Ephemeral on exhibition

I knew there was a reason why I didn't post the rest of the "Ephemeral" series... Actually no, it was just me exercising my natural gift for procrastination, but now I'm glad I didn't because they're forming part of a kinda-emergency exhibition at Trent Gallery where I work. So, if you're free on Saturday come by and see my six views of the same still life, along with some amazing work by the talented Freddie Claassen. After that I'll post them all up here so everyone can see them.

Ephemeral

A little while back I was planning a small series of work to send to The Art of Silver, a gallery / shop in Cullinan (here's the Facebook page). Anyway, they wanted skulls, and flowers, and maybe other things, but definitely skulls and flowers. So I was thinking, which is dangerous, because often I start thinking and forget to stop, and then I don't do anything because I'm thinking about it too much. And then a bit later I was in the bath reading a book about ancient Greek philosophy (you can tell I wrote this entire blog post just to let you know that I read Greek philosophy in the bath, can't you?)

And I read that the ancient Greeks were obsessed with the idea of permanence. What, if anything, was permanent? And what was transient? And I jumped out of the bath yelling "Eureka!" and made that the theme of this series.

Now, I know skulls can be seen as a bit morbid, but try not to see it that way when you look at these pictures, if you can help it. I know that to be Serious Artist you need to deal in death, mutilation and sex, preferably all at the same time, but these skulls and bones aren't supposed to symbolise death except indirectly. My work with skulls is informed by my background in archaeology, and usually refers to the past and what remains of it.

Here the skulls and bones represent permanence in the material world, and more broadly, non-living matter. The whole series is about the question of what is more permanent: the material (represented by the bones) or the immaterial (life, and the patterns passed on in the genes). The title of the series is "Ephemeral".

Covenant

That's what this first one is about; the title refers to the "covenant" that non-living matter enters into (yes, anthropomorphising here!) when it agrees to come together for a while in set patterns to form a living creature. The rabbit's hipbones are the non-living matter, and the flower represents life - I used the most ethereal and fragile-looking one I could find. The arrangement of the flower making a division between the two sides of the animal refers to the Ancient Near Eastern tradition of formalising a covenant by cutting an animal in half longitudinally and walking between the halves. After the duration of the covenant is over, the life sometimes leaves its imprint in the non-living matter, in the form of bones that remain, and that may then become fossils which are even more permanent. It seems that the question is resolved, and that non-living matter lasts much longer than life does. But what about the descendants of that rabbit? In all likelihood, they will still be living and reproducing (like rabbits) long after those bones crumble to dust.

Temporal

Ha ha, I made a pun. I have a sad addiction to the lowest form of humour. "Temporal" means having to do with time, temporary, not eternal. But it also refers to the sides of the head (up there, the sticking-out bits behind the eye sockets.) The watch is set to 5am (the "eleventh hour") of antiquity, and the alarm hand to 11, in honour of the last minute before the deadline - the only time I ever do anything. That is not an exaggeration.

Arrangement

"Arrangement" - I have arranged the bones neatly and formally, in reference to the way the molecules of non-living matter are arranged according to the blueprints of DNA to temporarily form a living creature. I wish I had a more creative title!

Prey (Ambition)

I've left my favourite till last. This one is about the other way that the matter making up a living creature gets recycled (cue Lion King music here). It is a tribute to the display in the Ditsong Museum of Natural History that has a taxidermy owl posed on top of a mountain of all the birds, rats, insects and so on that one owl eats in a year. I think it's a year, I haven't seen it for a while. The museum was the ULTIMATE TREAT for me when I was a child, besides the zoo of course. I still remember clearly how my parents let me choose what we would do for some special occasion, and how buzzing with excitement I was at the thought of going to the museum! Anyway, this is an African Scops Owl, and he was a little bit over-ambitious thinking he could eat a whole rabbit by himself. I just love his little face to bits! I want to do more owls. 

Anyway, that's it for now. The last 6 in the series are much more closely linked; it's just one still life viewed from different angles over time, and I will make them another post.

