Dunedin's Botanic Gardens

Antipodean houses ...

These houses are .... guess where...





The first, third and last are in Dunedin's North East Valley. The second is in Melbourne's Brunswick.

Sulphur crested cockatoos

Cockatoos are wonderful to draw, especially when they are tame and sit around on balcony furniture like model subjects. I have just put a series of cockatoo drawings online
at artsmitten.com

Melbourne Dress Shop

Ceres .... art and nature

I just discovered what must be the best use of land under high tension wires that I have ever seen. Ceres is a community based garden in Melbourne's Brunswick, a garden with a difference. Amongst the vegetable gardens and fruit trees there is a lily pond. Walk a little further and you see whimsical sculptures with chooks scratching around them.
A notice on a fence describes the work involved with the free range chickens and invites people to take part. There is a green technology workshop, a solar paneled ablutions block, various descriptive projects that show you how water and electricity is used, a bicycle shop and a cafe selling local organic products that is very hard to walk past. Beside the cafe is a big "350" sign made of cut-outs. It is a sign that unites people around the world who are fighting to make our governments commit to 350 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere

Yarra swim

The Yarra River runs from wooded hills in the east through Melbourne to the sea. Only about 40 minutes East of the center of Melbourne you can swim in the Yarra and feel as if you are a thousand miles from anywhere.

On the road: colours and varnish

It takes about 7 hours to travel from Sydney to Albury by car and longer if you make a detour to Canberra to see the Masterpieces from Paris exhibition at the National Gallery, an exhibition of paintings from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. What surprised me about some of the paintings were the unreal very shiny varnished surfaces.
The colours in Vincent VAN GOGH's Starry night [La nuit étoilée] 1888 above (picture from the NGA website)were not dissimmilar to those out the window of the car to the south of Canberra on the way to Albury.

Maribor Music

Finally, finally. It took a while, but now many of the drawings and paintings I made at the wonderful Maribor (Slovenia) Music Festival in September are online in a gallery at www.artsmitten.com.

The artists above are Melvin Tan and Klemen Hvala.

An evening view

A peaceful evening in a beautiful spot....

Sydney's Blue Fireworks

Happy New Year! Sydney's Fireworks were blue this year (well, amongst other colours).
Blue is sexy according to the organisers, even if it is one of the hardest colours to recreate in pyrotechnics.

I spent my New Year's Eve making blue fireworks cards and postcards (click on the blue links to see them.)

Challenging your perceptions

If you want to see a captivating show that leaves you feeling the need for a cup of tea, a bex and a good lie down, then go to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. The work of Olafur Eliasson (on until 11 April) is incomparable ... take your kids ... and take gran/grandpa as well. Its that sort of show.

Patonga

Patonga is one of those places that is lovely, rain or shine. The sand banks disappear and re-appear with the tide and you can sit around ...
...painting the sulphur-crested cockatoos
that gather to smooch on the balcony rail.

Santa smiles this week

Merry Christmas everyone and I hope we all have a healthy, happy and hopeful New Year.

My wish for 2010 is that our politicians become leaders and rethink their Copenhagen responses and that we all have the courage to prod them into it.

I'm missing Modaks

Can we survive Copenhagen?

Shame on the Chinese!
Shame on the wealthy West!
Shame on the Danish!
Shame on the UN!

It was a shock to to be confronted so dramatically with cynicism, secrecy, deceit and narrow self interest when pleading for the lives of our grandchildren.

Our systems have failed us and if we want to survive we are going to have to take action ourselves, each of us. We must pressure our politicians to act and to act alone if they have to, instead of trying to out-stare 'opponents' while the house burns. We must support those who are attempting to show the way and not be distracted by the noise.

Copenhagen showed us that people want action, more than 13 million signed the Avaaz petition. Copenhagen is a call to action.

There is hope. The following comment about Copenhagen was posted on the 350.org Facebook site a few hours ago:

"And yet there was a strangely hopeful gathering outside the Bella Center in the freezing cold after midnight. Mostly young people, chanting slogans--especially 3-5-0--long into the night. They were upset, but they were also optimistic--because they know that the one undeniable thing about this conference is that it reflected the growing power of a people's movement around the world. You were heard. We're not strong enough yet to dominate the talks--that's still the fossil fuel industry. But we're strong enough to make it harder for the great powers simply to impose their will behind the scenes. This time the power grab was out in the open. People have learned a lot about both climate science and international relations in the last few weeks--it will pay off in the months ahead."

Copenhagen

It looks as if the rocks these pelicans were sitting on when I drew them will be well and truly under water in a few years. Not only the rocks, but half the shoreline as well. Have those politicians ever looked at a map of how the world will look if the sea rises with increased CO2? The pelicans could have done a better job in Copenhagen than our selected representatives did.

Cockatoos

Sulphur crested Cockatoos are playful creatures and do all manner of tricks to catch your attention. This group was sitting on a powerline on the NSW Central Coast, waiting to be fed.

Hawkesbury River

New South Wales has some hidden gems and one of them is the southern part of the NSW Central Coast. It is only and hour north of Sydney by train and the journey is a very pretty one. This is the view from the train along the Hawkesbury River.

Sydney Opera House from Customhouse Quay

When I am in Sydney I am always drawn to the opera house. Drawn to draw the opera house.

Bubby

I am back in Sydney house sitting. Bubby has gone to Scotland with her parents but before she went I drew her. She sits on the desk and watches me.