If on a winter's night a cabbage....

There is a great phrase  in Ned Kelly's Jerilderie Letter where he calls the local constabulary "cabbage-hearted", and while I have no reason to malign cabbages in general, I think Ned might have had the green cabbage in mind. Today I bought half a red cabbage to make Braised Red Cabbage and Apples ( how easy that word 'apples' applies itself to other pursuits) but even if I subtract the loitering time taken to sketch the cabbage, I had missed the cabbage-ship of the dish by a couple of hours if it was this winter's night it was to make it to the table for dinner. The recipe I will use, from Sophie Grigson's Vegetable book is forgiving - on a previous incarnation of this dish I went a little mad with the nutmeg but after the three and half hours  reconsidering itself in a slow oven, the whole thing had melded into a buttery purple braise.

The Oddity of Bart B's Colourised Shadow

In  most regards the Farmhand cohort are perfectly ordinary  folk, but it has been remarked, quite often and not altogether flatteringly,  that Bart Brassica's coloured shadow is peculiar. There are a number of theories as to why Bart Brassica has a colour shadow. He claims he had a normal blackish sort of shadow until some fool fiction-writer took a Polariod photo of him, photocopied it and coloured the whole lot it in. Mavis Eggwhistle has been caught messing around with various kinds of coloured cellophane in her shop window and has managed to get a cerise shadow a few times but Granny Egg says she must be colour-blind if she thinks that washed out monochrome thing would fool anyone, even a one-eyed farmer.

Vaster Than Empires - Marvels of the Vegetable World

That Marvel had recourse to the word vegetable as an adjective worthy of the term Love, says something about the value he put on vegetables in general, as well as his coy mistress. The turnip and borlotti beans have a generous dose of lycopene to make red, variously distributed, and one might assume a bit of anthocyanin to make that purple in the turnip while the Jeruesalum Artichoke is a model of discretion with only faint pink spots at bud points. How can vegetables be homely, even cumbersome, and elegant at the same time? Had we but worlds enough and time to consider this properly.

Making Other Arrangements - the lovely transparencies of Icecream dishes

 

Fossicking through my picture folders this photo, naturally one of a series, made me wonder what the difference was between an assemblage that might be 'art' and a flower arrangement. And more curiously why did I make this, though I recall vividly my enthusiasm for the gelati dishes, which to the embarrassment of my children I asked the cafe staff at Zambrero, an excllent cafe on Rundle Street, Adelaide, could have one of each as I was an artist. This felt nearly exactly like telling the truth. Having to collect things for the vague process of assembling something odd, which you make up as you go along, is strange in itself. The coloured shadows and the shape of that single leaf seem ineffably lovely.  The dried violets, in case you're wondering where left from a scan collage.

The Intriguing Feet of the Tawny Frogmouth

It had been a terrible day for this Tawny Frogmouth, getting caught behind a fence, having to walk a ways to take flight once I'd ripped out the offending  piece of fencing, resting in the Jacarandah tree where he was attacked by every other bird in the garden while I batted around from an upstairs window frightening off the marauders before he finally flew down for a footbath in the water bowl. After this we gently wrapped him in a towel and took him to the Vets to recover. Picking him up, he seemed 95 percent feather, five percent night.

The Art of Listening - sashay into tuning in.

In the case of my study the walls really do have ears, something of an occupational necessity, working as I do on audio recordings.  A little while ago I wrote a short essay on The Art of Listening which was published in Meanjin, (Volume 68, 2009)  for those who might like to listen in  the Meanjin folk kindly also posted it up on  Meanjin Quarterly's web site.
Really it seemed either a little lonely, or lazy,  to have only one topic entry under 'Essays' so this is a partial remedy but obviously something must be done. Perhaps an interview and essay on Mr Farmhand?

The Mysterious Opacity of Parked Cars

The differential density of the twilight sky just before it sinks to dark is a great thing to attempt with paint . Though in every way I am miles off, there is still the feeling of doing something in puddling in the improbable lit green of the centre field, the cars with their opaque loads, and the red wink of their tail lights.

Fishy thoughts in a Fishy Shade

Since the pond water dissappeared a few weeks back, Bart has wondering about where the fish went to such an the extent that he now dreams of flying fish, fly fishing and, this is the strange part, as you can see here, breathing under water.

