Progress on Peacock Feather

Progress on Peacock Feather today. When Rodney gave me his critique this afternoon he pointed out her eyes were a little crossed! That can be corrected tomorrow. Also will finish doing the skin tones and shadowing on the shoulders and arm. Then the work will need to dry for at least 4, maybe 7 days? before I can tackle the really challenging task of embroidering the peacock feather she holds over her face, see the original photo in yesterdays blog below if you don't know what I refer to in regard to the feather. The 2 blue slashes on her right jaw relate to the shadow cast by the peacock feather. It will be more practical to finish painting that shadowing once the embroidery is completed.


I did some applique and machine embroidering to create the dress textile. It is just crudely tacked on over the torso at the moment. It has to be left until the paintwork is dry so I can do some more machine embroidery into it. 


I think I will leave the hair pink, though in the photo the model is blonde. 

Peacock feather

This is the beginning of a new work today. The original photo it is being taken from is stuck to the left side of the canvas. Above them is a small swatch of an embellished textile I plan to replicate to use for the models garment.

My friend Sally asked me if I was interested in doing a picture based on one of her photos. Sally is an incredibly talented photographer and took Rodney and I wedding photos. She is having an exhibition at the end of this month and asked Rodney to pose for her with some of his paintings. During the photo session I was admiring some of the other pictures she'd taken and Sally was intrigued to ask me to interpret one of her images in my particular way...and the beginnings of this challenge is what I've gotten onto the canvas today.

Initially the figure was blocked in with acrylic paint then I decided to complete the face, shoulders and arm with oil paint. It allows for so much more control and subtlety. At first I thought I might do a really loose, abstract interpretation....then I changed my mind and decided to do a much more realistic and tight extrapolation. If only to show that I can be clever and technically skilled if I choose to be....hahaha! That desire to be really loose and free was a reaction to having gotten into a place of frustration with all the fussing around to get the details of the previous work tidied up and looking right. I make art because it makes my world FUN!!!=bigger, brighter and more interesting....if it starts turning into a boxed in discipline of rules, regulations and conventions then -waaahhAAAHHHHH I want to get out! quick smart!!!!

One problem with using oil paint is that it will be up to week before the paint has cured enough so that I can handle the canvas without the potential for smearing and ruining the surface before it can be put under the machine for the textile embellishment. But I this shouldn't be a problem as I have 2 other images I was planning to start working on as soon as possible. I'll start working on them and get back to this one when its ready. Sallys exhibition deadline is April 22 so I will need to not let this one get lost up the garden path.

I am really looking forward to doing that peacock feather!

stuck and bored....

I've been stuck again.....in my blog post of January 26th, "The bird is flying", I talked about how sometimes you start an artwork that is somehow unsatisfactory - it can't be resolved, becomes frustratingly stuck or simply fails! I have perhaps 3-4 artworks floating about in my studio in this category. Sometimes after a few weeks, months or even years I go back to them and fiddle a bit more. There is one of these I think can eventually be "resolved" in time for my August exhibition at Muswellbrook Gallery. I rarely throw anything out or completely trash it. From uncompleted works I'll often cannabalise parts I like by cutting them up and inserting the fragments into later works. A month ago I cut up a canvas that had been finished 12 years ago! Parts of it will go into another one of the artworks I'm struggling to finish.

I have gotten into this place of irresolution with The Golden Pierrot. Here is a picture of it at the moment. It probably looks close to finished to most people and it does only require some finessing to the background. But I'm so bored and frustrated with it....

Golden Pierrot, as at April 5

I'm pretty sure I will return to it and do the 6-10 hours needed to complete it but at the moment its been abandoned while I've started another work - pictures of that this afternoon or tomorrow.


I think some of my problems with this one are - I don't usually do "realistic" backgrounds and are getting quite bored with getting this one right and I don't like how grey and monochromatic the background has became. I feel like I've started constructing a complicated story when in truth I have little interest in being a contrived narrative maker. My modus operandi is just to arrange a bit of stuff on a 2 dimensional surface and let other people make of it what they will. I'm tempted to do something wild and rebellious to bust myself out of that place and lash on lots of bright colour and abstract sploshes of pattern!!!....it may happen yet! The arch shape is a technique called bas relief, I built it using textured air drying paperclay.

