South Island and Newsletter!! I'm off...!

   Today I leave home and on Monday I fly to the South Island. It's been my dream for years to go down there. And now I am going!!

   I'm not taking my laptop and don't hope to be in contact with the internet for the couple of months I'm away. So don't expect to hear from me online before the end of May. But when I come back I will get back on my blog and tell you all about it and share some of my sketches. I'll be apple picking near Nelson for five weeks, and hopefully get to tramp to some huts in the weekends. Here is my March/April Newsletter. In which I write a bit more about what this artists been up to lately.

  Here are just a few of the huts I want to visit and draw if I get the chance.

 I've been packing today, and look who wants to come with me! Not this time Pansy!..

Well, I'm going to go now and ride my horse, Tigger, one last time before I go. Then I've got to quickly finish packing and leave. 

Good bye.  :-)

Drawing in the Bush: The Challeges

  Drawing out in the wilderness is very different from in the studio. It has it's difficulties but is very enjoyable on the whole. I love being outside and I love drawing so it was a great holiday for me. Below, I am working on a watercolour of Mangamuka Hut in the Kaimai Range. Caleb had just come back from hunting and was inspecting the painting with a critical eye.

 The challenges of drawing huts abounded. In the first place it was difficult to find a good angle to draw the hut from. It wasn't just a question of which side the hut looked most interesting from, often finding one possible drawing angle was hard. Most huts were either closely surrounded by bush or long grass, so I had to find ways of getting around that. Getting far away from the hut to get a good view of it and get it all to fit on my paper was a challenge but I always found a way. At Te Totara Hut in the southern Ureweras I sat up on a slip over the river from the hut. The hut was surrounded with tall grass so that was the only place I could get a proper view of it.

   You can see me, a blue and red dot in the middle of the slip busy drawing away. One of the boys took the photo from the porch of the hut. Below is what I got from up there. I will have to get all of my drawings properly scanned as the camera doesn't do a very good job of it.

  When and before I began drawing the huts I was thinking of doing just sketches of the huts and working on larger more detailed drawings later as the main thing to show at an exhibition. But I am now thinking that what I draw out there is worth more that what I could do in my studio. They have more interest and character to them and the feel of the place, because I actually drew them on location from what I really saw before me. For an exhibition and a book, all I really need is the material I get out there. But I still intend to do a few paintings on canvass and for those I will work on my studio from sketches and photographs.

Film Cameras

    After the interview, I could breath again and we visited some of the parliament buildings nearby before nearly missing our train. Marion had an old film camera of her families which we used to take photos with. We asked a few people to take photos of us with it and it was rather amusing to see their reactions to the old style camera. Everyone automatically looked down at the screen to see the photo which, of course, they couldn't. 

   I have all of a sudden been inspired by old style cameras. I remember when our family had film cameras, and how each photo was taken carefully considering weather it was worth using up shots, and how exciting it was when the developed photos came back from the chemist and we would see how they had turned out. Then came along digital cameras which are so much better in so many ways. More convenient, faster, and you can take a hundred photos of one thing, delete them all, then take a hundred more within an hour.

    But lately I have become sick of the speed of modern day life. There is so much information and images flying around and bombarding from every side that I just want to press pause and put the world into slow motion just to get a chance to look around me and see things in my own time. That's why I value sketches so much, because it takes time, it takes skill and the artist has really looked at the subject, considered it and interpreted it. A film camera has a little bit more of this feeling about it than a digital one. While I was looking through the view finder at Marion and the parliament buildings beyond I had a feeling that I was capturing a memory, as I would in a sketch. It felt like it had more worth than a digital image. There is more thought and time put into one film photograph, and no instant gratification to see the image. I don't know quite why I like it so much, but those good old film cameras have got me hooked and whenever I go traveling I shall have one at my side! 

Work and Horses

   I've just had a lovely weekend away from the internet. Our friends came over to stay and we went to the ceili, (Irish dancing--heaps of fun), tree felling (well, the boys did that and we watched when we weren't baking and making daisy chains!), and late nights with some good conversations and laughter. And of course, watching the America's Cup every morning thinking it will be the last day. But it's not over yet, and there's still another day of racing to go. Come on New Zealand!

 

 This week I'm working on a big commission similar to the one I did recently of three horses. Yesterday I did five hours on it, and it's looking good, I'm looking forward to working on it today.

  But I've still got to go outside and ride the horses back up the road. They have run out of grass in their paddock so I'm going for a ride in the rain. This evening I will blog again about some exiting news for The Art of a Hut project!

To the Snow!!

    When you read this I will be making my way down south to Mt Ruapehu--to the snow!

    It's something my friends and I have been talking about for awhile, and now we are going! We will be staying in one of the DOC huts on the foothills and have one pair of skis and a couple of toboggans. And are planning a good freeze! There will be eleven of us going in one big van taking a couple of days to travel down. I haven't been down south much and haven't seen much of New Zealand at all really having lived all my life in Northland, the winterless north.

   Where we are staying is apparently near to Gollum's pool which was filmed for Lord of the Rings, so we'll have to have a look at that wont we!

   I'm hoping to get a chance to draw the hut while we are there, and the neighbouring one which is just a short walk away. I also want to take the chance of doing some filming down there for my video promoting The Art of a Hut project. I'm working on setting up a pledge me account to raise money for the project. 

