Scissor Happy
I’ve been busy, busy as a little bee working on a new series of Poetry for Ransom collages. I’ve collected up a whole lot of vintage paper ephemera (going back as far as the turn of the second-to-last century), including old postcards, letters, envelopes, pages torn from ledgers and secretary’s shorthand notebooks, and combined them with found imagery, pen and ink washes. I love their foxy edges, yellow with age. I even found some of my own bits of paper secreted away since childhood in my parent’s garage. Finding those gave me a kick!
Look out for a new gallery in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s a little taster.
The Universe Within
When I was creating my poem collage for New Year’s Eve, I was debating whether to use some different images as the background. These were also torn from a magazine (an old issue of Black Book), but I realised they were images by the artist Chris Bucklow. It seemed a bit wrong to be using another artist’s work in my own art – although I’ve seen it done before. (Australian Copyright Law does allow me to create collages using found imagery). Instead, I used a commercial photograph advertising beauty products.
Christopher Bucklow is a British photographer best known for his Guest series. Each image is unique, and is created using a technique similar to a pinhole camera. He first draws a life-sized silhouette of his sitter on a sheet of aluminium foil, which is then perforated with thousands of pinholes. Sunlight is allowed to shine through these holes, exposing photographic paper to many images of the sun and sky at once. Colour variations depend on the intensity of sunlight, the hour, and exposure time.
The results are these beautiful silhouettes – the universe within each of us.
See more of Bucklow’s work in his gallery.
Counting My Blessings
In this lead up to Christmas and the New Year period, amidst all the stress and busy-ness of work, marvelling at how quickly the year had flashed by, I began to reflect on what had passed, and what was to come in the next year.
It is too easy to become fixated on the sad things that happened, the regrets of failures big or small; to become impatient for the year to end so that one can start afresh. Life isn’t always a breeze, but it is important to remember to be thankful anyway, even for the simplest things. For every failure there are lessons that can be learned; from sadness, strength and insight can be gained. Simply to be in the possession of all one’s senses is one of life’s richest blessings. Imagine a world without music!
On this penultimate day of the year, I am counting up all the things I am thankful for. Why don’t you?
Cheating in Venice in the Eighteenth Century
Riva degli Schiavoni Looking East, 1730I am not much a one for traditional art, particularly landscapes, but I have long admired the work of Venetian painter Canaletto. His full name was Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–11768) – he must have lengthened his surname to make it sound more distinguished, which is a rather amusing notion.
He is famous for depicting the humble working areas of the city, and grand scenes of the canals and palaces of Venice. Unusual for artists of the period he painted from nature, or outdoors, as opposed to in the studio. The extraordinary detail to be seen in his paintings is explained by the fact that he utilised the camera obscura, a kind of primitive projector and drawing aid. (Seems a bit like cheating to me, but he was far from the only artist to use it – the Dutch Vermeer was another famous proponent.)
The glorious light he has captured in his paintings of the Venetian canals is beautiful, and the sense of infinite space – both doing nothing to dispel the popular notion of Venice as a fairytale city.
Images from WikiPaintings.
The Grand Canal from the Campo San Vio
The Molo and the Piazzetta San Marco
A Long Summer
Recently I’ve been experimenting with hand drawn oil pastel backgrounds for my random poems. And this morning I wanted to try to assemble a poem that was somewhat more cheerful in tone simply to celebrate the fact that summer has come.
The table was strewn with a multitude of word snippets, and one phrase lead naturally to the next. By the time I came to the end of the poem, I found that not only was I pleased with the positive message, serendipitously the colours were also bright and complementary.
Instantly I knew exactly what kind of background I wanted: vivid, happy colours that softly merged into one another. Originally I was going to do broad stripes, but I decided on blocks of colour instead. I really love how it’s finally come together, and it makes me smile. Here’s to an endless summer.
Life is edged with delicate happiness
Step through the secret world where the sun sets gold
And a long summer for endless hours defies the laws of nature
Such an array of riches catches the inner glow to your heart.