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.

♥

Long roads, winding roads

Funny how very few things in my life happen in a purely binary fashion. Very seldom do I get confronted by a clear problem which has a clear solution. Noooo, "moi" has to travel long and winding roads to get to a maybe/sort-of answer.

My painting is one such an example.

I have told you how I have started painting (in recent years), but there is still another sub-plot, which I have to tell you about in order to describe my inspiration for a painting that SO many people like! Before I show it to you, I have to tell the story ...

While I was working on my PhD, there were loooooong times that nothing happened and that I had to wait and wait for people to respond. During one such an excessively frustrating lull - it was June or July - I attended a writing course presented by Riana Scheepers at the homestead of her stunning wine farm, called De Compagnie, in Wellington.

Never before in my life had I been so inspired! I loved it!

A few months later, Riana held a harvest festival on the farm, to which I was invited. It was such a memorable evening, with the incredibly talented Niel Rademan and Petronel Baard performing music.

Unforgettable!

Anyway, during one song, Petronel danced on the red tiled stoep of the homestead, with her long, dark hair, head thrown back, arms above her head, bare feet, and flowing red dress, enraptured by the music. I wanted to paint it.

As I am not too confident about figure studies, I browsed the internet for a picture which could serve as a model.

And then the road started wiiiinding again ...

I found some really nice pics, mostly of belly dancers. Yip, I became interested in belly dancing, and actually danced for two years. I still miss it.


Belly dancing is not a dirty thing done by strippers. Well, that is not what it was originally about, although it turned "dirty" in our Western hands. Originally, it was the dances performed by women in a harem to amuse themselves and also to prepare them for child birth, as it strengthens the abdominal muscles like you wouldn't believe!

Pretty, isn't it? Obviously, my level of skill wasn't even 1% of Viktoriya's. But what I lacked in skill, I made up for with enthusiasm.

By the way, a "harem" also is not at all what we were lead to believe.

"The word has been recorded in the English language since 1634, via Turkish harem, from Arabic ḥaram 'forbidden', originally implying 'women's quarters', literally 'something forbidden or kept safe', from the root of ḥarama 'to be forbidden; to exclude'. ... The 'harem' does not refer to a sanctuary for the wives of a polygynous person. It is simply a resting quarters for women. Female seclusion in Islam is emphasized to the extent that any unlawful breaking into that privacy is ḥarām "forbidden". A Muslim harem does not necessarily consist solely of women with whom the head of the household has sexual relations (wives and concubines), but also their young offspring, other female relatives, etc.; and it may either be a palatial complex, as in Romantic tales, in which case it includes staff (women and eunuchs), or simply their quarters, in the Ottoman tradition separated from the men's selamlık. It is being more commonly acknowledged today that the purpose of harems during the Ottoman Empire was for the royal upbringing of the future wives of noble and royal men. These women would be educated so that they were ready to appear in public as a royal wife.^"

Thus according to Wikipedia, (which  I will not quote in a thesis, but which does give a concise description of most things).

And so I danced. I even took along my daughter, who enjoyed it just as much as I did. It is such a girly thing, done by women for women. I loved spending time with women who love to dance and who, like me, did it without wondering what people would think of their less-than-perfect bodies. I loved the colourful costumes ... [sigh] ... I miss those days!

My husband quoted the South African entertainer Nataniël and said "I don't understand anything about it, but it is beautiful - just keep on doing what you are doing!" 

The snake in Paradise came in the form of a teeny tiny woman who made comments about me being a "big girl". It broke that safe bubble, where I could enjoy myself with other big girls, old girls, ugly girls, unco-ordinated girls, girls shaped like caterpillars, grubs or toothpicks. It was a sad day, and it was the beginning of the end of my belly dancing career.

Wow, now I am wandering along memory lanes that has very little to do with my painting!

Back to my painting ...

One photograph of a dancer captivated me: long, dark hair, head thrown back ...

Jamila

"Beautiful"

One day, I'll paint that picture of the singer dancing under the vines ...