The Miss Jean Brodie Effect at Work in the Botanic Gardens

Autumn, with her glass and grapes, idling by the stairs in the Botanic Gardens with her three Season friends, caught my attention as I hurried away from sketching class to get back home for the afternoon shift. The trip to paper has given her a more rakish air, and she has assumed quite a bit of the look of a couple of my cousins melded together, the generic cousin so to speak. This sleight of hand is  very like Teddy Lloyd, the art teacher in 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' whose portraits of the Brodie Set always looked like Jean Brodie. There is no getting away from some things.

Mavis Eggwhistle's Signature Dish Curries Favour

Coming in for lunch yesterday Bart Brassica found a fancy plate with an enormous Curried Egg had been left on his porch table.  Every one in Lambertville, except Bart, knows perfectly well that this must be from Mavis Eggwhistle, being as she puts it,   her 'signature dish.'  Her cousin Betty-Liu Eggwhistle says Mavis is plain silly with all this signature dish nonsense and it was their Grandmother Hetty Egg's recipe in the first place. And she adds, Betty-Liu always likes to get in something extra, the curry powder Mavis uses always give her indigestions. Still  Bart may actually be smiling in this photograph, if you look very closely.

Late Additions - sketches from East on Byron Apartment

 Looking for my a sketchbook yesterday I noticed these three sketches from the garden from the Easter week staying at Byron, or more exactly East on Byron Apartments across the road from Belongil Beach. These hardly do justice to the  lily pond and banksias, and that intriguing garden item the fire hydrant.

Damp grass & the non-colour fast twilight training

Monday twilight's fading fast to monochrome and I am back at Keirle Park, in the driver's seat, trying to catch the scene. Those closest to the flood lights sport short shadows with a high noon quality about them,  those further away sometimes have double shadows, or long green ghosts of themselves seeping into the damp grass, and then there's their other ghostly parts,  the under 9's.

The Replete Note Book : Dogs of a Feather

 While the old dog, after the necessary investigations and settling down, sat still in the morning sun at the front of the Tree House Cafe at Belongil, the two birds foraging at the recently vacated table were of an entirely different feather to draw, there for a few seconds and gone, leaving only a pen outline and me scribbling a side note on colour.

These two drawings filled up the last two pages in my small sketch book and there is a odd satisfaction in both finishing one notebook and starting another that is entirely out of proportion with the contents, a puzzle to consider further.

expressivo - how to turn the moon blue

The paint bucket function in Express Draw, if it not for the handy undo-key (though that word hyphenated surely suggests some Japanese maze-based (yes, corny, I know) game), would be wildest of the wild cards. Though mostly these express draw sketches  are based on real people, in cinema queues, at the hairdressers, etcetera, I've taken more than a bit of licence depicting people blue in the face. The paintbucket is wonderfully like magic colouring in, the digital equivalent to those magic colouring-in books where you just painted on water and the scene  coloured itself.

Wild Oats and the White-flecked Sea, The Nut, Stanley, Tasmania

Riffling through the photo hoard for other images, I found this odd, vertiginous view from The Nut, at Stanley. Those railings keeping one inexorably in place, dividing the frame like prison bars.  Even now long after the photo was taken its tempting to make a path down through the stand of wavering oats, down those wooden stairs to the boat which must surely come to fetch you.

House Leaves - real estate scandal on bistro blackboard ?

Dining last Sunday night at my local bistro Billy Swings I noticed an item on the blackboard menu that needed further illustration. Of course one might say 'House Leaves', after all there is that well known tipple 'House Wine' but house leaves suggested to me chipped weatherboard, finely sliced terrace, a frissee of igloo and garnish of thatched cottage.  But perhaps I have completely misconstrued the 'leaves' as a noun, and if  you order this the house staff are up and off? Or one's own house scarpers?

In any case the duck confit was very good, the papardelle with its ragu were swiftly despatched and the beef cheeks were gone in a wink. And on matters vinous the choko is now back - and might this be the next big thing in Mosman, as it must only have about 4kcal per 100grams?.

Moving Gingerly, the native violet in slow motion

It seems a little cruel to pick flowers from habitats where they can sway in the breeze or at least swivel a bit in phototaxis and confine them to a static vase. As an offset I made this arrangement where the apparently spheroid glass vase is balance in the curved top of the ginger jar.  The dining table where they sit is always a bit wobbly, so even sitting down set these violets rocking. Of course one can deliberately set them in motion.  More power to the kinetic vase.

