Saudade Through Song

The kids and I drove down to Canberra for a holiday. Well, to Murrumbateman, which is near Yass, but we did go into Canberra several times to catch up with friends. We take the M7/Pacific Highway/whatever it is called these days down towards Yass and Gundagai and then turn off onto the Barton Highway. I love going that way, with the wind farm towering over us on the hills beside the road. Great sculptural things of beauty, with cows grazing around them and the land otherwise undisturbed.

It started out bright, with my son complaining of the sunshine through the window (they're tinted so he got told to settle down). But the further south we went the darker it got. Great clouds massing on the horizon, grey then blue black. Finally the only sunlight we saw was the shafts angling down through the clouds in the distance.

This is actually a photo of Blayney Wind Farm by Dave Bassett; his Flickr name, tassie303. But it is so beautiful, and similar to the Birrema Wind Farm near Yass that we pass. I am always busy driving, so I don't have any photos of it.

We always have music on in the car. On short trips the children can take it in turns to choose, only rule being that it is suitable/not annoying for everyone. On long trips, however, I have full control, albeit with the same rules (it will be many years before my son hears a whole album by The Men That Will Not be Blamed for Nothing, or Abney Park's gorgeous cover of Creep). I decided this trip that it was time they both heard some Ultravox. So I put on Vienna, their first album with Midge Ure.

Listening to it was a little weird. It had been a long time and I had forgotten why I don't listen to it often. The Steamgoth's response on the first track was "can you put this on my ipod?" My girl has good taste. I found I could remember most of the words, although a lot of Mr. X still eludes me. And just as the weather closed in we got to the title track, Vienna. I love that song. I loved it the moment I heard it, as so many others did.

There had already been a time-warp effect. The music had made me feel twelve years old and in Year 7 again, with all the good and bad that was the early 80s.

When we are in primary school, whatever is happening in our families is usually just accepted. It is the way life is. Sure, we've visited other homes and seen other families in action, but somehow it doesn't sink in that the dynamic is different. Or if it does, we don't quite understand how, and it feels like the world is the way our life is. And then we get to highschool, or turn twelve, or whatever it is that happens that makes us see other people's realities, and makes us see our own realities more clearly.

My home was not a happy place growing up. And when I got to twelve, or highschool, or whatever it was, I was very struck by the fact that our home was unusually unhappy, and I started to really grasp why that was. I also accepted that I was weird, always had been, always would be, and decided that I was going to stop trying to fit in, which I had been doing until that point (trying, that is, not managing). No more pretending to like Abba (which had been difficult at the best of times), no more pretending to be ordinary and unimaginative. It took me a very long time to fully achieve that stop (although the Abba bit was easy), way past the end of my highschool days, but I got there in the end.

So there I was, deciding I didn't have to be like the people I had grown up around or the society I didn't feel a part of, starting to understand that violence and unhappiness weren't normal and, while beyond my control, were not my fault. And then Vienna appeared.

Minor keys have always been my thing. I loved the hymns like "Oh come Oh Come Emmanuel" or songs like "Summertime". A lot of pop music to that time hadn't had minor keys (well, alright, Friday on My Mind, House of the Rising Sun, Nights in White Satin, all songs I liked, by the way, and actually, they are much older), but most were happy boppy things, or meaningless pap, or pub rock, or Abba. And here was Vienna, with young men well groomed with interesting hair and sharp clothes, no flannel, (although I preferred the way Duran Duran dressed), interesting words and haunting music.

Everytime I listened to it I was transported, taken somewhere else, away from what was happening. It was the first time I thought that getting out could be an option, and that there was somewhere worth going to. Although I didn't go, not for a long time.

So there we were, driving down the highway, the windfarm above us, the rain pelting down. The sky was a mass of roiling black thunderheads. I turned the stereo up so we could hear over the rain smashing against the windscreen. And then Vienna came on and I remembered why I don't listen to it very often. My heart and head were in turmoil, all those mixed emotions crashing around inside. The pain and anger that had been part of life, the feeling of finding something that gave me some idea of myself. The idea that escape was possible. Emotions that, it seems, had never really left, just been packed away.

