I've been perusing paint charts and enjoying the names of the colours: Anthill Grey, Elephant Dung, Kalahari Sand, Hippo Pool, Limpopo, Zambezi Sand, Kariba Sunset, Serengeti Sand ...... They're all beautiful African colours Take a look at this colour chart here
Jeanne Opgenhaffen is a Belgian ceramicist who creates murals from thousands of fine overlapping porcelain tiles. They remind me of stacks of aged papers.
Jeanne Opgenhaffen "Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body" - Wassily Kandinsky
Graphic artist, Antonio Ladrillo. See website here. In grade one I was in awe of the little girl who sat at the desk next to mine. She drew beautiful horses. Real horses! Not just the stick figure variety. I couldn't wait to tell my mom when she fetched me from school. "There is a REAL artist in my class!" From as far back as I can remember, I have perceived artists to be the most amazing, luckiest, magical people.
"With the word creative we stand under a mystery. And from time to time that mystery, as if it were the sun, sends down upon one head or another, a sudden shaft of light.... " -- Pamela Travers, Creators on Creativity
"I gather shapes from the world around me, from travel, and from my journeys through books. I also look inside myself for forms that arise from my experience as a dancer, seeking to rephrase that understanding of the body through a new medium of expression, the body of clay." -- Ashwini Bhat
"Life is so ridiculously gorgeous, strange, heartbreaking, horrific, etc., that we are compelled to describe it to ourselves, but we can't! We cannot do it! And so we make art." -- Miranda July
At the moment I'm obsessed with decluttering. After cleaning and painting and throwing out anything I haven't glanced at in a year I'm finally sitting in my little think tank/computer room and being able to call it a studio again.
For a while it lost it's identity midst the mounds of things other people didn't want. The best thing I did was to ditch the exercise machine which lay supine right in the middle of the room. "Nobody" wanted to get rid of it just in case "Somebody" wanted to use it. Nobody ever did use it. You know the story! Now that it's gone a weight has lifted and I've been inspired to create a little nest where I can carve (though I will still do the messy machine work outside). All I need is some sort of mat on the floor that will make it easier to clean up the wood shavings and a lamp shade to replace the one that was smashed during the Orbitrek exorcism.
I've held onto my daughter's old desk which was passed down to my youngest daughter and then to me. It will be a good place to carve. Notice that God and Tom occupy the same space on the desk.
" There is a ritual in it .... entering a space that is set up for creative work." - Terri Moore, Art Making and Studio Spaces by Lynne Perrella
This is Cuddly. He's not nearly as frightening as he looks but he does keep intruders out of my studio ;-)
" My current studio reminds me of the little bedroom I had growing up. In a way, it was my 'first' studio, and it always overflowed with mad experiments, midnight projects, endless tapping on the typewriter, and sliding piles of papers and cardboard. Some things never change!" Lynne Perrella