Animal, vegetable, mineral

Animal, vegetable, mineral

Another world


Microctenopoma ansorgii

Collection I


Collection II


Cyclamen

Drimiopsis


Impala / lily


Motivated


Nature morte


Star map I


Twinspot

Mini-exhibition

Look! It exists! It is a thing! My exhibition opens on Thursday, and between you and me I'm almost finished with the pictures for it. Everyone is invited, not that I'm exactly expecting a crowd. I don't really know what to expect, in fact, especially as there is another exhibition opening same time, same place, and I'm worried that some distant aunt or something will think the other artist's (much better) artworks are in fact mine, and embarrassment will ensue.

"Autumn leaves" miniature

This is a miniature inspired by my biggest and possibly boldest painting. Which I haven't shown you yet. I wonder why? Let me try and figure that one out and perhaps remedy it. Same size as the other miniatures, watercolour with a bit of pencil and ink.

"Do I dare disturb the universe?"

That couple of lines from "The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (which I adore) was given to us as an essay prompt in English class when I was about 13. My then best friend wrote a story about a child-goddess playing marbles, and that story inspired this little picture an alarming number of years later. Thanks, Sheila, and I still miss you.

My mother-in-law bought it from the gallery, for which I am most grateful! This was another polarising picture like my lighthouse one; some people loved it, some people hated it. The lighthouse picture, incidentally, was bought some time after I posted it, by a guy with a compulsion to buy lighthouse-related things. As a mentor of mine once said, every picture has a buyer out there, someone who will love it. You just have to keep putting it out there until that person finds it.

Guest post on the BAASA blog

I wrote a guest post on the topic of "Inspiration" for the Botanical Artists' Association of Southern Africa. Please go and check it out, and if you're interested in botanical art, consider joining BAASA. We have workshops, courses, exhibitions and expeditions. It's great for networking, too.

Here are a couple of photos from our last trip, in November.

Butterfly on porcelain

Last month the local BAASA group had a porcelain painting workshop. I painted this butterfly on a random milk jug and am now totally hooked, I just want to paint on every bit of china I see, but don't actually own the necessary supplies myself. BAASA!?

Anyway, it's really great because you paint on already-fired porcelain or bone china, which means whatever you have around the house or find at the shops is fair game. The paints are overglaze powders that you have to mix with esoteric oils and things, and fortunately most of the time what you see is what you get in terms of colour. You need to fire the painted pieces in a kiln, sometimes several times between layers especially if you are trying to get a nice bright red, but when you're done the design is permanent: you can wash it, eat off it, whatever. I'm hoping that a couple of us will get together in the future and share materials so that I can do more. I started a sugar bowl to go with the milk jug, but someone sadly cleaned off my drawing (in a special porcelain pencil that disappears when fired; normal pencil will become part of the glaze and be permanent) so I have to start over again.

I never used to be able to draw butterflies, because I couldn't get them even close to symmetrical. Then one day I realised that you could draw half a butterfly and trace it in reverse for the other side. Even later (like, last month) I realised that you can use a simple four-square grid to guide you in situations where tracing doesn't work so well.

I drew a few for you to demonstrate - figured that horrible mouse-drawing would replicate the effect of trying to use a disappearing pencil on a wobbly moving object with a curved surface.

The aim here is to show that you don't need to draw beautifully to get the right effect - the grid will allow you to achieve the basic symmetry that will make your butterfly look right. The first one is a bit wrong: in general the thorax needs to be in the "crosshairs" because both pairs of wings (and all the legs) grow out of it. I haven't drawn in their heads. You need to make the head small and inconspicuous to look right; our instinct as humans (duh) is to place special emphasis on the head and eyes, making them a lot bigger than they should be. This makes the butterfly look cartoonish rather than real.

Butterflies, butterflies, I am going to go and draw lots of butterflies now!

With a little help...

