Love Pirate

He tore hearts in TWO, 2013The Love Pirate is a breaker of hearts. He plucks them from the chests of unwary girls and tears them to shreds, whereupon he tramples them to pieces. Woe betide you if you should cross his path! Of course, if you happen to have a needle and thread about your person, you might be able to pick up the pieces and mend your broken heart …

if one love is not forever, the next may be true …

Initially inspired by this page torn from a 1930s romance novel, this series of broken hearts allows the possibility that hearts can be mended; that if one love is not forever, the next may be true. Nerves might be frayed, like the edges of these threads; lives and loves perhaps are old, faded, and secondhand like these old pages torn from vintage books, but the wear and tear should remind us of who we are, what we have passed through, and how we have come out the other side stronger.

You may hate Valentine’s Day, or you may simply be feeling lonely, but once upon a time Valentines were exchanged amongst friends, not just lovers. So here’s my wish to you, single or loved-up: have a happy day!

It takes six kisses to mend a broken heart, 2013Her heart was broken many times, 2013

We Spent Years Up Late

Here’s one I prepared earlier …

No really, it’s 8.37pm on Wednesday as I write this and schedule it to publish at an aptly late hour tonight. For right now I am tucked up sound asleep (I hope) as I must rise at 4.30am in order to make a 6.35am flight to Sydney.

But what it is that usually keeps me up so late? Forever trying to cram things into the day, it’s usually art-making that keeps me up late at night. And so often even after I finish up for the evening I need to wind down, and end up window-shopping researching on Etsy, or playing a few games of solitaire. Whenever I stumble into bed exhausted, I think of those Warren Zevon lyrics, I’ll sleep when I’m dead … and think with satisfaction about all I’ve accomplished for the day.

The Red Boots

Recently I was reminiscing about a beloved pair of tasselled red boots I once owned, and decided to create a little collage in homage to them. I’ve been using paper ephemera in my random poems for a while now, occasionally including drawings. This time I incorporated some red and grey thread to create the whimsical pair of suede tassels that swung on the outer sides. Although I had already been thinking about this evolution in my collages, this picture was the first of a new series I am currently working on. A step in a new direction. Thank you Red Boots. 

Heart Transfer

Laser print transfer to glassine paper (the background is an old potato print) – both coincidentally use a heart motif.I’ve been working on collages recently utilising found paper, ink drawings and thread. A few years ago I had been working in a similar vein with laser-printed tracing paper incorporated into my collage. I decided to revisit this method, but this time I wanted to use glassine paper (that thin stuff between the pages of old-fashioned photo albums – you remember hard-copy albums, right?).

Glassine is too thin to go through a printer however, so alternative methods were called for. I also wanted something a little less hard-edged than a flat laser print. A transfer was the answer: a direct contact print onto a substrate. You can use many types of substrates, from art paper to fabric, wood, or metal, all with differing results.

Nail polish remover, a cotton swab, a spoon – and the great outdoors.After researching transfer techniques and realising I had none of the proper materials (and being impatient to start), I decided to experiment with other mediums. Transferring requires using a carbon-heavy photocopy (the primitive type found in public libraries rather than the posh laser printers in offices) for best results, but I decided to give the laser print a go anyway. The fresher the print is, the better.

I didn’t have any oil of wintergreen either (or methyl salicylate if you want to be a show-off), so I decided to try acetone – or good old nail polish remover, something every respectable girl artist has in her pencil case. All else you need is a cotton swab, a spoon, and good ventilation so you don’t get sick and die from inhaling all the deadly fumes.

Hey presto!I went out on the balcony armed with some ok quality illustration paper, my Sally Hanson nail polish remover, a Johnson & Johnson cotton tip, an old spoon left over from a photoshoot, and my fresh laser print of an old sketch of heart-bedecked trees. I placed the print upside down onto the paper and applied a little nail polish remover to the back. (The acetone will soak through the paper immediately, and become transparent.) Using the back of the spoon I burnished while the paper was still wet, which meant going bit by bit, as the print won’t transfer after the acetone dries.

It was like magic! The print was smudge-proof too. I immediately attempted a transfer onto the glassine – with poorer results unfortunately. The transfer was patchy, with lines that had bled a little, but perhaps in my excitement I was more careless with my burnishing. A friend has since kindly supplied me with some very pungent-smelling oil of wintergreen, so I’ll be playing with the real thing this weekend.

A transfer onto Canson 250gsm illustration paper was much more successful than those made using the glassine substrate.

The Naked Lunch

Le petit déjeuner sur l’herbe, Édouard Manet, 1863Somewhere in the world it’s lunchtime right now. If it is, may I suggest you honour Édouard Manet on his birthday and eat it al fresco in your birthday suit?

Édouard Manet, portrait by Nadar, 1874The French painter was born today in 1832 (d. 1883), and he was one of the first artists to begin to veer away from pure realism, paving the way for the Impressionists. His work marks the beginning of modern art, in particular his paintings Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) and Olympia (1863). Both the naked lunch and Olympia caused great controversy in their day, mostly for their connotations of sexuality and prostitution.

These four pictures I have included have always been my favourite paintings of his, although I also like some of his boating subjects. I particularly remember my high school art teacher pointing out the noses of the ladies on The Balcony (1869), how in the brilliant sunshine they lost all form and are defined only by the shadows underneath – apparently this was another shocking thing for Manet’s contemporaries to come to terms with.

Olympia, 1863The Balcony, 1869It is A Bar at the Folies Bergere (1882) that is my favourite however. There is such richness of detail and colour. It always held my fascinated gaze for long moments, my eyes wandering over the barmaid’s resigned expression and all the paraphernalia on the marble bench. I’m not forgetting the reflection of the man before her, but it is easy to do so because the distance suggested by the reflection does not quite tally with our viewpoint. It seems as though we ought to be peering over his shoulder. Some conjectures suggest this is not a mirror image at all, although none of these explanations satisfy. Perhaps Manet was simply taking some artistic licence and indulging in some painterly smoke and mirrors. 

Manet’s last great painting, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1882