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View from Veranda - sunset 8/12/07
All of the sunset/sky shots posted below over a 10 day period, are from the same place on our verandah looking in the same direction south/westish over the southern suburbs of Melbourne (Australia). These are summer shots where i can see the sun drop down over the horizon. Towards the end of summer and into winter, the sun moves around to the right so much so, that I can't see it from my verandah vantage point.
View from the Veranda - sunset 5/12/07
View from the Veranda - sunset 4/12/07
View from Veranda - rain clouds 3/12/07
Cold fronts close in regularly in Melbourne.
This is the same view as the others shown here in recent days. It's the same in amazingly different ways. Storms raced across the suburbs of Melbourne today (Monday) - This photo from the veranda, as the rain rolls in towards us from the Bay.
View from Veranda - Sunset 1/12/07
Same veranda, same direction, different sunset.
Today's View from the Veranda - Sunset 30/11/07
Same place, same direction, same view, different every day.
Today's View from the Veranda - Sunset 29/11/07
Our veranda looks south over the southern suburbs of Melbourne.
"The Floor" - Floor covered with photographic imagery, Lindsay Colborne 1995
Entering the gallery was a daunting experience for some. Unsure whether to enter, they would stand at the front door and call out, "Is it OK to walk on this?"
"Yes", was the answer. Of course it was. Walking all over the art was the whole idea. Everything changes, particularly when you interact with it. Nothing lasts forever, everything is eventually destroyed and remade. The act of looking at the floor art as you walked on it played an active part in it's destruction. By helping to destroy the work as they looked at it, the viewers of the work played an active role in the theme of the work.
Since the work was nothing but glued-together bits of photocopy paper, I wasn't expecting it to last too long. I wasn't even sure if it would last through the opening night, but in the end it proved quite resilient and apart from a few nicks and tears, it stayed together for more than a month. Finally a dance party was held on it and "The Floor" was destroyed once and for all.
But that was not the end of it.
"The Floor" - Floor covered with photographic imagery, Lindsay Colborne
The art gallery used to be an RSL Hall, so it had a lot of floor space. I was asked to be part of a group exhibition and when I walked in and saw the size of the floor, without thinking I asked the gallery owner, "Can I exhibit my work on the floor?" She said, "Sure."
At that stage I had no idea what I was going to do, except that I was going to cover the floor somehow. I had limited time to get the floor down, which left no time to develop my concepts concerning the nature of change, which will have to be the subject of a future floor, so this time I simply floated many of my existing photos of people in a sea of white. I tiled the images out on an A3 laser writer and glued them all together piece by piece, there were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Each people-photo is life size and made up of about 50 A3 pieces. It took me two solid weeks of printing and gluing and positioning to completely cover the RSL Hall-sized floor.
"Back Yard in Coorparoo" - Lindsay Colborne
I lived in Coorparoo in this house for a while, and so I'm wondering what the name "Coorparoo" actually means. I know it's an Indigenous word, but that's all I know. I've just now gone to Wikipedia and discovered... that it may mean "place of the biting mosquito" or "call of the dingo" or maybe it's the name of a creek that runs off Norman Creek... I don't know. I think that particular creek, which runs past where my father and mother grew up, is now a large cement drain - very practical in the floods. This site reckons that Coorparoo means "a ground dove", and that the name resembles the note of a cooing bird. But that site also reckons that Mt Cootha means "Dark Honey" and I always thought it meant "One Tree" because there used to be one very big tree that towered above all the others before it was chopped it down. - Well obviously... I can imagine the conversation of the first settlers... "Wow!!! Look at that wonderful big tree that towers above all the rest!" - "Yeah. Let's chop it down and burn it!"