I've been having a little bit of a hairy time lately, but I think things are starting to look up, and I've been coping pretty well - with a bit of help from some small friends. Here's a hint -

Out of the attic: Red-eyed Tree Frog

Guineafowl

I started this painting almost exactly a year ago, stomping around in the rain with my mother at the bird sanctuary looking for guineafowl to photograph. My mother's a bird whisperer, or possibly a magician, as after a completely unsuccessful morning we were walking back to the car when she decided to call one (not any sort of proper bird call, just, you know, "come along, guineafowl") and lo and behold, one appeared out of nowhere, came right up to where she was throwing imaginary food at it, and posed for pictures. He was the model for the left and middle birds, while the one on the right is based on a stuffed one from a museum!

I apologise for the bad photo quality - I have a dreadful habit of finishing things at the last possible moment, making it impossible to get proper scans done.

Playing with grass, textures, and some very, very mixed media

How mixed? I don't hear you ask. But I'll answer anyway. I started with paper. Then I added: Pencil; water-soluble ink; non-water-soluble ink; watercolours; oil paints; shiny metallic oil paints; turpentine; water; digital editing. This is pretty much my ideal process - I will always try to cram more media into any given picture. The incompatible media result in some very interesting textures and bold colour combinations without muddiness.

The drawing is awful, though. It started out as a longish rectangular picture, but the right hand side was just so bad that I cut it off. There is still some horrendousness around the horizon line on the right hand edge, but I couldn't get rid of that and still have a picture.

I'll just pass it off as a cautionary tale. Listen here, children: having two lines (here, the grass and the mountain) arbitrarily touch instead of either crossing or having a gap in between them is just as bad as, in fiction, having an arbitrary coincidence with neither plot significance nor relevance to the theme. If your writing is all about the randomness of life, for instance, you might have a pass, and likewise under some conditions it would be okay to break this line rule.

Of course, both incontrovertibly happen the whole time in real life, but are still unacceptable in art. Reality is unrealistic. Seriously though, we do it all the time without noticing, and it's one of those things that can make an otherwise fine picture look unaccountably icky. (Until you notice it, of course, then it looks accountably icky.) Oh no, now everyone who reads this will only look at the mistake. And don't even ask me what that pink thing in the sky is. It's art, OK?

Rainy day cat for Felicity

When Felicity mentioned this cat in the comments, it was a perfect excuse to enlarge it too. Or a half-baked excuse. Any excuse at all will do! Here you go.

Out of the attic: 17 cats

I made this design last year to go on a mug as a gift for my aunt. I'd like to have more mugs made some day. Of course that would mean I'd have to find a printing place. And, you know, go in, and talk to them...

In the meantime, I've enlarged a couple of them just for you. There's slinky cat:

Then there's smug cat:

And then my own little Katala.

Note the tail. It was like that when we got her, promise! Actually, the end is there - it just never grew. I suspect it was bitten when she was very small by one of her littermates or, more probably, her mother.

Botanical art exhibition

What I'm doing this week: frantically finishing the second of two paintings for this exhibition. If you're planning to be anywhere around Jo'burg this weekend, I really think it's going to be good!

Malachite kingfisher

Things about this painting:

* I sold it a few weekends ago (yay!)

* It was painted on top of another picture I'd done earlier. I have a great fear of pristine surfaces. Go and look at this comic by Gingerhaze. And then go and read her entire tumblr, which to me is basically one great dramatic pileup of this:

* The style of this painting was inspired in part by the first Black Orchid graphic novel - the early scenes in the greenhouse are some of the most gorgeous images I have ever seen.

* Malachite kingfishers are among my favourite things. The second thing I drew when I began taking art classes, aged 9 or so, was a malachite kingfisher. (The first was a green pepper, halved.)

* They are much smaller than they look in pictures (malachite kingfishers, not green peppers). I've never seen a live one, sadly, but I saw a skin in the museum at the University of the Witwatersrand, and it was no bigger than a sparrow.

* Oh yeah, I've been working on and off in the museum at Wits, and if you're a fan of snakes, spiders, bugs, axolotls, or giant green iguanas that like hanging out on logs and watching people do aerobics (seriously) and if you'll be in Jo'burg any time between tomorrow and Sunday, you should attend this event.