I know now what it was that was evoked, and is still evoked. Saudade. It's a Portuguese word but it doesn't have an easy translation. A melancholy sort of nostalgic longing is how Nick Cave describes it. And that is what I felt when I first heard Vienna. Not for the life I had, but for a life I wanted, or for the life I lived in my head. Can you feel nostalgia for something you haven't known? Maybe I was nostalgic for what I could imagine. And Vienna still does that to me. It still fills me with Saudade, although possibly just through habit now. A melancholy nostalgic longing. Saudade.

And my daughter is addicted to Vienna, the way I was at her age, although not for the same reasons. She loves it because it is beautiful, she loves it for what it is, a great song. And I think that just might make it more bearable for me.

The Claytons Holiday

We were getting ready to go to the farm for a few days, I had so much to do, too much really, packing, sheets to change, drawings to finish, and my head was overflowing.

So I took the day off.

My daughter the Steamgoth has been wanting some new corsets. She wants some for undergarments, but I need to source steel bones for that (found them, just have to order), and she wants some for outerwear. I had whipped one up just before we went to camp, but it wasn't boned, and was a little too big. I measure her and check on the patterns and the measurements match with size 14. But when I make a garment up, it's always a little too big. So I redrew the corset pattern for a size 12 and cut it out, and the day before we went away I put the whole thing together. With plastic boning, which isn't great, but gets the job done, and can be accessed easily.

Of course I forgot to pick up a couple of things I had run low on, bias binding for one. It's easy enough to make bias binding, but I wanted a particular sort, and anyway I can't make metal eyelets, of which I was low, so a quick dash to the fabric shop was in order.

And you know what happens when you try to rush something. Mistakes. For the first time in my life I put eyelets in backwards. Backwards. Honestly, how stupid. So I had to use pliers to get them out and then put new ones in the correct way round. Just as well I had bought the large packet.

It doesn't show up well, but there are four chains on it, coming off the buckle tabs.

In the end it turned out okay, and the Steamgoth likes it, which was the point of the exercise. And they say a change is as good as a holiday.

Trial and Terror

Peter Paul Rubens often wrote to his brother. The letters are interesting partly because he was not afraid to write about his talent. We are often told "don't boast", "don't bignote yourself", we are taught of Tall Poppy syndrome - if you stick your head up too high it will get lopped off - and we are encouraged to take part in the cutting down to size. Unless someone is good at sport, in which case they fly as high as they want and we are all expected to cheer them along.

Well, Rubens didn't care about what other people thought, or maybe in his day and age it was okay to admit when one was stunningly good at something. He certainly thought so. "My talent is such that no undertaking has ever daunted me". Ever? Really? He always thought "I'll give it a go"? Actually, when you put it that way, that's suddenly understandable, and pretty cool. And what is wrong with saying, "I am really good at what I do"? He was certainly very confident, unlike poor old Rembrandt, who seemed to always be racked by self-doubt and striving to be something he didn't think he was, and Velazquez, who made no secret of the fact that he wished he was Rubens, right down to the international intrigue.

Another line of Rubens' was "my talent is such that I no longer fear mistakes". Now that is one I wish I had.

When I did the School Careers Fair I told the kids who were serious that the best thing they can do is draw everyday. Without fail. Even if it is just a little sketch or doodle or pattern. I also told them that there is always more to learn and other artists are great people to learn from and share your own techniques with, because we all do things differently. I copy Rubens and Durer and others because I can learn a lot from them. I look at how contemporary artists whom I respect (there aren't many, to be honest) do things, because I can learn a lot from them. When asked how I have done something I am more than happy to share because it may spark an idea in someone else. How rude and selfish to keep that back, even if it is just a little thing. I am lucky to have talented artist friends who feel the same way.

So, by a roundabout route I come to the point. I have, as I have said before, been practising with three-colour drawings - sanguine and white chalks and charcoal. And this is the effort of the last couple of days:

Riyaz, sanguine and white chalk, charcoal, yellow ochre chalk on buff paper, Megan Hitchens, 2014

Doing this was at times quite scary. Unlike Rubens I am afraid of mistakes. Intellectually I know that any mistake can be fixed, that it is almost impossible to ruin a painting or drawing once you have enough knowledge and ability (which I do - not boasting, just fact. I have worked hard to get to this point). And if you do manage to wreck it after all, you end up with a really valuable lesson in how not to do something and how not to "fix" it. But emotionally? No. Terrified. And the closer I got to finishing the more frightened I became. At any moment I was going to wreck this. At any moment it was going to die in a screaming heap. But I kept going. And ended up with this.