Thompson Estate is what Annerly used to be called before WWII, and according to my Dad it's roughly between Ekibin Creek and Buranda. Ekibin Creek I now know is the name of the creek that is now a big flood-proofed cement waterway which flows off Norman Creek and is the creek that the Indigenous people may of called Coorparoo. Thompson Estate is a stones throw from Coorparoo and interestingly enough, if you did need to actually throw a stone from Thompson Estate to Coorparoo, you would have to throw it over the inbetween suburb of Stones Corner. Both my Mum and my Dad are from the area and they know only one story about the name of Coorparoo. In the 20's 30's and 40's when they were growing up there, they knew Coorparoo as coming from the Indigenous word for the cooing sound of the Indian Dove. My Dad explains it like this... "Cooooorpaaaaaroooooooo" he says, like the Dove would coo it.
"Crucifixion" - Photograph, Lindsay Colborne
If you do not send this blog to any people you will have very bad luck, but...
Send this blog to 10 people and you will have good luck and a wish will come true.
Send this blog to 20 people and you will have even better good luck and two wishes will come true.
Send this blog to 30 people and you will have very good luck indeed, and three wishes will come true.
Send this blog to 1000 people and you will show them all how gullible you are.
I understand why people send traditional chain letters with the hope of making lots of money from fools down the line who think they can get something for nothing, but why do people send email chain letters that promise no money, just good luck and miracles if you send them on to large numbers of other people? And why do people believe it and diligently send them on?
Sometimes the messages contained in the email chain letters are inspirational and/or informative, but why the need to promise miracles to get people to send them on, or bad luck if they don't?
The altruistic reason is that they think they have a good message that people need to hear. They play on people's 'fear of lack' in order to get them to send the good message on. I still have no idea why though. Because the thing that ends up being bounced around the world is not a good message but rather, a large number of expressions of 'fear and lack' from the lives of the people sending them. A seemingly altruistic unselfish concern for the welfare of others becomes a lack of faith in people's ability to recognize and pass on a good thing when they see it.
To send these email chain letters on, no matter what the message, is to send on an expression of the belief that you can't look after yourself and that you need someone to give you miracles on a silver platter.
But seriously, if you don't send this blog to 10 people right now, you will get a big boil on your bottom.
"IceBergs" - photograph, Lindsay Colborne
There's so much more to these people.
In 1981 I worked as Camera Assistant on a feature film which was shot on Moreton Island just off the coast of Brisbane, Australia. You won't have heard of the film although I did see it on TV once. That is to say, it was on TV once, just once. This photo of some cast and crew members was taken during a swim on a rest day. What a beautiful place it was and what beautiful people. You spend six days a week living in tents on an island, making a film, getting little sleep, working hard and closely with 25 other people all with their job to do, each job interconnected and woven together to produce three reels of film that can be tucked under your arm or burnt to DVD and frizbee'd away. On the seventh day you rest in the company of friends with whom you hold a bond.
"Bird Tree" - Parrots in my Chestnut Tree, Winter, Lindsay Colborne
There was only enough room on the feed tray for two or three at a time and so the birds would wait their turn sitting in the branches of the Chestnut Tree.
When I was living in Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges just east of Melbourne, Australia, there was a Chestnut tree right outside my window. I placed a small tray of parrot seed on the window ledge in the hope that I may attract the Parrots and Sulphur Crested Cockatoos to my window, with the idea of taking close-up photos of them by setting-up my camera just inches away on the other side of the window glass. It took a few months to attract any birds at all. But slowly they came to the tree, and cautiously from the tree to the feed bowl. At first, the slightest movement I made on my side of the glass scared them away. They did not understand my strange and complicated ways any better than I did. But over time as they saw that my movements, though odd, were predictable and harmless, they stayed longer. After 12 months I had regular visitors to my window. They each had different personalities. This one shy, that one forthright. This one fearful, that one bold. I came to know and love them all, but always, i remained on the other side of the glass.
I've lately been thinking a lot about the trees and the birds and the beautiful people in the hills, feeding the kookies by hand and looking out through the trees to the lights of the city. Now is the winter of my discontent, and it's only autumn.
"The World of Men 2" - Photo + Mulberry Splat Painting, Lindsay Colborne
Here's the mulberry splat wall of men. It goes down there and around the corner with a gap up here to put a person into and complete the picture.
"The World Of Men" - photo + Mulberry Splat Mural, Lindsay Colborne.
