A new blog has hatched ...

Tadaaa!

Here I am, at long last!

Today is the first day of a new venture, which I shall share with those who care to follow.

Since childhood, I have always been rather creative. Like gazillions of other little girls, for sure. My creativity resume sounds a little bit like a beauty queen's bio: I love to draw and paint, I love photography, cooking, and sewing. Yeah. Right! I also love animals, reading, dancing, traveling and wish for world peace! So there!

So why blog?

For some time now, I have been painting pictures, which all end up in a tiny blue room that I use as my guest room. I am not overly fond of displaying my creations in my house, so I contain them in this itsy bity boudoir. Now, however, there are too many of them, and they start collecting on the floor, in stacks resting against the wall.

I have to get rid of them, while hopefully earning a few bucks as well. And being  completely commercially impaired, I hope that some big name art dealer will notice them and buy them for lots and lots of money!

Like that will ever happen!

No, what I want to do, is to research different avenues of marketing art online and share them with you. I know quite a number of very talented artists who are just as impaired as I am, and maybe my blog will help them as well. It would be nice if we could create a community of like-minded people and that we will be able to share ideas and encourage one another. Sometimes all we need is a little shove in the right direction ...

A bit about me:

I am a happily married 49 year old mother of two: Nina (18) and Marco (15). Before Alf and I even got married, we decided that if we had children, I would stay at home, even if it meant that we had to sip porridge through a straw. So, after a brief career as a reporter at two large newspapers, followed by a stint as the editor of an environmentally minded youth magazine, I became a stay at home mom. Not a housewife. I suck at that.

But, being terminally curious, I soon had to claw my way out of what I call the "poef groef", which is the Afrikaans for "poop rut". You know, that place where you end up when your day consists of feeding Baby, cleaning Baby, burping Baby, cleaning Baby, feeding Baby ... all to the wonderfully stimulating strains of Barney the Dinosaur.

I started painting on silk. In was a huge challenge, but I must have been fairly good at that, for I managed to sell a few of those paintings ... mostly to members of my family, who insisted on paying me when I felt too bad to ask for money. However, I did manage to sell a few at craft markets and even a galery as well! But silk is rather expensive in this neck of the woods (South Africa). In fact, I could not buy it in Bloemfontein where we lived at the time, as it was simply not available.

Sargeant Major and Soldier Fish.

My last silk painting.
The badges are from the HMS Birkenhead, which sunk near Gansbaai.
The naval tradition of "women and children first"
originated during this tragedy.

So I stopped painting and started reading old books that my husband had collected in during his time in the army. I got intrigued by all things military, and even wrote a novel, which I chucked in a bottom drawer after receiving a couple of rejections from agents. Still have to finish that project, though ...

I continued this interest by first doing a Master's degree in journalism on propaganda, and eventually, after much pain and suffering, obtaining my PhD. 

During my studies, I took up painting again to relieve my stress. I thought it would go down better if I turned to paint rather than to pot.

I painted.

Red Umbrella

While driving to Stellenbosch one late afternoon in the summer,
I saw these three people huddled together under a singe red umbrella.
It was raining and the sky was almost threatening,
but it was such a happy and vibrant image
that I simply had to paint it!

And I painted.

Paternoster Moon

While staying at the deliciously stylish Afrikaans author Riana Scheepers's fisherman's cottage,
we strolled along the beach one afternoon.
Soon the sun set and the full moon rose over this scene,
painting the landscape in shades of pink, blue and purple

And I painted.

Then there were three

I adore the herring gulls found along our coast.
These three were visitors at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town.
My mother-in-law simply told me that she was taking the painting,
and she did! Just like that!
I don't mind, though, as she means so much to me!

While I as writing a book on propaganda (yet another unfinished project), I got a very nice and simple idea for binding printed pages into a single volume, without using scissors, glue, staples, heavy files or punches, I decided to patent this, but to do it, I needed money. Rather a lot.


To make a long story short, I have sold one painting to my long-suffering sister, my husband forked out the money for the still pending patent and I still need someone willing to manufacture my idea.

And I have a room full of paintings to peddle.

So here we are. What does the future hold? I don't know; I hope the completion of all of my projects.

But I'll keep you posted.

♥