Pretty

It's been a while i know. It's November? I just don't believe it. Christmas is a mere 7 weeks away and the renovation has been at a complete standstill.

Funny how you lose a bit of drive mid way through things.

I came across this picture that I had saved, and to keep it somewhere safe it's best to throw it up on N&N. I absolute love it. The fact is has animals in it will always appeal to me. But the colours are just beautiful together.

I use a bit of colour here and there in the house, but not much. These tones above I'm thinking of using downstairs.

This painting is stashed in the office waiting to be mounted so it will guide the living room. It's enormous. 1.7m x 1.3 by indigenous artist Mitjili Naparulla. I like the simplicity of it and her style is very unique when thrown amongst other artists. I have a gazillion things to frame and mount - anyone know a great and cost effective framer in Brisbane? ................

Who's that artist?

Isn't this a pretty work room. Everything about it looks perfect. The old counter, the curtain divide which looks like it's made out of old card table tablecloths and fabric remnants, the nice high ceilings. I wish I could see more of the rug. I don't know where this image is from. I've had it saved in 'pictures' on the computer for possibly a year. Same with the image below - they were saved together.

I love the painting in this one. Cute cat.

Does anyone know who the artist may be for this painting? Every time I see it I visualise this in my house.

Crystal Head Vodka

On Wednesday night a package wrapped in newspaper sat on the kitchen bench with a card and bunch of flowers next to it. It was from B – our 5-month old staffy to say thank you. Isn’t he thoughtful?

B had an accident out at my brothers property – nothing electric fence, snake, cow or cattle dog related. He jumped on a table and fell off again and fractured his knee. Orthopedic surgery (with castration thrown in) and an emotional 2 weeks later, he’s healing – but is beginning to get a bit crazy from his confinement. I’d been flying solo for the ordeal and the first week. So when B asked A to buy me a present, I guess A thought it was a nice gesture, plus we manage B's finances.

This is what was underneath the newspaper.

A bottle of Crystal Head Vodka. Yay.

I’d hoped to pick some up when in the States and then forget when leaving NY (and my bags were bursting at the seams). Now Australia stock it! Dan Ackroyd (who you gonna call... Ghostbusters..) is the master mind behind it. Isn’t the bottle fab?

 

I have this mixed media art work I did back in school which I threw in  an el cheapo frame last year when I decided orange was needed in the house – it’s collecting dust somewhere in the office now. This pic's a bit weird, i had to crop it but you get the jist of it.

Once the vodka's been consumed, I might reframe and throw a water plant in the skull and unite them whilst listening to Death Metal.

Great gift idea for the vodka lover. The bottle is, quite simply, a cracker.

Colour, colour and more colour!

As most of you would know, the latest online edition of Adore Magazine is out ... and faaaab. I'm loving sick these paintings for the wall by Nicole Cohen

She's got a groovy blog called http://sketch42blog.com/. Check it out. You can purchase these via her etsy site. I really like this one above, the colours are spectacular.

This is pretty too.

Do you remember Ken Done the artist?

I associate him with Expo '88' in Brisbane. Myself, and fellow Irish Dancers of the time, were asked to perform in that big stage area and were all given a 'thank you' Ken Done scarf which he'd designed specifically for Expo 88. It had the exact same colours as Nicole's piece above. Looking back at some of his works now, i really like them. This one done in 1990 in particular.

It's called reflections. You get lost in it i think. Ken Done's still very prevalent and a huge success for Aussie art. I think i'll find that scarf (which i gave to my mother 20 years ago) and frame it as a little momento.

Expo was so fun. I wish they'd do it again. I loved the pavillion that you could ski in. Even though Mum wouldn't let me it looked totally rad!

It's nice to admire colour on an overcast Brisbane Day. The local farmers markets are on tomorrow - can't wait to snag some fresh flowers and mango yoghurt.

Happy Friday.x

So pretty .. for $1

Aren't these just so pretty?

$1 each from a local op shop. I'm looking forward to framing them. You can see the plastic they're still in is discoloured and a little ferol, but underneath,  the pics are in super fine form.