This is a small bit of a large mulberry-splat-mural-painting that goes down the wall and around the corner. The mural is especially designed and constructed to be mono-coloured (primarily blue) and mono-subjected (the subject of men) so that it is not actually "finished" until somebody stands in front of it - and I take a photo to record that moment in time when the painting is finished. When the person moves away, the painting is no longer finished. When a new person stands in front of the mural, it is once again finished, but in a different way. A different conclusion. This painting is finished and then not finished and then finished again in a different way, over and over.
The above photo is a record of one of those finished times.
There are more.
"Splatt" - Mulberry splat painting, LC 1994
When I was living in Spring Hill in Brisbane (Australia), I had my 2 door 1966 XP white Falcon HardTop parked at the side of the house underneath a large Mulberry Tree. During the Mulberry season I discovered why it wasn't such a good idea to park my pure-white 2 Door XP Falcon underneath a Mulberry Tree. One morning I walked outside, took a look at my car and stopped in my tracks. Many mulberries had fallen from the tree and left indelible purple mulberry-splat stains all over my white-of-white pride and joy.
My first thought upon seeing the purple disaster was, "ARRRRGGHHHHH!!!!".
My second thought was, "NOOOOOOO!!!".
My third thought was, "Hang on... actually, hang on a second..."
And my fourth thought was, "...those mulberry splats look pretty good!"
I collected a couple of buckets of mulberries, stuck up some blank white art paper on the wall, invited a friend over, and we had a 'chuck mulberries at the pure white paper' party. Later on, after the splats had become permanent marks, I drew other stuff into them.
Getting the splats off the car is another story.
"Eating (The Fourth Wall)" - Toilet Mural, UQ Student Union, LC 1994
The Fourth Wall of Eating is the door.
I tell people it's a self portrait but nobody ever agrees with me. It was the first section that I painted and at that stage I really had no idea that i was going to do any more. I covered the existing appallingly bigoted graffiti on the door with a coat of white, and began painting. To get rid of that graffiti was the reason I was there, but at the same time I also saw my replacement painting as just another type of graffito, so I painted silently and secretly in the night just like a real graffiti artist.
As i did more paintings, people started talking about them and wondering who was doing them. We kept it secret for many months until people started to accept the "new graffiti". I heard one man say that his three year old daughter always insisted on be taken into that particular cubicle so that she could look at the cow on the wall.
The original idea of stopping people from writing immature and bigoted graffiti on the toilet walls was a success. They still graffitied the paintings but only in the flat colour areas and now the graffiti used the painting subject matter as a starting point for the graffiti subject matter. For instance, in one of the ribs of the man on the door somebody wrote, "No man has ribs like this", and later in the next rib down somebody wrote, "This man needs Jesus", and a few weeks later in the next rib down somebody wrote, "This man was Jesus".
The graffiti in the women's toilet in those days was usually much more enlightened discussion & ongoing written debates on various topics. It was far more entertaining than the crass bigoted male toilet graffito one-liners.
"Eating (Three Walls)" - Toilet Wall Graffiti, UQ Student Union, LC 1994
This cubicle has a meat eating theme. Starting with the rain forest on the first wall, clearing the rain forest to raise beef on the second wall, eating the beef as hamburgers on the third wall and the 4th wall, which is painted on the door and the subject of the blog entry immediately above this one... the effects.
"Eating (The Third Wall)" - Toilet Wall Graffito, UQ Student Union, LC 1994
I worked at the University of Queensland Student Union from 1991 to 1995 and in that time I went to the toilet many times. Information like that would normally be filed under "things you don't need to know" and this case is no different except that I needed to explain why I was in those toilets everyday day, and that's also fairly obvious, so I'll start again...
The old UQ Student Union male toilet cubicles used to be covered with so much bigoted homophobic racist immature and uncreative graffiti that i came to loathe going in there and subjecting myself to it everyday. So I decided to do a bit of graffiti of my own and create virtual themed cubicle worlds, a different theme in each cubicle. And above the urinal, paintings of faces of men looking secretly across and down to check out the size of other men's willies. And in the spot above the sink where the mirror used to be, a painting of someone checking himself out in the painted mirror. Etcetera.
