion that I am not all-knowing and that others know more, have searched more or learned more than me.  But I am wary now too of being so open-minded that you can be left considering some dumb stuff that isn't true or even factual.

So perhaps the job today is to be open-minded, then check everything.

Which is far less catchy than Sagan's description of your brains falling out!

Reading the Palm trees, Dadang Christanto, 2008, Darwin.

Peace and more peace

Both Barry and I have been unwell for a week or so, and the creativity has been limited as a result. I have managed to continue to prepare samples for teaching next weekend; and to fix a couple of weather grams and re-hang them.

Lovely little bits of peace work seem the right thing to do when you can't do much else!

One of the things I really like to do is to handstitch my handwriting on paper.

So here is pax under way,

and completed.

And the outline stitching and filling in stitching of individual heartbeat script letters....

And doodling with white gel pens

I also bought  couple of white ink stamp pads and have been practising with some alphabet stamps I have.

And then the sewing machine came out and off we went with machine stitching on paper. Another delight!

There really are so many options and possibilities using white on white I think.

Workshop notes almost finished as we head into a rather busy week; and this time next week it will all be done!

As mentioned I also repaired a couple of weather gams and re-hung them.  It is good to have a few more flying again; and now they are accompanied by tender shoots of green - peace emerging I hope.