Vase-O Dilation - the diletantte approach to down scale flower arrangements.

  In a  near perfect Saturday morning moment I picked this diminutive brunch of native violets and fern fronds for my new-found Noritake vase. The vase started off life as an ash-tray (yuk) though this seems nearly cruel for such an elegant shapely piece.  My idea of  luxury is a cupboard full of vases. This piece, with its broad collar and angled body, was from Little Peach in Bangalow, NSW. If you are acquisitive and quick there other one just like it might still there.

Post Script:
 The temptation, is of course, to draw the flowers, taken over to the shed for this purpose. The best I can say about this is that I like the shadow, and it was pleasant work.

Nepenthes heads for heights, Botanic Gardens, Sydney

Winning the race to the top of the glass house in the Tropical Centre, this narcissitc pitcher plant, Nepenthe spp,  seems enamoured of itself, twining its nearly digitally enhanced leaf tips, in something uncannily like a lovers tryste, meeting itself in mid-air.

Feets Don't Fail Me Now - Dream Shoes and the BluesFest

Looking for replacement laces for my flat Pumas with the pink Plimsoll line, the junk draw in the kitchen yielded two different lengths of ribbon, stripped pink grosgrain - a candy bright confection and a textured pale pink tape with a pale green edging. Viola! New laces.

While in Wagga I drew some cowboy boots, the Pumas (being handy and on legs' ends) and all the slippers in the house. But why did I wear these pale shoes to the first day of the BluesFest?. Recently I dreamt they were perfectly clean. In your dreams, as the saying goes.

American Gothic - Bart Brassica and Colour Field Theory

Well Bart is unimpressed, some varmint has got into his Colour Field and made a dreadful mess. His theory is weasels with wet tails but it is hard to explain how that much green has gotten into yellow or where all the pond water went.

The Shape of Water

When I first moved into the house and garden where I live I imagined an extravagent water feature, with a rockpool and a fall, perhaps a rill winding in from the side path, or a formal pool dropping down into a fern edged pond. Then one blistering summer day, watching a currawong drinking from the film of tepid water collected on the lid of the BBQ, I put out this ikebana bowl, full of water for the birds. I have been watching it ever since, a seismograph for deck steps, a mirror for the sky, a landing for rain drops, a watering hole, a bird bath, a barometer of the state of household equaninimity - if all is well the bowl is full of clean, clear water - and an object of contemplation.

The Shape of Water

Why do they still come to this last inch of water,

claws pivoting the bowl’s rim

to dip further, further into a mixture tainted

by flecks of undigested fruit and seeds,

with its history of wind set out in leaves?

Rosellas, magpies, currawongs know this bowl,

the surety of its blue glaze,

know its reflections of sky and cloud and wind,

its surface tremolo from the beat of wings,

and the times when there is so little

in it but it is water still,

know by faith the shape that water comes in,

and return as lovers to it again, again,

through emptiness and dregs and miraculous re-fillings.

This poem first appeared in The Australian Fabian New November 2010.

Keirle Park, May Day, 2011, Twilight Signs

By five thirty pm, early May,  the light is fading fast and the street lights have come on so there is the odd effect of that backlight last light in the west, and the shadow falling from street light on the eastern side. Most times I've been sketching here the signage has been gestalt-less, but there is something about the annotations, numbers, letters, pictograms on that light pole which I find intriguing.

Express Draw , Doodle Buddies and How to Cheat

Is this cheating? Start with a photo as a background, use it as template and then take it away, or add in a different photo?  Perhaps. Three out of these four quick portraits, done in idle moments at East on Byron,  have been made this way. I suspect the odd man out is easily spotted.

A Shintaro Moment at Nijo Castle, Kyoto

This admonition seems to have worked perfectly, with nary a scribble in sight.  At first glance it might be that those dashes are cheeky chalk marks, and here is the great thing about digital photos - ZOOM  in to see taht  they are the pattern of shadow falling behind the gate posts.

Those who have had the benefit of seeing Shintaro translated into English might remember those odd scenes when Shintaro said something to  Kemosabe with his lips moving for about 30 seconds, while the over dub in English was,"That's too bad!!" Is there something curious in that the Japanese character or characters for the word 'scribbling', and mind you I am really guessing, as I figure 'No' and  'here' must be fairly simple, goes on like scribble?  Or maybe something is really lost in translation,  maybe the 'please if you would be so kind, I humbly request' part is missing?