I haven't been back to UQ for years but I'm pretty sure the building that these paintings were in has been demolished and replaced, so the only place my graffiti cubicles now exist is in my photographic records and in the memory all those who pooed and weed in them.
"Sacred Women's Rock" - (acrylic, oil, newspaper) LC 1999
I painted this picture at the Sacred Aboriginal Women's Rock in the Dandenong Ranges a few years ago. It's marked on the signs and maps with a white-fella name, but the locals know what it really is. And some of them know the energy and power of the place. The Women's Rock is a broad and nurturing expanse of rock on which one or many people can sit peacefully or lie in the sun and be at one with nature for a little while. It's a place to relax and unwind and know that everything is as it is meant to be. Just below is the Man's Rock; a much smaller shaft of stone protruding abruptly from the ground and just big enough for one person to sit on the top. Sit here if you need to fill yourself up with energy to attack the day.
WHY IS THERE NO ROCK IN MY PAINTING OF THE ROCK?
Before you go down to sit on the rocks, ask permission from the spirits of the place. If they say no, don't go. If you think it's beneath you to ask permission from the Spirit of the place before entering the area, don't go. in the past, we wouldn't have been allowed to go anyway. I had been going to the rocks daily for some time before i attempted to paint them. I needed to know I was accepted by them and I'm sure that I was. But going to sit on sacred rocks is a whole different thing to painting them. i have to go deep into a thing to paint it, and although I could feel that the rock was sacred, and I could sit on it and feel it's energy... back then I don't think I was ready to go deep into that sacred place, and I think the rock knew it.
I started several different paintings of the rock and each time I ended up painting only the trees around it. It wasn't that I couldn't have forced myself to paint the rock itself, it's just that i gravitated towards the trees. The new energy of the trees was easier to deal with than the old energy of the rock which contains so much memory of that place and of all the people who have come there for thousands of years. We feel the memory of places and things. This is why we are drawn to old growth trees which have avoided the axe for hundreds of years. They contain a memory and a power that we can feel and connect with. The big old companion trees to this rock had been cut down by the white settlers over 150 years ago for the wood and also to allow people to see the view. The whole mountain was dairy farmed and treeless. It wasn't until the 1920's and 30's that the farms were pushed out and the trees began to grow again. That's why all the trees on the Dandenong Ranges are the same height, they all started growing at the same time about 80 years ago. And that's how much memory the trees that have grown back up around the rock have. But the Sacred Rock is hundreds of thousands of years old and holds all of the memory of that place.
At the time, I thought the rock was saying to me, "You're not allowed to paint me".
Now I think it was saying, "How about painting the trees? They're nice."
And they were, but now it's time to go back and add the bottom bit to that picha.
"Australia is not England" - LC 2000
A few days ago there was a front cover story in the Herald Sun about the drought in Australia, with a full cover picture of the dry brown land and an inset picture of a serious-looking Prime Minister John Howard with this quote, "We must hope and pray there is rain".
Which may be true, but all of this climate change stuff makes us forget that Australia is NOT England.
Australia has always been "a land... of droughts and flooding rains". 'My Country' - written in 1904 by Dorothea Mackellar
"...Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die-
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain..."from 'My Country' - written in 1904 by Dorothea Mackellar, bless her cotton socks.
I hope I don't get sued for reproducing that copyrighted verse.This is a site where they do have permission to reproduce Dorothea's timely poem.
LET'S ALL GO SAILING ON THE INLAND SEA. JOLLY GOOD.
At the heart of John Howard's comically severe expression (chosen by the Herald editors) and his ineffective prayer to make this country into something that it isn't, is a lack of understanding about the nature of this beautiful land.
In Dorothea Mackella's words:"all of you who have not loved her
You will not understand..."
...Instead you will get upset that there is no inland sea, and wonder why it hasn't rained lately, unless of course you live where it is bucketing down. So when John Howard says "We must hope and pray there is rain", he is using fear as a political tool. Conservative politics is based on fear. Don't let the name of the political party fool you as to whether or not it is conservative. Liberal, Labor, Conservative, Republican or Democrat; You will know them by their fruit. - Jesus said that.