It isn't perfect. Each time I look at it I think "I should fix this", "I should change that". Despite that, I am actually quite pleased with it. Hopefully my friend and fellow artist, Riyaz, doesn't mind being the subject (it occurs to me NOW, that I should have asked first - oops).

If you read the caption you will notice that it isn't three colours, it's four.

Here's where the learning comes in.

Try as I might, I could not get an olive green for Riyaz's jacket. Dirty grey, dirty brown, but not olive. I contacted my friend, Mark, an artist of great talent and even greater knowledge. He was so very helpful (thank you, Mark). We had a discussion about the reflective qualities of chalk versus charcoal and about grounds and Leonardo, and then I went away and experimented.

The key, it turns out, is the colour of the ground. The paper I have been using is buff, which means a sort of tan colour. I really need to be working on something a little more yellow. Yellow ochre perhaps, or, if I could afford it, vellum (which is what Leonardo was drawing on for his portrait of Bianca Sforza). I have some scraps in my workroom, so I can at least experiment.

I had already done so much of this drawing, and was so happy with it, that I did not want to start again, so I borrowed a technique from oil painting. Dead colour. You could also call it "spot imprimatura". Where the jacket is I put in a layer of yellow ochre chalk and then came back with the charcoal. Et voila - olive green. Not as good as working on a yellow ochre ground in the first place because the chalks mixed a bit, no matter what I did so it is not an optical olive, but not bad. I experimented on another page and black chalk is definitely better than charcoal, and high quality charcoal is definitely better than low quality charcoal (well, dur). For the purposes of not adding yet another thing I stuck to charcoal for the drawing.

Next is a drawing of another artist friend, Arlene. I want to do this one on some beautiful paper I have that is a soft grey. But again, I'm not Rubens. I am daunted. But hey, I'll give it a go.

How Many Letters in the Pirate Alphabet?

10 - arrr, aye aye and the Seven Seas.

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I don't have any piratical drawings (I'm working on other things at the moment, and still processing fleece). So instead...

You could dress like a pirate

All these clothes are available from Gallery Serpentine in Enmore

Or you could let me tell another pirate joke:

A pirate captain walks into a bar, with a ship's wheel down his trousers.
The barman says, "Excuse me, but you have a ship's wheel down your trousers."
"I know," says the captain, "it's driving me nuts."

Brrrr ching.

And then there's this. Okay, it's Airship Pirates rather than seaborne pirates. But I couldn't find my favourite version of AEther Shanties and this is a great song.

Have a great day (what's left of it anyway). Pass the rum.

Three Chalks and the Truth (well, sort of)

It's been an odd day. Good, but odd.

I put a drawing in the post today. It is so nice when someone loves something I have created. Lately I have been doing quite a few drawings in sanguine (that's a type of red chalk), white chalk and charcoal. It is an intriguing combination. You end up with all sorts of other colours coming through, either as a result of physical mixing or optical mixing. I'm not at the standard of Mark Calderwood with this technique, but I am working on it and having a lot of fun in the meantime.

If you want to see the master of this, well, you could guess who that is.

Leonardo da Vinci, attr. Portrait of Bianca Sforza, c1490. Red, black and white chalk and brown ink on vellum

And yes, really, there are only the three chalks and brown ink. The olive sleeve, the gorgeous flesh tones, they just come from those three colours. As I keep saying to people, "use it as an inspiration, not as a yardstick".

There is also a new project lining up. If it comes off it will be hard work but could be quite lucrative. It'll only go for a month, which makes the hard work easier to face. Unfortunately it depends on other people. We are split over when the thing will happen, and that could make all the difference dollar-wise. A longish meeting didn't resolve the matter, but someone else will probably have the final say, which could be a good thing in end.