Any Other Medium wins....

Pearl with "Out of the Violet and Blue" at the Wallaby Art and Jazz festival last night

I was absolutely thrilled and flattered to win first prize for one of my entries at the Wallaby Art and Jazz Festival last night. Wallabadah is a town a little smaller than Murrurundi about 45km further up the New England Highway towards Tamworth from our little village. For 3 years a committee of residents have been developing and running a wonderful event called the Wallaby Art and Jazz Festival. Last night people from the community and surrounding areas gathered for the art show immediately followed by live music from the DJ Gosper band.

I won first place in the section "Any Other Medium" and the grand prize of $1,000 for best in show, known as the "Ken Wilson Memorial Champion Painting". Tania Hartigan, one of the tireless workers on the Wallabadah Development Committee and daughter of the late Ken Wilson, very graciously awarded me the prize.

I was a little disappointed the 2 judges were unable to be present as I would have been very curious to ask them for a more in depth analysis of their choice! Of course, I'm so delighted to have this recognition! - I don't make that comment in any sort of a derisory way! Heavens forbid!!! It is just that as a textile artist, more often than not relegated to the "boonies" of  "other/textile medium",  I have learned to live with the reality that my unconventional medium of choice is frequently regarded more as a sideline novelty, not quite in the realm of serious/proper/respectable mediums like paint. After winning I was happy, elated and bemused to spend quite a lot of time explaining to people who suddenly had their curiousity piqued how I apply the surfaces and build up the images. So many people look without seeing because the medium simply cannot be contextualised within their personal understanding of what an artwork is.

So I truly feel I won more than acknowledgement, recognition and money last night. I feel I won over a few more people to "seeing" and possibly broadening their context and appreciation of what art can be.

Many thanks Wallabadah and the generous legacy of Ken Nelson!

this beautiful garden of eden, snake and all

Hi Caitlin!....yes my studio is is an extraordinarily beautiful and peaceful space to work in. That view   overlooking the pond I showed in the previous blog is taken from the deck of the studio, heres another photo  of the same view taken standing inside the studio doors - ain't it glorious!

Outside my studio doors, March 2012

Rodney and I have worked very hard to transform the garden from a neglected thigh high tangle of overgrown weeds into a lovely meditative space of growing things. The "pond garden" area outside my studio comprises approximately the bottom quarter of the whole yard and I wanted it to look like a tropical garden - hence the Bali style bamboo gazebo. I found it a bit challenging trying to select plants in that theme which would survive in a temperate climate! We get a few mornings -8C most winters and old timers maintain that snow falls every 2-3 decades! In the beginning I lost heaps of palms! Fortunately tree ferns, grasses, canna lilies, arum lilies, flaxes, mondo grass, achilleas and phlomis varieties have proven robust.

I found this wonderful nursery in Victoria which has a similar climate to this area and a few times a year I mailorder 20-30 plants from them -  www.lambley.com.au.

The front and side of the house have been planted in a more traditional cottage garden theme and there the plants are mostly daisies, geraniums, salvias and roses. Rodney put down the pebble paths just a few weeks before we got married last year and it finishes the garden marvellously. We still have many years of work to develop the middle area of the yard! You can see many more pictures of the garden that rodney has taken throughout the year by clicking on the link down the side bar of the blog.

The snake is no more! we found it lying dead in the grass yesterday afternoon not far from the woodpile. It was dead, through Rodney put the spade through it, just in case, because we were too cautious to touch it otherwise. I think it must have eaten a rat or mouse that had taken poison that we put out in the laundry. Rats had eaten through the rubber pipes of the washing machine! I found a huge rat dying in the garden the day before seeing the snake. The snake measured about 85cm.

Just a reminder and some encouragement to come forward with comments! If you are a subscriber and receive the blog by email notification you'll need to come to this website to use the comment button at the bottom of the blog -  www.pearlredmoon.com.