The definition of Conservatism is: “the disposition to preserve or restore what is established & traditional, and to limit change… ” - dictionary.com
FEEDING THE FEAR
Fear of change is the driving force behind political conservatism. Our economic structures are based on fear, our politicians respond to our fears, and we will look to the political party who will provide a way of easing our fears. The political strategy of many politicians is to develop policy which caters to the fears of their voters and in doing so they feed and compound the fear in people’s lives. And here in this large number of people who are locked into a cycle of fear, lies the reason for so many of our problems. Fear compounded by fear, feeds the emotions of anger and hate and is the ultimate cause of the violence and destruction stemming from our environmental vandalism, our polluting and non-sustainable methods of living, and our resource wars. The resource we're warring over at the moment is oil, but the resources fought for change according to place and time. There have always been enough resources for everybody even in these over-populated times. It is lop-sided distribution of resources, non-sustainable over-use of resources, fear of lack of resources and violent fighting over resources that remain the constant problems.
A TRIP TO DARK SIDE
In the Star Wars film, the dark Emperor could sense the anger rising from Luke Skywalker’s fear and urged him turn it into hatred, and from there to turn it into a violent act against the agent of his fear, the dark Emperor of fear himself, who would then compound that violence by turning it back onto Luke thus creating a cycle of violent destructive behaviour within Luke, whose trip to the dark side would then be complete.
"…I can feel your anger…. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete.”
The dark Emperor – Stars Wars
This is the way to the Dark Side of fear:
Step 1. We fear our Dark Emporer
Step 2. We are angry with our Dark Emporer
Step 3. We hate our Dark Emporer
Step 4. We are violent with our light sabors
Step 5. We destroy what we hate
Step 6. Our light saber now glows red instead of green
Step 7. We spit lightning from our hands, for evil instead of for good.
Step 9. Our journey to the Dark Side is complete.
Step 10. That door is closed, move on to the next one.
THE STORM TROOPERS WON'T SAVE US
Fear leads us to send in the storm troopers, which causes more suffering more fear and more uprisings of the things we fear.
There will be no peaceful answer whilst we remain in the cycle of fear. Step out of it when and if you can, but until then, don't expect the cavalry to arrive in the nick of time to save you, unless you're sitting on a sea of oil.
TECHNOLOGY WON'T SAVE US
Even if our technologies can solve each of our problems as we hit each wall one by one, if we don’t also change our whole way of thinking and living in order to lesson the impact of our existence on the environment, then we will eventually reach the ultimate limit of our environment, and that will be a wall that no technology can scale.
LOVE WILL SAVE US
To create peace, compassion and a secure environment in the world instead war, suffering and environmental destruction, imagine sending in ambassadors of Love (not Luke) instead of armies and air strikes. This needs to be imagined because it hasn't been tried yet.
THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH ! (AGAIN)
Eschatology - The branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of human kind.
Climate change is giving Eschatology a good run at the moment. It hasn't had such good press since the year 2000 when the world didn't come to an end. It is a fearful notion indeed that if we don’t collectively change the way we are thinking and living, RIGHT NOW, we may be doomed. But this is nothing more than the everyday fear of death, the ultimate change, re-packaged in a different way. It's the fear of change that is scary, more than climate change. We need to make many scary changes to overcome the effects of the changes in climate we are creating. I hope we can. Eschatology is Nigh!
HUMAN 20/20 ADAPTABILITY
We normalise the situations we find ourselves in. We're good at adapting to nature's cycles and limits, but when we choose to adapt them to us, we need do so within Nature's limits or else suffer who-knows-what sort of unbearable rule-changes. For thousands of years, the indigenous people of Australia have been successful at Nature adaptation. They're good at the long version of the game. They have the runs on the board, but new arrivals to the Australian wicket have suffered a string of run outs trying to hit big sixes before getting their eye in, as if this is a 20/20 match instead of a Test. We need to firstly get our eye in and let our indigenous partners take the strike for a while until we see how the Australian wicket plays, so that eventually we will see this country like a beach ball, and finally understand that Australia IS NOT England.
