From the wild to the tame continued

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Here are three attempts to show the different sections of the view, the constructed garden, the in between landscaped slope, the forest. Possibly in a real painting (not just in cyber space as these are) an artist could use different media to show the shift - paint, pencil, charcoal, pastel, collage, etc.

From the wild to the tame

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I've often been interested in the space between the wild and the civilized, from the forest to the planted farm, from deep ecology to the organised city. I find that over-organised living spaces are uncomfortable, locked doors, shut windows, things like that. I love walking through a forest where small living creatures are not disturbed though I couldn't live there - with snakes and creeping things. I like verandahs, gardens and outdoor living. Perhaps tha's why I fitted easily into the lifestyle in Fiji. But as more and more forests are destroyed, and trees are felled, there won't be a lot of jungle/forest left and if we have to live in tightly knit apartments with rules (such as in Geneva) that you can't flush a toilet after 11 p.m., then I won't call that human living!

Over Christmas at Greendale I did some sketching outside a very modern home and it was so noticeable - that there are three kinds of spaces - the tall timber at a distance, flowerbeds mainly of pansies and cement nearby, and an indigenous constructed garden in between which is perhaps a firebreak which is necessary in this kind of landscape with so much timber. I made three pen sketches and back home made two paintings, but as usual, never satisfied, I messed about with shapes and textures using a computer program, Photo-edit. Click on any picture to enlarge to see details - which look a bit scary at times and remind me of the 70s!

A better way to show the three different sections would be to use different techniques for each part so that is next!

Christmas flowers

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My sister-in-law's house is always full of flowers, dried seeds, leaves, with a love of nature intruding into the civilized spaces. Margaret has a magical way of bringing in the harmony and complexity of the bush into her domain which is very inviting. On Christmas day I had taken a photo of one of the flower arrangements - in the midst of Christmas muddle of course - then this morning, back at home in Geelong, I have been messing about using an image program to make new shapes and textures.

Christmas at Greendale

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It has been a delightful Christmas and Boxing Day for Peceli and me as we went to my brother John's place to meet with all his family - there were fifteen children and eleven adults (oops - fifteen adults and eleven children) so it was a contantly moving busy crowd with lots of fine food preparation, games under the gum trees, kookaburras and kangaroos, swimming in the dam, and plenty of conversations about life in Darwin, life in Geneva and France, and how life has been going for us all. The environment at Greendale is perfect - tall timber and houses snug in Lacote Road. We were privileged to have a most beautiful house to sleep in as neighbours up the road kindly gave us the run of their very modern home, with beautiful art objects and walls of fine books. Peceli found a minister's dream office so he browsed through Biblical study books he'd never seen before and wrote his sermon for later. Thank you to Marg and John and the families for a time of refreshment and connecting us once again with our Australian extended family.

What do you do with your drawings next?

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Since we started the Babasiga and Geelong Visual Diary blogs in 2006 we have amassed a large collection of drawings/paintings and photos, so what do we do next? Accept that it was the process and forget them? So I filed of the pictures into categories to see what was there and there's a heap of stuff about the Geelong Botanical Gardens, the sea, flowers, etc. So Picasa put them into mosaics. I wonder whether I could select the best and make a small book with pictures and words - some haiku, poems, comments, 'preachy' kind of sayings? Or a DVD?

Angels All-sorts

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Yesterday morning we were at Altona Meadows/Laverton Uniting Church for the Christmas family celebration with scores of angels in all shapes and sizes. A delightful worship program. (More pics on babasiga blog) Then last night we were at East Geelong for the Carol service where the angels were a little older - lots of singing and a small play about three dodgy kind of angels who were booted out of the angelic choir!

Another barbeque

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This time we went to a children's park near the Barwon River where numerous groups gathered for picnics and barbecues. We were only a small group of Pacific Islander and Australians, an end-of-year midday gathering. Peceli took a few photos of Joe, Latu, Christine, Ann, Selai, Ken, Lai, Melaia, a baby in a pram, and me, somewhere in the background. The day was cool at first then sunny, the grass green, the Barwon River shining, a Border Collie under a gum tree, and the kava bowl dutifully flowing. When Santa arrived to give out gifts to children in another party, we wondered if Santa had ever tasted the precious drink!

Donation in Kind Break-up Barbeque

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Some of the run-up to Christmas parties are a bit overwhelming and that's how I felt yesterday, shopping for a halo for an 'angel' in a play and reluctantly writing out cards to post, then last night we drove our son to the Melbourne airport for the flight to Fiji. Just before the Air Pacific landed about 10.30 p.m. three-quarter of the lights went out in the terminal building and passengers couldn't be checked as they entered the tunnel and passport control etc. Hey, I hope the tower computers are still working! I felt relieved when I saw a bit later than the Air Pacific had landed okay.

But today was pleasant with a couple of hours sorting books and then a barbeque out at the Donation in Kind depot in North Geelong. A whole lot of books had arrived this week from schools changing over their library books. Also dozens of hospital beds. Also wooden toys,handcrafted by 'Buster'.

A professional chef who is a Rotarian prepared a delicious lunch for a bunch of volunteers.

Our house has been googled!