I've reached around 9 paintings/prints kicking around the house wedged between cabinets and walls which require 'space'. I have no wall space left. I mean, i do, but i'm living in comfortable clutter at the moment - the white walls that are available need to stay that way or the tide will change very quickly.

These are flowering in my garden at the moment. So vibrant. They soothed the fact it's Monday again. I have some gorgeous lillies just beginning to flower too - a lovely gift from friends who came to dinner Saturday night.

On that topic. 'A's "latest" is a spit roaster. We went to a dinner party last Saturday night and F's husband cooked up some cracking meat on this little roaster. A was besotted. Absolutely enamoured with it. He's been wanting one for years and seeing this little sized one sealed-the-deal.  So, of course, one appeared at home and spit roasted lamb was on the menu Sat night. This is one purchase i highly recommend. The meat was diiiivine! Buy one for him for christmas. It spins on batteries and you just put those coal things in to heat it up.

Indigenous Art

I've been admiring Indigenous Art for a long time. I think, like Surrealism, you either love it or can't stand it.

A friend has just been out to the Red Centre and then on to Tennant Creek. As soon as she told me she was going, I jumped on her like a mosquito and pestered her to send me some photos of the art. She did. And this is what she placed into my hot little hand this morning...

It's called Women Dreaming. They are separate ponds where the women are sitting and, well ... dreaming. The pond on the bottom right hand corner is my fave. Once canvased, i think it'll look lovely on a white wall.

 This one is called Bush Seeds. The colours are gorgeous. I love the simplicity of it. Here's a close up.

I'm really chuffed with these two above, and being that the art centre at Tennant Creek provides a really great environment and workspace for the artists and pays them directly for their work, i'm happy knowing that the cash is going straight back into a great community initiative.

The piece i am rediculously head over heels with is this one below ... It's called Mina Mina Dreaming

It's reduced at the moment to $13,200. Unless i win one of those new fandangled million dollar scratchies, this little fella is staying put. This painting amongst other stunning pieces can be found on http://www.aboriginalartstore.com.au/ Beeauuutiful isn't it?

Highschool Art

Did anyone do art throughout high school? Like as an elective class?  My school portfolio has been stashed for 15 years at my parents house and is a ‘when are you going to take…’ topic of conversation, often. I collected it 2 weeks ago and have been reminiscing with my amateur art thinking about what I might frame.

Believe me when i say, this is amateur and certainly not a post in hope of an art critic to offer me thousands of dollars for one - so do not have high expectations, but with the significance of grade 12 figure drawing attached to it, I like the idea of hanging it somewhere. Probably the office. Office’s are personal.

These are a couple of the one's i like. This was figure drawing so we drew from the interior to exterior, hence the skeletons (which I just don't mind … freaky as they are)

This is my favourite which I will definitely frame. I like how imperfect it is, it’s bold strokes make it less confronting, i've looked at purchasing a nude over the years but never find one i like, and if i do it's thousands of $$'s. This one's free.

 … i like the first one alot and don't mind the second but not sure if I would in the still of the night. Definitely different, but i also have a group of 4 that i've done as a mixed media, kind of like the Andy Warhol pic's, they could look ok together maybe?

 

First thing 'A' said about this one was 'is that red stuff blood' .. hmmn, it looks a little like a murder scene out of CSI. So i'm going to play around with it and cover the red back to black. It's a little too sensual for me but i'll see what it looks like when it's fixed.

This above was E.A.P circa Grade 10. Shading and cubism i think we were doing. It's not perfect at all, but i do like the childlike lack of proportion. It already has shadows so in a hallway under a light would be ok.

That's all that i took photos of and i've probably overdone it anyway. My goodness time gets away. Feels like yesterday i was standing there charcoal in hand and the clock ticking.

Does anyone else have school art that brings back memories? I have a few surrealist one's too which are wack with a capital W. I remember sitting there looking for things to add that were around me and being amused when my art teacher nodded in understanding of what? I do-not-know.

Have a fab weekend.

a gold cushion

Over the past couple of months i've been spring cleaning various areas of the home in an effort to declutter. The great thing about it has been that i have also come across things i forgot i had.