We will be re-born from the Ashes like a cricket bat made from a Eucalyptus-tree.
(This cricket analogy has clearly gone too far.) Rain stopped play.
IT'S TIME FOR CHAT ABOUT THE WEATHER
...and how we cause it. It's much easier to see how the human emotion of fear creates everyday problems like terrorism and road rage, than it is to see the relationship between human emotions and the weather. That human fear can cause excess droughts and flood maybe explained by seeing that fear causes us to cut down trees and to disrespect and pollute the nature of our environment in order to grow and make more and more so that we always have enough to survive and so that we have nothing to fear. Our fear then becomes the ultimate cause of environmental collapse. But there is an even more direct causal link, which can be used to affect change for better or worse more immediately. Physicists and enlightened people tell us that every part of us is energy; even our thoughts and our prayers are energy, which at the quantum level is interconnected with all other energies. Each of our acts in the world is the physical manifestation of pure thought energy.
A thought is energy that links us to the manifestation of our next physical act.
A prayer is a thought that links us to everybody else’s thoughts and their subsequent physical acts. The more positively and quantifiably we link our thoughts to others (i.e. pray), the more quantifiable and positive will the acts of those others be. Prayer is direct connection to all of the energy around us. And there’s no reason to leave out of that equation, those bits of energy that make the weather.
The overall effect of this energy-connection between all things, impacts either positively or negatively on all of our surroundings including the weather. Love, joy and compassion, transmitted en masse through prayer, can heal our environment, and once healed, our overall respect at the physical level and our continued prayer at the level of energy will keep the environment healthy and whole.
HOW TO PRAY
Every prayer that asks for something out of the fear that the thing might not be given is an affirmation of the belief that the thing will not be given. When you pray for the WANT of something, the WANT of something is what you get.
Fear of not getting something is the very thing that prevents you from getting it. Instead, simply be thankful for what you have and for what is already on it’s way. A prayer of sincere thanks with no hint of fear concerning whether or not you might get what you ask for, puts up no fear barriers between what you need, and it’s arrival at your doorstep.
If you want something, the best prayer is a one word prayer, “thankyou”.
(I know, my spell checker says that's two words.)
When John Howard says, "We must hope and pray there is rain,” he is affirming his belief that we aren’t getting any rain. If enough people are influenced to make the same fearful prayer, then those large numbers of fearful prayers will be the very thing that will keep the rain away.
So either go to the beach and get a tan, or…
With love and compassion for all souls, just say…
“Thank you for the rain, God” Amen.
After all, Yahweh is a Storm God.
…………………….
p.s. God, can you also throw in one of those large TV screens with surround sound, I really want one of those. And a new car please, I promise I’ll wash it with a bucket. And also… a new Prime Minister! Either Peter Costello or Kevin Rudd will do, but I would prefer The Dalai Lama.
Thanks God, mate.
p.p.s.
7th July 2008 - Thanks for the new prime minister.
You Are Loved - illustration, oils+photoshop, LC 1997
DAY 14 - Easter Sunday
It's a long time since I've seen an Easter egg with a little chicken stuck to it. The chicken plus the egg used to be double the Easter symbology - new life itself as symbolised by the chicken, and all the potential of life as symbolised by the egg.
That's a lot of eggy potential for such a little chicken. I hope she didn't have to lay it.
