Art and Abart

I have my easel out again after a winter hiatus. This board with sketch of cellist has been waiting patiently since autumn.  I...

My garden gets ever more colourful as Spring progresses. It is full of self seeded butterfly flowers and poppies and the cuttings of all the...

My blog has had few posts since Covid  made travel difficult but I just read my post from November last year and realised that I should be p...

I have a visitor, a cat called Prince, who was with me while his owner was on holiday for a fortnight and continues to visit while his owner...

Spring has sprung, though you'd not know it from Sydney temperatures. It is cool and wet, but the sweet peas are happy that there are no...

I watched the funeral of the Queen on TV yesterday. So much pomp and so many inherited arcane rules but the choreography was won...

In memory of Merran Esson who died prematurely last week When I applied at the National Art School in Sydney in 2010 I was asked to bring wo...

This summer has been cloudy, or rainy or stormy and after so much wet the water has nowhere to go. This morning's photo is s...

Happy New Year from Sydney. Its a lovely day at last after all the rain but the city is awash with Covid and people are staying at home if ...

  The little gum tree I planted when I arrived here two years ago has burst into flower just in time for Christmas.  May you have a year of ...

My morning walk takes me down a set of  stairs to the bottom of the hill, then around the corner and up the hill again along parallel street...

Spring has sprung and the garden is a riot of flowers, at least as much as a garden can be that is on slowly-improving soil. Thankful...

Today I went out for the first time (apart for my two vaccine shots) since May, to the post office and chemist. I have been so isolated that...

 Lots of dawn activity in the trees with two sulphur crested cockatoos chasing a little bird. Sulphur crested cockatoo with little bird disa...

We are in lock-down again in Sydney and the online sketch group I joined in 2020 has started to organise  online exercises again. On Saturda...

It's been so windy here in Sydney that the tops blew off a neighbourhood cactus. 

https://youtu.be/yAG0kPovQe8    Covid lockdown bears all sorts of fruits. Music by a talented young mate of mine Girl Platoon.

When I arrived in Germany in 1973 I had no idea I would spend the next couple of years collecting oral histories but that is what happened. ...

Can it be June already? It is!  The 4th June is almost over as I write, the 4th day of winter, although the past two weeks in Sydney have be...

On my way to Bayreuth (pre-Covid) to hear Wagner's operas Tristan and Isolde and Parsifal I stayed with friends in Hamburg. Sitting on ...