   I'll tell you all about the snow after I get back next Sunday. Hopefully we have lots of snow and beautiful weather and no earthquakes or volcanoes. After all it is an active volcano and one of the most dangerous places to be at the moment, according to my brother. Imagine us sliding down the while slopes of a beautiful mountain under sunny skies -- just like this:

Introducing Caleb

   I think it's about time I properly introduced the co-author of this crazy plan, 'The Art of a Hut'. Caleb Bergstrom, is his name, and if it wasn't for him I don't think I would have been able to get on so far with the project as I have. It would have merely been one of those ideas one has and thinks, in passing, how awesome it would be to be able to do that one day, and which never happens. But, thanks to Caleb's enthusiasm, and because I have someone to do it with who is just as much involved and interested as I from the very start -- well, it looks like I might just happen to find myself drawing and living in backcountry huts for six months of my life very soon.

   Caleb is from Hawkes Bay, which is a long drive south from up here in Northland. He was staying with us when we came up with the idea of drawing huts. You see, he had applied to enter the army as an engineer and had been waiting all year to see if he would get it, but, while he was up here, he found out that he hadn't gotten in. That was a disappointment for him, but he is now free to help with The Art of a Hut project and become the co-author of our eventual book. So, he is going to take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity to explore our country. 

  

  He is looking forwards to spending a whole summer and more tramping and he's planned allot of hunting and fishing. Hopefully he will be able to keep the three of us fed!

  The third person in our adventure will vary. For the first two months our friend, Thomas, will be coming with us. And after that we have several friends who want to come along when they can fit in. We are planning to go in Caleb's tiny white Toyota starlit, I'm wondering how we will manage to fit into it, it will certainly make things interesting! 

   Caleb has promised me he will write a post or two for this blog himself sometime soon, so hopefully that will give you a further glimpse into who he is. 

Blessed beyond expression

 I began drawing today, instead of working on my website as I had planned, and I realized again how much I love it!

  There are so many downs in an artist's life and so much to do that really has nothing to do with actually drawing, that one sometimes begins to get bogged down into it all. But then I pick up my pencil expecting nothing, touch it to paper and suddenly I'm away into a world where a single line can excite me, a shadow can make me smile, and where an empty space can fill my spirit with gladness. Those moments make me feel like this, and this is what I feel now:

   I'm blessed beyond what I deserve to be able to draw! I can't wait to begin the big adventure and spend my whole summer drawing. I'm sure there will be low places and many very literal bogs, but that will only make the happy moments all the more memorable.

  This isn't the serious blog post I had planned, just a spontaneous response to my sudden joy of finding myself drawing a muddy old truck!

New Blog Design, and other news

    I spent most of today creating this! How do you like the new design, do you think it's better than the old one? I do, of course! I have also redesigned my website: equinefineart.net 

  Caleb and I have been working for the last month on ways to raise funding for 'The Art of a Hut' project. I am just a pennyless artist, actually I have more pennys than dollars at the moment! So that means we are going to have to raise money from somewhere to make this project possible. We have various ideas which we are working to put into action, involving newspaper articles, and radio broadcasts.

   The main thing at the moment is to make a video promoting our project to put on Boosted - a website based on public funding where people donate to help make projects possible. I'll post more about it later, but that's the general idea. The only problem with this is that I don't have a camera anymore! So what I've got to figure out next, how to make a video with no camera. I'll manage it somehow, necessity is the mother of invention after all...

 I am selling my oil painting 'Hot and Cold' on TradeMe at the moment. It's one of my favorite paintings which I took a looser approach too making it slightly stylistic/abstract instead of my usual realism. Hopefully something will come of that.

A New Adventure Begins!

A month ago I began brainstorming ideas for ways to start getting somewhere in my artistic career. I decided I needed to start working towards an exhibition, but I needed a subject, a theme. 

I began a list and wrote down 'Huts' and didn't get any further than that. I had been thinking about drawing or painting the old farm buildings and huts one sees everywhere in New Zealand. And now the idea suddenly came back to me.

My friend, Caleb, was with me at the time and, together, from the one idea of huts as the subject for an exhibition, we came up with a wild idea which has become quite a serious project! 

It's called 'The Art of a Hut'

This is what I wrote in my

The Art of a Hut Newsletter:

This summer, if all goes to plan, two friends and I will set off into the bush to disappear into the backcountry for six months. We will be traveling all around the North Island staying at DOC huts all the way. And I will be drawing each of the 50 or so huts that we stay at. After the six months I will go home to my studio (quite sick of the bush by then I'm sure!) and work on larger finished drawings of the huts and prepare my work for an exhibition sometime in the spring of 2014.

   I am really looking forwards to drawing the huts and anything else my pencil finds to sketch on the way. There will be a lot of tramping involved and a whole lot of roughing it. It will be quite an adventure and an amazing opportunity to experience my own country in places where our roots are still in sight. I will be taking a journal with me and keep up a written record of our adventures in the bush; for we also have in mind publishing a book of my sketches and the stories of the huts as we experience them.

   I have chosen pencils over paint, not only because this will be a lot cheaper and more realistic for me, but because I really love drawing as a medium in itself. I wish to promote it as an important aspect of the arts and show that it is not inferior to painting, and can stand alone as an artistic end in itself.

   This is a really ambitious project for me: a poor artist having barely started out in my career, but I believe it will definitely be worth it, and hopefully will be the means of opening many doors of opportunity into the future.

   So, there you have it! The rest of this winter will be spent in planning and fundraising and all that sort of thing which is going to be a whole new learning experience for us.

I plan to have this blog very involved with the project all the way, so 'stay tuned!' as they say.