* I know the last point has exactly nothing to do with my picture. But, the iguana! It really happened. I was coming in from lunch, and what appeared to be most of the museum staff were doing some sort of dance routine, and the iguana was on a log, sommer there on the floor, watching them. It was one of those great moments in life, the ones you know you'll treasure forever. And there was an enormous hi-fi, and an instructor, and I think some people had belly-dancing belts, the ones with the coins. And... and... the iguana. It was beautiful.

P.S. In case you're one of the 17 people in the world who haven't seen this clip yet, may I present another of those beautiful moments. I don't feel bad saying that, because the kid wasn't hurt. Just don't read the comments on YouTube. They are exactly as you would expect.

Sea Horse

A genuine seahorse on my blog! ...well, kind of. I sold this picture (I sold this picture!) to a little girl (her father paid for it), which I found extremely flattering, because if a small child likes something, she really likes it.

It's a small picture - maybe twice the size it's posted here - and it started as a simple watercolour doodle, playing with colours. I kept it for a year or so, not knowing what to do with it. I looked at it from every angle and eventually decided that it looked like a sea monster.

The surface was very rough, so my next step was to paint over it with a solution of gum arabic to prevent ink from bleeding. This made things difficult later, though. In retrospect I think gelatine would have been a better option. Then I drew in the "sea horse" with ink. The picture looked too empty.

Next I went all mixed-media and punched holes down the left side, stuck on those reinforcement-sticker things, and threaded them with shiny embroidery thread and beads. It still looked too empty. So then I decided to fill in the background with huge numbers of real sea creatures, past and present. Some of my favourites: the pansy shell, the Glaucus sea slug, the flying fish, and little Hallucigenia (the earlier interpretation, because it's more awesome) near the horse's eye.

All the background creatures were done in pencil, but the gum arabic made the surface so inimical to graphite that the process was more like engraving! It took ages, but the heavily textured end result made it worth it.

The barely mediated contents of my brain

This is what happens when I'm sitting around with drawing materials and no idea of what I'm about to do. It started in the bottom left quadrant with a spontaneous phoenix and paisley explosion. Above the paisley is a city of bird people, the project of much more conscious thought and one of the last things I added.

As you can see, I'm a maximalist.

This painting was made with watercolours and a lot of black ink, and was bought by Lisa, which makes me happy.

Does anyone know what this character means?

So, at Saturday's market - nearly 300 cranes down, 700 to go! - I got a real, live customer who wants to buy this little still life in oils that I did some years ago. The thing is, she'd really like to know what she's buying, and sadly I have no idea. The candle was a present from my friend Lauren (hi Lauren!) and is labelled "Chinese pyramid small candle" which may help. Or not.

So... does anyone out there know what that character means? Of course I may have copied it wrong, but hopefully not egregiously so. Anonymous (whose mother is the customer, hi Anon and Anon's mom!) thinks it would be really funny if it means "candle".

I like this still life, it's got some of my favourite things in it - a shell bought in Cape Town when I was eight, the candle from Lauren, an amethyst candleholder given to me by my husband (then boyfriend), and jasmine, the very best smell in the world, in a vase belonging to my mom. All arranged on one of my nighties. Oh, the things that inspire us.

At last - a new picture!

I paid a visit to a little print shop, so now I have scans of some things I've been working on since my scanner/printer went bung. Here's one of them: one of my favourite plants in my garden. It's some sort of an iris-type thing. The plant itself is really big, and the flowers last for only one day, but they are the most perfect purplish-blue, and the markings on them are too wonderful.

Now they last for a day, I said, but that's on the plant. This painting was a race against time, as the moment I picked the flower its petals began to shrivel and curl up. The outer petals went first, so I painted them first. Then I did the inner petals (that look like antique blue-and-white Chinese porcelain) and the inside (a garish zebra-print rug) while the whole thing slowly but inexorably rolled itself into a little indigo blob like a sea anemone when the tide goes out.

That was one fast painting. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was finished, but one day I want to do a proper painting of the plant that shows how the flowers grow from communal buds that are held on the ends of flattened stems that look just like leaves.

Oh, and does anyone know what it is?