When storms take over

For the second project of my final mixed media assessment, I chose to illustrate an instrumental piece of music by local composers Harvey Welsh and Chris Holly. I have responded before to this work with poetry and photography and no matter how many times I listen to it, it makes me think of storms. 

The "playlist" brief called for execution of a mixed media piece by using at least two surfaces and two techniques.  

My artwork is an instinctive response to the music and it doesn’t have any other concept behind it other than imagining a storm at sea, watched through a window. 

I chose to use collaged elements: paper, bark vinyl imitation of wood and tracing paper. The window is overlaid on top of layers of painted clouds and stormy seas. A boat made out of bark is adrift. The onlooker is alone with their thoughts. They open their window and watch the storm. I illustrated the act of opening the window by creating a lift-the flap look. The strips of vinyl make the shape of the window, the tracing paper is the window opening, looking out to sea.

The surfaces used in this project were Archers paper, Canson paper, tracing paper, bark and a wood-imitation vinyl tile. I kept the colour scheme simple, with only a few colours: blue, grey and brown. To create the storm, I used Prussian blue and neutral grey acrylic inks and ultramarine and white watercolours.

I didn’t have many challenges illustrating this idea or executing it because it was an instinctive response and I didn’t have to think about how I was doing it. I knew how I wanted the work to look just by listening to the music. My main challenge was my minimal experience with watercolours and inks. Another challenge I didn’t predict it will be as time-consuming, was creating the lift-the-flap effect by cutting precisely the tracing paper to create the open window. I managed to rip quite a few sheets before the window was in place.

If I had more time, I would have liked to use real wood instead of vinyl and I would have experimented more with creating the clouds and water textures and with the fluidity of inks and watercolours. 

I would have liked to work on a bigger scale (ceiling to floor), to draw the audience straight into the eye of the storm and I would have liked to add a silhouette next to the window, as a separate layer – possibly realised in a charcoal sketch. Given the time constraints, I think it’s a good trial run but it’s a work I would like to re-do in the future.

El Arcoíris

 

Rojo - los labios de esos niños que ayer robaron las cerezas. 

Naranja, el amanecer de mis mañanas soñolientas.

Amarillo - la hoja que encontré corriendo con la lluvia

Verde son las briznas de hierba y los ojos de mi hija

Azul es el retrato tuyo que nunca tomé, pero lo recuerdo cada día

Índigo las noches desiertas, 

Violeta es el color

del dolor.



About the Eyes

About this poem:

We live in times of great turmoil; worldwide, we are divided by power, greed, discord and famine. I think it is most important than ever to acknowledge that we live under the same sun, that we are all equal. Unfortunately, I don't speak as many languages as I would like to.

I imagined 4 different characters, with different languages, different eyes colour and different life experience. They are made by the different memories each of them carries.

The black eyes remember storms, wars and their mother, trying to find her children's next piece of bread. Even when they found peace, living in a different country, a country of blue-eyed people, the memories come back.

The green eyes remember different kind of storms and Spring nights. The brown eyes remember the enchanted forest of their childhood. The blue eyes have never known famine and they reassure the black eyes that they will never have to worry about the bread.

I have always considered myself a visual artist primarily. That is not to say that I am not serious about my writing. I always knew I want to write - there was never a doubt. I just always envisaged the two getting along just fine. I couldn't imagine myself doing one without the other.
Recently, I have been commissioned to write. A lot. And I am thrilled to say, "Stories from my Grasslands" will soon have a home, airing from a local radio station. (I promise, all will be revealed soon).

Meanwhile, I want to talk about writing and about what I have learned about writing . Last year, I was fortunate to take part in a series of "Mother Tongue" workshops under the guidance of the ever amazing Jacqui Malins and Lauren Klinger. I admired their courage of standing up and admitting they only spoke English; yet their workshops were truly mind blowing. They taught techniques and emphasis, they made writing exercises fun, they made me see languages and their fusion in a totally new perspective. Each workshop was enhanced by the contribution of a special writer as well as the contribution of the other participants - so many ladies brought their knowlege: Anita Patel, Niloofar Fanaiyan, Vesna Cvjeticanin and Dunja Cvjetićanin, Christiane Vivanco de Savaris, Melissa Gomez, Karina Palomita. Thank you. I have learned so much in so little time. And I made some friends too, in the process.
So I decided to try fusion for myself. Here is my first poem in all the languages I love.
I get this question so many times, why do you write in other languages than yours? And I don't really know what the answer would be. Perhaps because my biggest regret is that I cannot make music, even if my life depended on it. So I play with the words, instead. I find music in their rhythm. I am (by far) not an academic, and I am sure that my grammar is poor at times. Perhaps the sense of what I want to convey is lost in translation at times, just like me. But what a fun adventure, to dance one's way through all these words.

About the roundness of a circle

I don't do new year resolutions. I don't live in the spur of the moment promises, nor am I good planner. 