That's a bit cryptic. Hopefully I can reveal the plan in a few days. And hopefully it won't be a huge anti-climax.

And then I came home and washed some more fleece (that will go on for days).

Princess Crocodile is on this post for the simple reason that it is playing a lot in the house and the car at the moment. It is driving my poor son crazy, but my daughter the Steamgoth loves it. Finally I have someone else who shares my love of electro swing.

Only For Sheep

After madly working on some birthday pieces I had a break today. No art, just a day full of fleece.

I love fleece. I love sheep, actually. I am wholeheartedly with Ellie Linton from John Marsden's "Tomorrow When The War Began" - sheep are misunderstood and underappreciated.

There are about nine fleeces awaiting processing. Most are from Suffolks, two are from Wensleydales and there are a couple of Merino fleeces as well. All of them come from my brother's farm, so I have a passing acquaintance with the animals, which is nice. I picked a Merino to do. The fleece comes from Merino 42, aka Baldric.

Baldric pre shearing. Some of the Suffolks are in the background.

It didn't start well. The fleece was well rolled, cut side out, compact but not compacted. And I could not find the end. If you can find the end the fleece just rolls out into a sort of sheep shape and it makes your job so much easier. Not today. I ended up with half right way up and half upside down and dags in two places (the daggy bits are from around the bum - they have the poo in them, and a fair amount of dried urine. You don't want to keep them).

Eventually it got sorted out but I was mainly grading just by feel rather than having position on the sheep to help. Shoulders and flanks are generally softer and longer than the britch, and you don't want the tummy wool as a rule - felted and full of weeds. So you skirt first (removing the outer edges, ie bum and tummy) and then you grade. I usually grade into three categories. One is the longest and softest, generally very fine. Three is coarsest and shortest, but still usable (makes good sock wool and warp). Two is in between.

Halfway through grading

There were a lot of second cuts in this fleece, which was quite frustrating. I came across a whole section that was beautiful - clean, white, so very soft. And full of second cuts. That means that the shearer hasn't gotten close enough on the first pass and comes past again. So what should have been a lovely long staple of about 7cm ends up being cut into two or three useless lengths. It happens. No one's perfect. But did it have to happen on such a soft section? It had to go.

And then I wash. And wash. And wash.

In warm water and Lux soap flakes to start with, to get rid of the sweat and lanolin and most of the dirt, and then in clean warm water to rinse out the soap and any remaining dirt. And believe me, sheep get dirty. The water is chocolate brown the first time. Even if you think the fleece looks quite clean, the water goes chocolate brown. Alpacas are worse. They LOVE dirt baths. Alpaca fleece plus water equals mud.

I'm at the second rinse of grade 2 at the moment (I wash in grades), and it is so beautiful. The whole fleece has a lovely crimp (that means the fibres are wiggly, not straight, which means any yarn I make will be quite elastic) and it is going so very white. Great to spin, easy to dye, a pleasure to knit with.

First rinse after washing. Already cleaning up well.

Next I will lay it out to dry and then pick over it to get out any weed seeds, sticks, what have you. And then it will get put in a pillow case and stored in a drum. I can get three fleeces to a drum. And then it just has to wait until I am ready to spin it.Which is another story.

I Should Have Known...

Yesterday I went to Eckersley's in Erina. I needed some supplies and I was in the area. I should have known better.

Their range of paper is pitiful. Quite frankly, Riot Art has a better supply, which isn't saying much. Can I get the tint I want? No. Can I get the type I want? No. I may have to follow the lead of the ever resourceful Mark Calderwood and tint my own.

I went through all their pens for the one I needed. No joy. I can buy my pens from a stationers in Newtown, but not, it seems, from Eckersleys, despite their claim to be a speciality art supplier. I couldn't even see the last thing I wanted.

So I decided to front the counter and ask. "Do you have Sakura pens?" (in case I missed them somewhere).

"What are they?"

I explain. No. They don't. They have Staedtler, Rotring and Copic. Good pens, but not the ones I want.

"Do you have silverpoint supplies?"

"What's silverpoint?"