I was dubious about starting this blog in November last year and have surprised myself in keeping it up this long! It really has become an aspect of my art practise where I can reflect, focus and maintain a flowing narrative about my art and life. As a person who is not naturally gregarious, rather insular and solitary in fact, a thing I have learned with some difficulty about my life is that there are absolute benefits for me in interacting with people and seeking feedback. As a person with Aspergers Syndrome I have to overcome extreme anxiety and discomfort whenever I'm in the presence of others. This internet communication is a wonderful opportunity for me to be able to present myself in a way where I feel calm and without the confusing over stimulation of discerning what is happening, what is expected and trying to appear "normal"!

more dangerous life

A half hour ago I was finished working in the studio for today and came up to the house. Fortunately, as I don't move too fast with this peg leg and crutches, I checked the washing drying on the clothes line before going inside. When I came out of the house a few minutes later I saw sunbaking under our back porch was a red belly black snake at least a metre (3.5 feet) long. I had walked passed it only about 1.5m away!

outside Pearls studio door, March 2012

Rodney was down at the Gallery working on his own art so I immediately called him and he came home straight away. We watched the snake for about 3 minutes then it slivered off about 15 metres away and disappeared into our woodpile! Rodney reassured me they are not aggressive snakes and that particular one must have heard me as I clumped up the back yard and stopped at the clothes line and then decided I wasn't enough of a threat for it to abandon its spot in the cosy afternoon sunshine.

We know there are snakes in the garden not just because its part and parcel of living in a small rural community surrounded by bush. We constantly see evidence of them in the garden; have come across wee baby snakes when mowing (they're a lot slower to escape than their parents) and have had lots of ambivalent sightings. We are also aware that the garden we chose to create is an ideal snake habitat!....see above picture! We have a very large fishpond, tons of natural bush rock landscaping (snakes love to warm themselves on sun warmed rocks) and have planted shrubs, ferns and grasses. This is an ideal habitat for snakes, especially as the pond is populated by hundreds of frogs - the gourmet food choice of snakes!

Unfortunately the camera was down in the studio so I wasn't able to take a picture. I considered taking the risk of "running" (read - fast hobbling) past it and realised I wasn't brave enough - even for the entertainment of my blog readers! Even without the gamy foot I think it was a wise decision because that thing really took off FAST when it decided the suntan was optimal.

Golden Pierrot

detail from "Golden Pierrot"

Having overcome my fugue of yesterday I've gotten back to work. Such a gorgeous Autumn day! I feel better physically, the tiredness has gone. Beloved husband put March Girl on a stretcher so that work is now ready to be hung in the Gallery.

The work in progress has been renamed "Golden Pierrot" and the original background, intended to be pale metallic gold has been overpainted with black. The intention is to paint quite a complex picture of a gothic archway framing the figure. The picture shown is a detail, there is quite a lot of space surrounding the figure at the sides and above the head.

Rodney and I are off to celebrate Tess Hynes 30th birthday tonight. Happy BIRFDAY TESS!!!! So long as I don't indulge in too much champagne and are hangover free for tomorrow theres a good chance I could finish it. I'll be attending in the wheelchair, not taking crutches, so should keep safe from over enthusiastic revelry on my part or others!

more backwards with crutches

On wednesday the orthopedic surgeon operated on my ankle and put in a supporting plate and screws. I suppose this will be good in the "long run" (sick pun) for getting the bones to mend. I just hate being back on crutches, it is so limiting and difficult to get anything done. Some things like gardening are completely out the question! Rodney is being his usual positive self (we are a good balance, me always being the half empty part of the glass and he always insistent it's half full) and my saintly beloved cooked us roast chicken with veges and malaysian style sago dessert last night. So we aren't starving at this point. I did have to explain to Rodney I was merely using the crutch to point out where items were in the kitchen rather than threatening him with it....

I didn't get out of bed until 11am this morning and are trying to shake the despondency of having 90% of the things I want to do made very difficult to impossible. In the last 48 hours I've felt totally exhausted more from the effects of the morphine than the relatively low trauma operation, I think. I seem to have lots of adverse reactions to it like migraine headdaches and vomitting (3 times)....yuck!

Reminding myself of the glass half full - the surgeon did say I don't have osteoporosis, so at least thats not what caused the disunity issue with my bones. Except for being able to rule out some possibilities like diabetes and the former he said he had no explanation what the basis of the problem might be.

With the dry weather of the last week I'll be able to get down the back yard to the studio, as the ground will be firm enough to use the crutches safely. During that really wet part of early March the ground became so saturated the crutches would sink down several inches. I can still sit to paint or sit at the sewing machine to work on my art -so theres another glass full issue to celebrate in that I didn't break the right ankle or I wouldn't be able to use the sewing machine! Hooray!

one step forward....then another back!