Ascension - biro+whiteout, LC 2002
DAY 13
I did the Reiki 1 and 2 courses a couple of years a ago. And afterwards, i drew this bird onto a card and sent it to my Reiki Teacher with a message that said, "Thank You for the Reiki". (I've Photoshopped that out on this scan). I was living in Olinda at the Time and the bird is actually a Yellow Crested Cockatoo, which are predominately white. I drew this one from one of my blurred cocky photos. I take blurry photos on purpose just to do drawings from them. it's amazing what you can see within the blur of things quickly moving past. (And you don't have to draw tricky bits)
A time of contemplation... It is through ones innocence of grace, your true voice will be heard
Easter/Christmas - LC 1992
DAY 12 - Easter Friday
Christianity isn't that popular in Japan but the art and ceromony of giving gifts is popular, which apparently makes Christmas worth getting into over there, not for any religious reason but just because it's an excuse to give gifts. I haven't been there but I read once that the department stores are well into the commercial possibilities, and once in an in-store display they got the Christian culture a bit mixed up and crucified Santa instead of Jesus. Maybe it's folklore but the story I read said that this actually happened. If anyone knows, let me know. I was so fascinated by it at the time that I started drawing all sorts of things up on crosses. In a mural I painted once, I crucified the Easter Bunny. I thought it was all pretty funny until "The Passion of Christ " came out and I realised how lucky I am that Mel Gibson has never seen any of my crucifixion drawings. He'd probably come round and beat me up.
If you hesitate… it will be lost to you
Olinda Trees - LC 1999
DAY 11
This is my Friend Yol. Picture taken in Olinda on a beautiful misty day. Well, actually there wasn't any mist but it was snowing when I took that picture of Yol, but she wasn't in front of those misty trees when i took the photo, but those trees are in Olinda and it was a misty day when I took that photo of the trees, which are in Olinda, and my friend Yol has been to those trees many times, but not on the day that i took the photo. Arrrrh Photoshop, I love you.
Delight in being a child of the Universe.
I AM what I AM - self portrait, LC 1987
DAY 10
By 1987 in Brisbane there were so many construction cranes on so many half finished buildings, that the skyline was more crane than building. It was crane city. Joh Bjelke-Peterson infamously used the crane phenomena as a measure of how well the ecomomy was going when he said, "I just look out the window and count the cranes". Had he wished, he could also have looked out the window and counted the "Office Space For Lease" signs on practically every city building. Clearly there was nobody to move into all of those new buildings and six months later the recession hit, interest rates went up to 18%, and Joh went back to Kingaroy.
Joh presided over the destruction of many lovely old Brisbane buildings, including the Cloudland Dance hall where my Mum and Dad met and danced the Foxtrot and the Pride of Erin. If it was still there today it would be Salsa and Lindy Hop Heaven on a dance floor the size of a The Rod Laver Tennis Centre and sprung with 10,000 tennis balls. But Cloudland was a famous Brisbane landmark on top of a prominent hill and visible for miles around, so naturally it should be demolished and replaced with units. It was pulverised at 4am in the morning to avoid the protesters who would otherwise have lay down in front of the bulldozers and been squashed flat like a cane toad.
And the beautiful 19th century Bellvue Hotel with it's intricate display of wrought iron railings on 360 degree verandahs, was pulled down and replaced with a statue of the Queen. Twenty years later she's still the pigeon poo Queen of Queensland.
from Great Moments in Brisbane Architecture series - LC 1989
We are all here to raise consciousness to a new level of awareness.
Flowers - from my Pursuit of Happiness pc game. LC 2005
Day 9
Today you must rub your tummy gently, clockwise.
And if you have lost your sense of smell, take some time for yourself to smell the flowers. And if you can smell smoke when there is no smoke to be smelt, and if you get a headache from smelling all that imaginary smoke, then you must take some time out from your responsibilities, and in that time, breathe slowly and deeply, in an imaginary smoke free area.
There are some fine things in your life that are meant for you to enjoy.
Like rubbing your tummy clockwise. Life was not meant to be anti-clockwise.
I am just a figment of my own imaginings.
A Place Of Solitude - self portrait, LC 2000
What has become of Findhorn? (In Scotland... )
The power of Findhorn was twofold...
It was the PLACE...
(the Ley Line intersections, the electromagnetic power, psychic energy, etc)
and it was the PEOPLE who went to that place.
(the connection and interaction between those two things)
One of the original people there was Eileen Caddy.
She connected with her Spirit, which told her and the original Findhorners how to farm that land, and they worked hard at it and succeeded at it.
Many years later...
The famous BIG VEGES don't grow any more, and Eileen Caddy died late last year.
And now what is there in Findhorn?