I do have a list with things I want to do during 2017. It's a hefty list, with the little things, as well as the bold and daring dreams. The key word here is "do". Not achieve.

They are all things that mean a lot to me; I want to do all these because they are things I believe in, or things that make others - and me - happy.

Whether I achieve anything by doing them, that is another story.

I haven't set that expectation of me, this time.

In fact, I haven't set any expectations at all for 2017. I want to look at it as a clean, crisp Canson paper where I can play with my pastels as long as I like, add the colours gradually and see what comes out of it. No rush, no pressure. 2016 has been a very challenging year for many. For me personally, it meant a lot of self-search and reflection. And at times, it felt like going around in circles.

Therefore It seems fit to leave you with this text I wrote a while ago, when a friend challenged me to think about a circle of reflections. I was never thinking of publishing it, but by the way our year has been hitting all the wrong notes, it makes sense to write it down again.

To all my friends in all four cardinal points: before the year leaves us, I wish you Love, Strength, Unity and Patience. May your circles stay round and may love reflect onto you.

About the roundness of the circle:
Nobody ever saw the face of God yet I am sure he is everywhere, at every step and can take any shape; in fact, I am sure creation has the form of a circle. Life starts in the roundness of a womb. Or an egg. Planets are round; we all live enclosed in a big round circle and people died for their belief in its roundness. 

I am sure as hell that lines and rectangles have been artificially made so we can be easily put in a corner, forgetting about our own wholeness and about the roundness of our circles.
We live in all kind of circles - and the most miraculous of all, we call it circle of life. We surround ourselves in more of these concentric circles: circle of friends, circle of trust, circle of love. The lucky ones even get to intersect these circles. Their tangents are a joke though; they are merely lines.
Coming full circle is not a coincidence either, is it? We start as helpless babies, learning everything and then we come around, forgetting, getting weaker and ending up just as helpless as we started.
We round up: our wealth, in rounding up amounts, we round up the cattle, the sheep, we round up the family for news. We gather around the table.

And all around and inside these circles, our world is made entirely of reflections. Each object, each colour is more or less defined by the amount of light absorbed, emitted or reflected. We are reflected - yet we are also reflecting.
I find it amazing that the English language gives the act of thinking the same word as the act of throwing back the light without absorbing or retaining it. And it is also amazing that the eye globe is round; the iris through which we filter these reflections has a circle shape too.
Unfortunately we are unable to retain the light but we are able to retain a thought. 

Sometimes we skip around these circles, without giving it too much thought or even without being aware of it all. And then again, we seem to come to a full circle. A circle of reflection.

 

 

 

The Bird Fairy

 

She spent all night talking to the bird. “You’ll see: one day your wings will take you high up to the skies. And then you’ll never be afraid again. She told her about her own wings: once upon a time she was the tiniest fairy in Fairy Land. She spent years wishing for her special power to reveal itself - until one stormy day. The sun was just coming back and she was watching it shine through the leaves of the gum tree she was under. “- I wish I could have wings like that” she thought.

“- I’ll make your wings” – said a young sapling next to her. And ever since then, she never stopped flying. She finally found her special power and she was roaming, setting all the birds free. The little white bird said nothing. Her plastic blue wings were sad and listless. But she had the most amazing song. The fairy shook her head. She was too young; she didn’t know yet that some birds have never known freedom outside their cages. She cast a spell and set the toy bird free. After all, she was the Bird Fairy.

Traces of Green

Come closer. Lay your head. Now close your eyes. And listen:
These are the stories that you will tell when it's your time. 
Traces of green embedding winter's slow, hushed whispers 
And memories of amber skies in prime.

There's so much movement in this silence
And so much love lies in this solitude - just like a spell.
Listen: there is a tale in every fragrance; 
These echoes are the stories you must tell. 

Look past the end of rainbows and forgotten sorrows;
Feel all these blades of grass pushing your palm, 
And find the stories born from the despair of no tomorrows,
In all these hidden storms that live within the calm. 

The Promise

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's going to be a long, stiff climb;
So you better steel yourself ahead.
Some days, we'll run against the time
Some others, our limbs will turn to lead.

Some days you'll feel as strong as ever.
Some days you will be weak and shaking;
Some others we will be silent and demur
Some days we'll look at all the dreams that you were making;
Some others, you will loose it in the dreamland
And I'll be right along to hold your hand.

Some days you'll hate the sight of me and everything on earth.
Some others, you'll enjoy my hand on yours.
There will be days of long despair - unsaid, unheard.
Days of evading on cooler, misty shores
And others of high hopes and endless hours.
For now, just take my hand and dream of Autumn colours.

 

 

 

Untitled

This Paradise is broken
So we’ll invent a new one
This time we have to be careful who populates it
Or we’ll end up again
With guns - left, right and centre.