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Hey, there isn't such a thing as privacy these days. In three seconds I came up with a photo of our house in google maps! Then our next door house - but google is out of date because the little white house was demolished eight months ago and there are now four units there. So there! Then I searched for our church. No, it ain't there, but the funeral parlour in front is, and a mistake - they called the suburb Thomson, and also a Geelong East church came up, which is really St Andrews. Hmmm. I've already found some mistakes Google guys!
Well, at least the photo didn't show people this time, though some pictures in the streets of Geelong certainly do, such as a parking officer leaning against a post having a standing up snooze.
So what do you think about the privacy matter in all of this?

Tis the season to be jolly....busy

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Although most of the activities lately haven't been directly related to Christmas, it certainly has been busy. Today the small booklet I wrote on the history of our local church was launched at the 50th anniversary of laying the foundation stone for the main buildings on the East Geelong property. About a hundred people attended in the morning - worship and morning tea and birthday cake, and a large crowd in the afternoon with plenty of catching up with old friends, historical displays and five laptops running with DVDs or photographs and a splendid afternoon tea and another birthday cake! The cover design of the book was kind-of designed by a committee after my initial design was hijacked. I wanted just the mosaic of people and larger print for title, but anyway, the job got done - pages in full colour, excellent quality paper, and hopefully only tiny mistakes! Peceli very kindly spend the day with us in East Geelong instead of going to Altona Meadows/Laverton church, and as he had been a minister here for nine years he was able to meet many people he knew.

The streets of Geelong

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Walking through the city streets yesterday I noticed that many streets were almost bare of people, shops empty - but, down at Westfield it was like mobs of sheep surging forward amidst all the red and green and glitter. How appalling. The rich owners of Westfield will be laughing that Mr Rudd's cheery thousand dollar gifts to pensioners are going to swell the coffers. I did see some buskers on Malop Street though and some cheery shoppers taking time to talk with kids. But the Santa at Westfield certainly looks zonked out!

The journey, not the destination

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It's the process of taking that pen to paper, manipulating colour and shape that is fun, not whether the final results are okay or not. Okay with that? I started with a photograph I found online, took it to Picasa, toned out the colour and printed on pink paper. Then used that picture to change using a black pen, scanned the result then took it to Photo-edit to try and look at variations. Okay, the original photograph is the best, but my 'journey' meant I could get out of two hours of housework! As to the subject, well we used to have many sprouting coconuts in the compound when we lived beside the sea at Nukutatava.

Now I had better get organised to go to a book launch - a Seniors Writing competition where everyone gets published. I gave them a dark anti-war poem.

Bungle bungles

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I used to like oil pastels and did a number of pictures of local landscapes plus this one of the Bungle bungles which is very far away (and one of the locations in the film 'Australia'). I've never been there but the landscape is intriguing. This was based on a photograph. I just changed the colours a bit in two of the pics. The white spot is from the flash of the camera - this is a picture hanging on the wall. The texture of oil pastels is quite different though to the results here.

There are numerous photos of the Bungle Bungles with the beehive like domes. A sample is here.

It's Christmas almost

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On the Babasiga blog I reposted an article in today's Age about the obsession some people have with decorating their front gardens. Here are some simpler things to do: our church Christmas stall at the car-boot sale yesterday morning, and the little tree at church this morning with gifts we are giving the women and children in a women's refugee in Geelong. I gave boxes of art materials of course. I think this is the way to go. Keep it simple, but pretty. Pretty simple.

Nukutatava painting and variations

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Nukutatava was our home beside the sea for a while when the children were very young, an ideal place, so beautiful at dawn and we looked out towards the sunrise behind Vorovoro and Mali islands. We had three bamboo walled bures, no electricity, but an on-going fresh water spring that came from a rock, so we had all the conveniences we needed. Over time the coconut trees have fallen, the bures flattened by hurricanes.
Here are some variations of the picture courtesy of photo-edit.

Bouganvillea has gone rampant

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I always admire a large bougavillea that grows up over fences, garages, or up the front of houses. Red, pink, or purple. Ours has really gone rampant lately. Closeup they are very ordinary and watch out for the sharp thorns. I started a drawing of them but soon got tired. So here is my drawing hidden by the real thing!
(and later, I messed up a bit with the paint and pastel job!)

Welcome

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Some of the houses are starting to decorate with Christmas wreaths on their doors to welcome people. However when you go to visit someone you usually have to wait for them to unlock their security door, then another door, etc. Extra padlocks at times! I thought I ought to do a cartoon for the Neighbourhood Watch newsletter but that would be rather rude considering that the people who go to those meetings are often very anxious about security, the energetic and sometimes cheeky teenagers, the possiblity of theft and so on.

And another old painting

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It hangs on the lounge room wall. In 2 minutes I clicked on the camera to take four pictures around the house, but it took 20 minutes to get my son off the computer! Here is one of the pictures - a gum tree by Lake Benanee over the Murray River from Robinvale. Acrylic paint. Even then I liked the twisty lumpy kind of trees!

How I used to paint

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I've been cleaning up boxes of papers, chucking out lots of stuff and found two small photos of two acrylic paintings I made some years ago. Heaven only knows where the real paintings are these days! I guess I gave them away. One of of Nukutatava Beach in Fiji where we lived one time, the other is of Stephenson's Falls out of Geelong. Flat shapes then and rather a cold look I think.
(later: I changed the colours a bit using Picasa3 and I think this is more like the original. The other one was too yellow!)