Thanking Swazi

   As I mentioned in my last post, in the beginning, when The Art of a Hut project was still only an idea, Caleb and I tried contacting a lot of companies and organizations for sponsorship. We had not much success in that area, but we had one answer which was really positive and encouraging. This was from Swazi who were really encouraging about our project and donated to Caleb and I a $200 voucher each for their store.

    Swazi is a New Zealand outdoor clothing store which proudly make all there clothing in their factory in Levin. I was able to have a peek behind the scenes one time when we visited the store last year. Each piece is made entirely by one seamstress and her name is printed on a label inside each garment she completes. It is a really nice touch, everything about Swazi speaks of quality and passion about what they do. 

   So i would just like to say thank you Swazi, you are awesome and we think you are amazing at what you do and for keeping it in Kiwi! Caleb wears his Swazi stubbies all around the university where he is now, and I love my Swazi woolen socks. My bush shirt also has been awesome, and various pieces of pencil and charcoal and paper have collected in there very conveniently, I even wore it in the self portrait I painted. 

Thank you, Swazi

The Beautiful South, a Hippie Van, and Something about Art

   For the last three weeks I've been on a kind of holiday. Holiday from much painting and drawing anyway! I flew away to the South Island just because I thought I'd like to see a certain engineering student whose dear name begins with the letter C...

    One week with friends we went hitch hiking around the three blue lakes near Mt. Cook. We slept under the stars every night and traveled on our feet or by the thumb and a smile. The landscapes all around were truly amazing. I found myself wishing for a little hippie van in which to travel around the country all on my lonesome...and to paint. I might just do that, as soon as I can... be a wandering artist, and really try to capture that beauty that surrounds one down there.

  I very much like the South Island. Everything is so much grander and wilder and more open than in the North where I live. If you have seen the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit you have only glimpsed the magic of New Zealand.

   But most of the time away I spent in the city of Christchurch where Caleb is studying. I'm quite impressed at the amount of hours engineering students spend hard at it. It seems as if they have so much to learn that they could work 24/7 and still have lots more to do. I spent a week in the University library. Lived on the fourth floor where all the art and literature books were. I believe I could spend a lifetime in there. So many books that I've been wanting to read, and that I would never otherwise be able to see. I read and read, wrote down quotes and had a mind teaming with ideas and words by the end of it.

   One book I read was full of Rodin's thoughts on art translated from the French. I was interested in what he had to say about beauty. He lived at a time when the trends in art where changing dramatically, a similar time to now, when artists were suddenly liberated by a truth which turned everyone upside-down. He spoke of seeing beauty in everything, he said that true art could make anything beautiful.

   'There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth...Whatever is false, whatever is artificial, whatever seeks to be pretty rather than expressive whatever is capricious and affected, whatever smiles without motive, bends or struts without cause, is mannered without reason; all that is without soul and without grace; all, in short, that lies, is ugliness in art' 

 

Sculptured hands by Rodin

   He was right, but those that came after him in the modern age, twisted the words to mean that 'all art could make all beautiful' and then 'art is beautiful because it is art', and eventually got rid of the idea of beauty altogether for even they could not see beauty in what they created. 'Art for Art's sake' became the motto. What happened to the amazing discoveries of the impressionists and other artists of that era that art was brought to such a low level so soon after?

    Perhaps a better phrase would be 'Art for Life's sake' after all what is art without life, truth, or meaning? I think the mistake that artists make over and over again throughout all the art movements of history is to  forget about what they paint and look at the paint itself. They forgot what they were trying to say because they found such a brilliant way of telling it, they saw it was brilliant and than all they could think of was the telling and forgot what they really wanted to say in the first place.

   “Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to the love of the telling"― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

God grant me Grace!...

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.  :-)

What I'll be When I Grow Up!

  When I grow up I don't want to be a model, it would be tedious work! But it was fun for one afternoon to dress up in a huge wedding dress and ride my horse playing my violin! Today I've been modeling for my sister, Bianca. She is an amazing photographer and has some very beautiful work on her blog, go have a look at Luce Bianca Photography. I'll be able to share some of the photos she took of me soon. 

* * *

    On Tuesday I decided what I want to be when I grow up. I shall be a freelance travel artist! Doesn't that sound so exciting and adventuresome. I've tried looking all over the Internet for such a person but can't really find anyone who dose it. There are freelance artists, or artists who travel, but they never seem to all combine into one. My idea is to be just like a freelance travel writer only making pictures instead of words. But maybe there's no real demand for such a job because of photography. But photography is so common now, and just about every place in the world has already been photographed it might be something new to have drawings and paintings of places instead!

  But whatever the case, the idea inspires me and I will one day find a way of traveling and painting as a career, a way of life I should say, because obviously there's no money in it! I'm finding that chasing my dreams is really becoming addictive! Before I began, or had even thought of, The Art of a Hut project I would never have dreamed that so many dreams could really come true. I've now taken one step, the first step, towards following a dream, all of a sudden I feel it becoming a reality, and my dreams have become one step bigger. It looks like the rest of my life will be lived chasing dreams that just get bigger and wilder and more exciting and beautiful the more I run after them! I hope I feel the same after my first hut drawing trip, but even if I discover that tramping and traveling isn't for me, I'll still be dreaming bigger dreams than I ever did before. It's the dream - the journey - that is so exciting, not the destination, I don't know why, but it's true. So here's to traveling, for that is my biggest dream at this moment in time.