Art-hop in August

A little while ago, I went with a group of art students to visit some Galleries in Johannesburg. I'm always blown away at the talent on display and other than inspiring me to look further, see deeper, try harder...I was inspired to simply.....STOP thinking.....quieten my mind and just look!

I pour so much thought into the fine detail of my work (and almost every single aspect of my life actually) that I miss the essence of it. I'm just producing a picture (I'm so busy trying to live that I'm not alive). The day I finally manage to get someone to sit in front of my paintings with a box of pop-corn, feet up!.... and watch people walking across the canvas, through colourful flower lined streets and leaves falling from dancing branches and smell the cold salty air coming off the sea or hear the call of the fish eagle in the distance without seeing it ....only then, will I begin to believe that FINALLY, I am a true artist.

The art I saw that day was very diverse, very morally and ethically challenging (especially for some of the older Fundamentalist Christian students :o) ) but thought-provoking non-the-less. The artists got the reactions that they had intended...shock, horror, amazement.

My favorite Gallery is the Circa and its neighbouring Speke Gallery. The Everard Reed Gallery is the one gallery where I believe every artist wants to exhibit but holds little attraction to me. Commercialism saturates the very walls and one senses the 'business' aspect rather than the 'art' . Then, the UJ Gallery, is the one place I would visit before going to any other in JHB. The art is often totally off the cuff and crazy and brilliant and intriguing and makes one ask oneself: "whaat on earth is art????" I love the entertainment value and also being challenged on every aspect of 'me' the artist and 'me' the person.

One of Angus Taylor's sculptures. I LOVE his work


This was at the Speke Galery. I cant remember who this artist was, but it was one of the biggest charcole drawings that I've ever seen...beautifully done.

Noreen on top of the Circa Gallery. Beautiful views, the top floor provides chairs to relax and just absorb the experience. Angus Taylor often exhibits his works here because the space offered is huge as are some of his works. There's a story behind this gallery which appeals to me too.

This is another very poignant piece by Angus Taylor, depicting an elephant with a gazillion blazing arrows stuck in it....also at the Circa.

I'm off in a few days time and will be going to many galleries and am rubbing my hands together at the thought! Today I got an email that the SCA is having a one day exhibition at the Westminister Cathederal on the 19th of November and I've been asked to exhibit. I'm very honoured and blessed but gosh, I feel like a pimple when I see what is out there.

I need to focus on my dream now..Its big, unreachable sometimes, but for me, so real.

London Journal 2009

I was looking for contacts, addresses and street names for my impending trip and I discovered this..... and had a good laugh! My 2009 London journal ! Perhaps there are a few things in here which aught not to be shared but my age and current journey has rendered me (to a certain extent) immune to opinion!

A dear friend was so right....drawing/painting what you see makes a memory so much more vivid than a photo....perhaps because you are using more than one of your senses while recording something. I've only included a few pages but this is what I did then and intend doing now, on this next trip. I am going with a fellow artist and friend who is also a framer, art restorer and best of all, a teacher with a wealth of knowledge and passion for seeing and recording art in everything she sees. This promises to be an enlightening and interesting trip.

I really haven't been in a great space over the last two weeks. There has just been so much on my mind, not only linked to emotional upsets and misunderstandings and weird things which have complicated my life( and perhaps shouldn't have) but the events of the exhibition have also been somewhat overwhelming. I never expected any of this!!

At one stage over these past few days....and even today in fact.... I honestly though I was losing my mind (the little that appears to be left of the cognitive bit!) I have torn up drawings of my dreams, destroying them rather than trying to understand them...I have scribbled down others that where soooo disturbing, I have had a desire to do things that are so inexplicably odd and out of character for me. I think that perhaps my brain has been flooded by mutant hormones .... natures sudden and cruel way of letting me know that this is my body's, my 'normal' life's swan-song....changing me from a 'productive' woman into a strange, demented 'sports-model'. Hell...where to from here??!!!......In a soft rocking chair knitting baby Jerseys with bat-winged specs balancing off my nose....or sitting on a wooden porch with a stick of smoking hashish hanging from my wrinkly lips. (God strewth....now THAT'S a mental image!!!) Ooooooohhhhh, I'm not ready for this, any of this....whatever 'this' is!

Right.....off to the chemist.!!