I explain slowly. The woman looks at me like I have sprouted an extra head or asked for automail or something. I'll take that as a no then. I did end up buying a sketch pad in a nice grey tone, just so I didn't feel I had completely wasted my time, but there's a part of me that keeps saying I shouldn't have rewarded them for being useless.

Time to trek down to The Rocks then, to a real art supplier. Parkers. The Aladdin's cave. The ultimate destination. The shop that makes me feel like I have died and gone to heaven. Even if they don't have what I want they will know what it is and when they are getting it back in, regardless of what I ask for.

They may even have the paper I want. I have but to ask.

(I had thought of including Jim Diamond's "I Should Have Known Better", or Elvis Costello's "How to Be Dumb". Instead I have gone with the Peatbog Faeries. At least they stop me grinding my teeth.)

Jobs for the Boys (and Girls)

I have just spent the morning at my son's school - at a Careers' Fair. This is the second year the school has run this. It's a primary school, not a high school. Running a Careers' Fair.

The school is really actively engaged with the children. There are creative arts and music programs, dance and sport programs, breakfast club, a homework club, a choir. Plenty of support for children and parents, the school garden is back under way after several years' hiatus. The school is in a low socio-economic area and also draws from new estates, so there are a range of lived experiences in our student population. Like all good public schools, it teaches inclusion, acceptance and equality of opportunity.

We have an amazing Deputy Principal. Not everyone likes her (I do, very much. Our school needs her) - she does not suffer fools, she is forthright sometimes to the point of bluntness. She doesn't gild the lily (and some parents don't take kindly to being told the truth about their child, but that's their problem). But she knows her school, the students, the families inside out.

When I was asked to take part last year, I did ask her why we, a primary school, were having a Career's Day. Turns out there are children in our school who do not have a single adult in their family with a job. Going back generations. There are children who do not know an adult in regular employment, or an adult who is happily employed. Some know only that work is where parents go to earn barely enough to keep them all together, and the work is hard and the workplace is unhappy. There are some who only see work as a miserable burden. How can a child have aspirations for themselves if this is all they know?

So we have a Careers' Fair. So children can meet adults who love their job. So children can meet adults who have a job.

All sorts of people come: electricians, fire fighters, vets, pilots, engineers, personal trainers, musicians (we didn't have one this year, which was a shame), people from the university, kids from the high school agricultural department to talk about farming, nutritionists, doctors, the guy who runs the local supermarket (he's popular - he gives away lollies), bakers, scientists, more. All sorts. And me.

Last year I felt like a fraud. I was asked to come along and talk to the kids about being an artist. Having been ill for so long, nothing much was going on for me. What was I supposed to tell them? No one buys anything, if you get sick you don't get paid, don't do it if you want to eat (unless you happen to be married to someone with a regular job)?

No, I didn't say that. I talked about all the things artists can do. I had design drawings from cartoons, films, computer games, some of David Landis' excellent Desktop Gremlins, Rob Ives' paper automata. There were some of my own things, but I kept the focus on other people's things, vocational paths, that sort of thing.

My little display this year.

It was pretty much the same speil this year. Although this year I didn't feel like a fraud, and I had more of my own work on display, and less of other peoples', and I talked about what I have been doing (two exhibitions do a lot to bolster confidence). Some of the children already knew me as I did a series of workshops earlier this year with my son's class. And I felt I could really say "find what you love and don't let anyone stop you".

Last year I had a violinst next to me, so I had the most glorious music for the day. This year it was dancers. Well, acrobats really, regardless of what they said. They threw each other around and bent over backwards. It was like being next door to Cirque de Soleil. Lots of fun.

... while on the other side of the room...

Some of the kids are pretty venal. When they realised I didn't have freebies to give away they walked off. Which suited me fine. Others actually wanted to know what I do, how I do it. They were fascinated to think that their computer games and films NEED artists. Some loved the idea of drawing comic books. Two children spent most of the time looking through my Escher book and talking about how art lets people see impossible things.

There was one girl who questioned that art can be anything more than a hobby. She got directed to the Hobbit art and design book and the Assassin's Creed concept art book.

At the luncheon afterwards one of the teachers came up to me and said she had asked her children what they liked best. The answer came back "the dancers and the artist".

How could I ask for more?