July      

 A few years ago my daughter taught me how to do linocuts.  

I tried it and did first a little simple flower. 

I wanted to do some more. I thought pictures with flowers would be nice, stories with flowers would be a good theme. 

I remembered a Dreamtime story I read long ago, Girraween. It is about a brave man who, after all the flowers had disappeared from earth, brought back the flowers for the people. 

And then more flower stories came to mind. 

An old Chinese woman carrying water in a cracked pot and flowers grew along the side of the path where the water leaked.

A poem by Goethe we learned in school about a flower being trampled down and passed away smiling

A poem by Wordsworth about dreaming of flowers he had admired when he was wandering some time ago.  

Remembering walking along the streets of a war-torn city and seeing a flower coming up among among the rubble.

A ballade by Henry Lawson praising the beauty of the bush.

I coloured the flowers in by hand. 

Later I turned the linocut prints and stories, 11 in all, into a little book for our children and called it ‘Flower Power’.

June       

When I was just a housewife and mother I sometimes felt I should do more, something different, something interesting. I went for a short session of art classes at a local Community College. The teacher was an artist and let us, mostly housewives, do what we wanted. He did not think much of teaching, he just brought some of his painting along, talked a bit and then read the newspaper. 

One of his pictures was relief painting of a tree. That interested me and he explained, that after sketching the outlines on a board, apply some plaster to the part which should be raised and when it is dry paint the picture and then varnish over it

And I did a sunflower:

     

May

  

For years when I worked, there was no time nor energy left to do much creative stuff. But I did paint a lot. Painting of that other kind: painting walls and ceilings, renovating houses, ours and also helping the children with there places.

It is actually also lots of fun, seeing a room change from dull and sometimes depressing to bright and beautiful.

                                          

April     

My father took me often with him to art galleries. And I loved this, even as a child. 

I remember very well when I was 10 years old going to an exhibition of works by Ilja Repin. The painting of the ‘Volga Haulers’ and ‘Ivan the Terrible’ made a big impression on me. Ivan’s eyes haunted me for a long time. The story of the people who had to pull from the shore big boats along the Volga and that they sang all the way, moved me a lot. 

I still go often to Art Galleries and never miss the Biennale. When ever we are in a different city I have go to an art gallery there. 

At each visit I buy some art post cards. It is great fun to fossick now and then through the box of art post cards, looking at the pictures and remembering the exhibition. Sometimes I pin some of the postcards on the wall or above my desk and enjoy looking at them again and again. 

March 

A few years ago I went to drawing classes. There too I learned a lot, but realised most of the other could do so well, so much better than I. Never mind. It was such such a nice group and we had a great teacher.

Here are some of my drawings:

The Local Council offered sometimes creative classes for seniors and I went there too.This session was called ‘Fun with Colours’.  It was the first time I used acrylic paint. There was no actual teaching of technics or tasks given. But the few sessions were fun and I learned not to be afraid of paint. 

 Many years earlier, at the beginning of retirement, I went to some Community College art classes. There I felt very lost, could not do anything right. Sad. I had hoped I would learn a bit of what I loved to do more now. 

February   

As a child I loved drawing. 

My father could paint beautiful pictures and I loved sitting next to him watching. 

I liked very much when Papa took the paper and pen I got from his desk for him, started drawing and after a line or two would  asked: “What is this going to be?”  “A fish.” Next line. “A dog.”  Another line. “A bird.”  And then a few lines more and it turned out to be a seal! 

My sister and I had to help with washing my baby brother’s nappies. Disposable nappies were not yet invented. After our mum had cleaned and soaked the nappies, we had to rub soap onto them, then they were put into the big cauldron and boiled, then rinsed and hung up. We both sat next to each other at the side of the bathtub, a big cake of soap in our little hands and rubbed and rubbed the nappies. To have more fun we each got a piece of differently coloured soap, mine was green and Hannelore preferred pink. And then the real fun began: we decided to draw pictures on the nappies. Mostly we painted smily faces, sometimes trees and flowers.

When I got new colour pencils I was often sitting all by myself  drawing lots of pictures. Many of my pictures had a little houses with a garden and flowers all around. Some times I also drew some people. One of Papa’s artist friend admiring my drawing and said: “Remarkable that children always draw people with far too big heads”. He just had no clue! Really, he, who could paint so well, should have known that the face is what is most important. 

I was about ten years old when the school had an art competition asking all pupils to draw the school, or one of the nearby  lakes, anything of the surrounding parkland. I wanted to participate. Papa gave me nice paper, good pencils and colour pens and off I went. I wanted to draw the small lake. It never seemed to turn out right. Papa said: “You are  drawing the lake like a map, but from where you are looking the lake appears really like uneven broken horizontal lines. You are not a bird flying over the lake.” I tried again and again and never got it right. My lake never looked good and I never finished the picture. Not many pictures were handed in and only a few made it to the school hall, but those which did were really very good. 

January  

The year started with painting. Lots of painting. And very different kinds of painting.

Each year the little town Bellingen on the Mid North Coast stages ‘Camp Creative’, a week filled with a variety of exciting courses in art, music, dance, craft and life style. Acrylic painting sounded interesting. And it was, but far above my abilities. Still, I had fun and learned a lot. Most of all I learned that although I like making little pictures I have no real talent. But never mind, I will keep doing in my limited way what is fun for me as long as I enjoy it. 

Here are a few of the pictures: 

  

At the end of the last day I did  not want to waist the paint on the palette so I brushed all the left over blue on, put in the middle thinned  black paint, tilted the paper up and down and helped a bit with the brush, smudged a bit of white on the upper part and on the lower part and finished was my boardwalk along the river estuary. Finally a loose-n-luscious picture!

Soon after that more painting. 

This time painting the outside of the big house. My daughter and I painted every day from morning till late and in a week it was completed, including making new matching covers for the outdoor furniture. It all looks just beautiful. And it was so much fun working together and getting it all done.