After making that blog post this morning I went up to Tamworth for another X-ray and inspection of my ankle this afternoon. It is still not mending (after 2 months) so much to my surprise the osteopath asked me to come back to hospital tomorrow to have surgery. Apparently he will put in some temporary screws to encourage it to knit back together.

So...bahh-gaah! no art today and none tomorrow either. I may have to stay overnight after the surgery so possibly won't be home till Thursday afternoon.



I did make a start on a new work yesterday, as above. The face has been painted. The figure will eventually be trimmed back to be mounted on the canvas behind it which is painted a pale metallic gold. It was inspired by one of the famous masks created by W T Benda in the 1920s. This iconic face has appeared in hundreds of photographs throughout the 20th C. After painting the face I was playing around with fragments of textile embellishments from my collection, trying to decide how to finish the work. The pieces that are shown in the picture below I had initially rejected but when I showed Rodney he really liked them and urged me to use them.

I was reluctant to use these pieces because I often judge my work as too pretty pretty. I really wanna be more surrealistic and gothic!!!....waaahhhh!!

I'm referring to this one as "the golden collar" at the moment.....but are open to alternate suggestions as usual!

a step in the journey

Pearls studio window

 It has been cool and windy the last few days and I had to shut my studio window....uhhh-ohh! look at all those vines clambering in. With my ankle broken I haven't been able to mow, whipper snip, weed and tidy the garden as I normally do. Rodney has taken over the mowing these last few months but he tends to do just the middle bit and the outer edges are getting a bit rampant!

In the middle of the window sill is a clay face I sculpted for "Petrouchka" a doll made in 1998. That was the year of the exhibition of the costumes collected by the National Gallery of Canberra from the Ballet Russes. I was only vaguely aware of the Ballet Russes then, mainly because I have always been a huge fan of the Cirque de Soliel, and the exhibition that year introduced me to the marvellous heritage of this group of early 20th C artists. I did a whole body of work based one of their principal male dancers,Vaslav Nijinsky. One of those paintings from 1999 is presently displayed in my gallery. It is based on a black and white photograph of him in the ballet "The Blue God". Another work was this doll "Petrouchka" from another ballet Nijinsky danced in.

The Blue God, 1999

Petrouchka, 1999

I just relate this story because 1999 was when I went to University to start my Visual Art degree and the Ballet Russes inspired work was part of what I submitted as my portfolio to gain entry as a "mature age" student. All of the the other artworks I made as part of the Ballet Russes inspired phase has been sold or given away except the doll and the painting. I'm quite sentimentally attached to them not so much because they are particularly "good" art but because they represent a sort of transition stage in my journey as an artist. That was the year I segued from regarding myself as a talented hobbyist to believing I could be a "real artist"...

To me these works represent 2 transitions that were being made at the time - the psychic striving from perceiving myself as a hobbyist to serious practitioner and the other transition was ending of the period of making sculptural forms and going back to 2 dimensional representations. In 2012, some 13 years+ after these works were made all my work is now 2 dimensional, I haven't made an art doll for about 6 years.

However! there is one constant in my "art journey" that always amazes me as it goes right back to the very first painting I did as a 17 year old when the thought first came into my mind that maybe I could be a professional artist. I don't have that painting any more but I remember it well and it's a memory I turn over with some sentimental awe because how could I know in 1976 that I would still be obsessed with exactly the same themes in my art in 2012!!! Sometimes I think I should try to reproduce that picture...!

That picture I painted was of the historical Indian Queen Mumtaz Mahal (wife of Shah Jehan and she who is famously entombed in the Taj Mahal. (I visited the Red Fort, which was built by Shah Jehan and the Taj Mahal in Agra, India when I went there to collect textiles in 2001) I think I must have must copied it from some original source material but I don't remember exactly where the concept came from. What I recall painting was this exotic Queen of India depicted kneeling on a lavishly patterned turkish rug wearing her regalia of crown, earrings, necklace, heavily embroidered sari. A very decorative woman clothed in and surrounded by glorious embellished textiles and jewellery!

Astounding to realise that 36 years later I am still depicting the feminine figurative, and that textiles, design, colour, jewellery and the decorative are still major fascinations.