October  

We have kept many pictures our children and grandchildren made when they were little. 

I often hang them on the wall. Especially portraits are a joy to look at.  

                                       



Papi by Rowdy, 3 1/2 years                                                   

                                                                                                    

                                                                     Mutti by Rusty, 4 1/4 years

            

 Our Family by Ulrike, 4 1/4 years     

Maude by Maude, 4 1/4 years

                                                                  

                                                                           
                               
                                                                                                                by Cati, 6 years

Clown, by Tina, 6 years

       

September     

My father took me as a child often with him on his pushbike for a ride. One day we went to the very old part of Berlin. Quite a few painters with their easels were there, painting the quaint street scenes. I was fascinated to watch them paint, some with watercolours, some oils, others with chalk and some used only a pen. I could not decide which I liked best. Papa bought two of these paintings and I own them now. Not long after that day, the bombing of Berlin became severe and most of these beautiful old streets were completely destroyed. 

                                                                                                       

       

August        

I love having pictures around me. I put pictures I like on the big wall in our flat and  change them now and then, always enjoying to have something new to look at: some artwork, sometimes  posters of an exhibition, or pretty photos we have taken, even one of my scarves.   

And these are some of the many pictures I had on my ‘Art Wall’:

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.