Week off, cleaning re-organising, and back to designs

These past 2 weeks have been a bit of a roller-coaster. After delivering my eldest son to the airport – he has moved to Melbourne – I was hit suddenly by a severe virus and spent all of last week in bed, basically in isolation as no-one else in the house wanted it – nor did I want to give it to them!!

By Saturday I’d had enough and got up and started to clean the house – basically clean out and re-organise my son’s ‘ex-room’ which led to cleaning out the linen press, then the study including all the cupboards and yesterday all the bathrooms and cupboards. Not to say that my house is as yet clean and organised as I still have at least 6 boxes of my son’s in various stages of being packed!!

The previous week I had spent time re-organising one of my studio spaces – problem is my son has been working on his school artwork there the past week – and as I find it difficult to work with someone else also working there I went back to cleaning other parts of the house.

I have had some trouble getting back into my artwork again so when this happens I sometimes set myself tasks that I don’t like (such as cleaning) and then getting back into artwork seems very attractive!! My thinking is that is I am able to clear out my house – clean and de-clutter it also helps de-clutter my brain. I feel that I can then spend a significant sustained period of working on my artwork. So after cleaning until 10.30pm last night I decided I deserved some time today on my art.

As our puppy needs a bit of tlc and quiet after being de-sexed this week I have been sitting with her quietly today and working.

I have started working again on two series – one a smaller simple design like the Tasmanian Christmas Bells I completed earlier this year. Today I have set out about 6 new designs in this series. The second continues in the design art series – and today I have been working on a new designs of Rainforest Flowers. I have set out basic ideas also today for several more of these multiple flower designs to compliment the more simple single species designs.

I am hoping to develop these current works into more commercial based ventures – along with 2 other major projects I have been working on this year and then move onto some more experimental work.

Next weekend I am going to a workshop at Barrett Galleries with the amazing linocut artist Jenny Kitchener – so hoping for some wonderful inspiration!