Standard good organic farming practices, a whole lot of people looking for gurus and magical answers, and a commercial set-up to cater for them.
The original Findhorn people have gone.
But what of the PLACE?
Is it still there? Can the power still be felt there?
OR
and this is a very real and serious possibility...!
Has the power moved to Lossiemouth !!! (?)
Go Lossie!
From a place of solitude, you will find the answer within.
oops - LC 1991
DAY 6
...and God made the world in 6 days, which was a good effort.
I know. I've been a "creative artist" for 6 days days now and I haven't produced anything like a whole world.
But here is a picture of the world being squished, which I made in much less than six days.
The seventh day is a rest day. Just as well, because God's got lots of work to do on day 8.
Let the Spirit of YOU emerge.
By hiding behind ones fears we only cause confusion to others.
Someone in My Life in 1989 - LC 1989
The Fifth Day (of my being as an artist)
Today I am pulling up my metaphorical pants.
Don't worry, I can pull them down again any time, in fact i just did, but then I pulled them up again. Later on I might pull them down again because that's the sort of artist I am, and have been for 5 days now.
Being True to ourselves, we are also true to others.
Train to the Cup - LC 1998
Dream Journal:
Last night I dreamt I was on a train, but I'm not going to say whether or not I had any pants on. If it was the case that I didn't have any pants on then it wouldn't have been embarrassing because I would have had myself well covered up with towels and bags and things, but i'm not even going to go into whether or not I had any pants on because it's neither here nor there, it's just a dream and I'm not going to say what my pants situation was, so lets just move on from that whole lack of pants thing, shall we.
Now, I may or may not have had any pants on, but my train was speeding along nicely. So in my fourth day as an artist I may or may not have finished any paintings or drawings, and I may or may not be in control of my life, but the train I'm on is speeding along nicely to a fantastic destination in the hills overlooking the ocean and it's a beautiful day. There's more to this dream, but blogDreams have a way of just ending...
Be still... as there is nothing more beautiful than the stillness of the mind.
Fields of Plenty - Drawing on a piece of brown wrapping paper - LC 2002
DAY THREE (of being an artist)
I'm thinking about money and the power of love.
Money is a material representation of the work we do for each other, and the work we do for each other is a material representation of our love for each other. In essence, the exchange of money is the exchange of love. Giving money is a way to express our love for each other. Now i've never told him this before but, "I love you, Bill Gates".
Giving is the greatest gift you can offer to yourself and others, and it will be returned ten fold… if you believe it.
WinGoalFeast - Drawing on Newspaper - LC 1999
Delta Alpha Yankee Tango Whiskey Oscar - (Day Two)
My second day as an artist was invigorating and relaxing, almost erotic; like swinging on a spiritual rainforest vine melding itself to my shape as we swung through the day. I haven't actually got any work done as yet but the night is young. And when I say work, of course I mean... aRT, with a capital A. Not getting anything done all day does sound a bit like procrastination i know, but I was thinking about things, which also sounds like procrastination, although, as I've already made clear, the night has only just begun and the midnight hours have an enticing red light in the window...
This drawing, WinGoalFeast, is a part of a series of Drawings on Newspaper presently under way and which will one day, soon, become my first as yet unorganised exhibition. I go now to work on number 11 in the series, which is the lemon tree in my back yard.
I am guided by my own power doubled.
Room at Olinda - Cocky Feather Quill & mixed media - LC 1999.
DAY ONE.
Up bright and early at 11:30am.
But daylight saving ended yesterday so it was really only 10:30. It's good to be an early bird again.
Many years ago, after I got 9 out of 10 for colouring-in beetroots in grade 2, I promised myself that I was going to be an artist by the time I turned 50. Why I gave myself so long I have no idea, probably because I thought I had time, which was a big mistake because now I bloody AM 50 and I have to get a wriggle on. So this it, no more frittering away of time, no more lagging, lingering, loitering or lollygagging.
Today is Day One of my new life as an artist...
(really)
Place aside all of your fears and recognise there are infinite possibilities and opportunities for you to fulfill.