This gold cushion below was in one of our top cupboards. Neglected. I love the tone and pulled it out and wandered around with it. It's found a home and single handedly brightened up a room.

I'm not much of a pillow arranger - they sit where they're thrown.  

The Emu painting was rellocated to this room when it caught my eye whilst 'wandering around' with the gold cushion - it's got great colours and he's a cheeky thing, look at those eyelashes. Boys and Emu's get the long lashes ...

He was painted by a local artist called B Grolf. I like the style of his work. He's done a lot of travel and photographed animals in different places which he then paints from the photo.

I really enjoy a bit of gold tone mixed in here and there, and i do really like it mixed in with silvers. These lamp bases are in the same room, and are more vibrant now with the cushion and emu close by ....this first lamp base was mine growing up and still has a little round sticker, where you turn it on and off, of a horse and foal. I was obsessed with horses when i was little.

This is the other lamp 'A' picked up on one of his little escapades. He really is a little hunter and gatherer.

They're like two peas in a pod and both lamps sit on Art Deco side tables. They are differing in height. I purchased them in poor condition with chipped veneer in some areas at the base, so slapped on a couple of coats of high gloss black paint and they work perfectly. The original bakelite handles also a gold hue.

Another part of the room I updated with a little foliage. I have a thing for bevelled mirrors and like to keep them grouped together. There's a gross technical devise called a tv next to them so i cropped it out. I'm so nasty about tv's, i should be more appreciative, after all it has brought me Madmen and Will Farrell.

These little plants are in old medicine jars and grow so well in them.

So my Spring Cleaning is working out to be very fruitful. I have so many other things i have found. A stash of Chanel makeup i'd forgotten about, a silver tea set given to me from a relative when i was young and other little pieces that i've been carrying around for years.

With the highs come the lows and the low was in the form of a deeply disturbing amount of clothes that can't be pulled past my mid thigh ... but i did find the gold cushion and the chanel ... and the tea set...

the piper of dreams

This print by Estella Canziani was an unexpected find ... at the Salvos in Ipswich. I saw it on the wall amongst so many other prints and there was just something about it.

The more i looked at it after purchase the more smitten i became. It's so whimsical without being too fairylike. Fairies ain't my thang. I then did a little research and discovered that it was a well known and famous fairy print of the early 1900's.

See the little robin sitting on his shoe?

Estella Canziani was born in London in 1887 and was an artist, interior decorator, travel writer and folklorist. This was her most famous watercolour which made its first appearance in 1915, a year into the Great War.

In the first year this print sold more than 250,000 reproductions and is believed to have been so popular because it offered an escape from the goings-on in Europe during that time - many were sent from loved one's to their men in the trenches during the war. 

It's framing is aged and the cardboard border is showing that rusty kind of age mark paper gets, but it still has a good feeling about it.

my love of tretchikoff

I purchased my first Tretchikoff about 3 years ago and this is her. I LOVE her the way Oprah loves Australia.

 

Isn't she beautiful. Her name is Balinese Girl.

Last year for my birthday, friends bought me these girls. Meet Lady from Orient on the top and Chinese Girl on the bottom.

And also the divine Miss Wong.



At the moment they're sporadically placed around the house but eventually they'll be together once i have the wall space. I found these frames to put them in but the top 2 girls have not been done any justice. Frames are so hard to decide on. The 3 above were purchased straight from his estate by my pals, so are recent reproductions. Balinese Girl is an original repro ... i love them all equally.

When i was searching for his website, i came across these wall murals. Not sure where the first one is from but the second one is apparently in a lounge bar in Notting Hill, UK called Trailer Happiness. Fab right?!

I want one.

For those of you who don't know the works of Valdimir Tretchikoff - he was a self taught South African artist prevalent in the 1950's and 1960's. His works were mass produced across the world and is 2nd only to Picasso in popularity. You can snag reproductions on ebay and in antique/second hand stores and his family trust now produce them through their website here. I am constantly on the lookout for more to add to my little collection.

I read that a few years ago, one of his original sketches fetched $480,000 at a Sotheby's auction. So if you happen across an original ... well, i'll take it off your hands for whatever you pay for it! That's fair isn't it? ...