Selby and Friends in Sydney

Haveron, Valve and Selby
(from their brochure)

Music in an intimate atmosphere is what Selby and Friends seem to achieve regardless of whether (like the City Recital Hall in Sydney's Angel Place) the venue is  a little too large to be called intimate.

On Thursday night pianist Kathryn Selby played at Angel Place with two gifted string players, violinist Andrew Halveron and cellist Timo-Veikko Valve, a combination so successful that my concert buddy immediately went looking for a brochure so she could book more concerts in the series.

Valve introduced the second piece, Busoni's Variations on a Finnish Folk Song, by saying it captured Finnish melancholia so well and I prepared for a mournful dirge. Instead Valve seated himself at his cello and played a firecracker of a piece - yes perhaps melancholic, but also exceedingly energetic. A  riveting piece played by a fantastic cellist.

The Schubert Fantasy that Halveron chose to play us after the Busoni was an inspired choice. Very different to Busoni, very Schubert.

Kathryn Selby is an enviable pianist and chooses equally passionate partners to play with. This was a  dream team.

Nana's honeypot

Honeypot with Flowers
61 x 61 cm (20 x 20 ")

Whether a painting is successful has a lot to do with composition and if you get the composition right before you start, painting must be so easy. Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to pre-compose paintings. Instead, try as I might, they grow organically amid much tearing out of hair and rubbing off of colour.

This painting is an example.  I bought some lilies but they were in bud and all but one dropped off the stem before they opened.  The only bloom in the garden was a giant orange hibiscus flower but I picked it and put it on the vase with the lily. This was not a flower combination I would have thought of painting  but I had a square canvas on the easel I wanted to try as a change from oblong and before I had a chance to reconsider, I began to paint these awkward flowers. I added my Nana's little honey pot to give the flowers some sort of counterweight. I have had the honey pot for years and am fond of it even though, like most of her ceramic objects, it bears the marks of robust family wear and tear. 

Getting to the flowers and honey pot was not so simple though. I changed the vase (the original was rectangle glass), I changed the pot (before the honey pot I tried a pottery sugar bowl), I put a cloth under the vase then removed it and I almost painted over the whole thing with Gesso several times. Now I have decided to leave it for a few months to see if it grows on me.

Pekka Kuusisto and the ACO Collective in Sydney

Pekka Kuusisto plays and directs

The lights go down and a young man steps onto the stage.
"Hallo, " he says to the audience, "my name is Pekka!"
"First of all I would like ot thank you for coming. It is always so much nicer to play for an audience!"

Pekka Kuusisto is the newly appointed Artistic Director of the ACO Collective, the younger sibling of the ACO which was previously known as ACO2 and if you hadn't yet read the program, Pekka's accent would tell you he is Finnish.

Pekka is a proponent of modern music and for the first half of the concert he had chosen seven pieces by three different living composers (Muhly, Tüür, Dessner). He had re-ordered the three movements of Erkki-Sven Tüür's Action-Passion and inserted the other compositions between them.

Not everyone would have the courage to re-order what a composer has written but it was a move that paid off: the first half was captivating. Not only did it showcase the musicianship of these up-and-coming young musicians, it was music they obviously enjoying playing.

"Oh that was just marvelous," said the elderly gentleman sitting next to me when they finished.

The Sibelius and Beethoven pieces played after the interval complemented the works chosen for the first half.

So bravo Pekka - your concert made those of us who didn't know you realise that we we have just acquired a (or another!) Finnish treasure.

Growing paintings

Picasso used to re-sign his paintings when he added to them so some of his paintings have several signatures. If I were to follow suit, my peaches painting would now have three signatures because it has grown once again.  When you paint something that seems incomplete it nags at you until you change it and the peaches painting has been doing a lot of nagging.

It started in December 2014 like this:

Peaches and glass bowl (20 x 10")

It sat quietly in the studio for a year, then suddenly earlier this month it morphed into this:

Peaches, pears and bottles. (20 x 20")

I hung it on a wall but it still wasn't very happy. It eyed the pumpkin vine growing in a vase in my studio and wanted some for itself. So now it looks like this:

Peaches, pears, bottles and pumpkin vine.
(20 x 30")

Like the vine, my paintings have a mind of their own and grow while your back is turned. I am hoping this one is now replete and happy to stay as it is. Perhaps it is time to sign it?

Garrick Ohlsson in Sydney

Garrick Ohlsson plays Mussorgsky

As I write this I am listening to Garrick Ohlsson playing Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition on the radio. I saw the concert on Monday, recorded by ABC Classic FM, and now hearing it on the radio I am aware that it sounds different without the visual effects. It is simply a different experience. Listening to non-live music is great, but it always makes me want to hear the actual live performance. Hearing a concert after seeing it live though is just a pleasure as you notice more about the audio experience that you might have missed on the evening.

Pictures at an Exhibition is a piece often played as a showpiece by virtuoso pianists as it is so difficult, not that you would have realised  that by watching Ohlsson's performance on Monday as he made it look easy.

As he finished however, one of my seat neighbours said to his companion, 'How does he do it?'

We are so lucky we live in age where technology makes it possible for performers to fly to unlikely places to give concerts and also makes it possible for us to hear them perform again and again with a press of a button.

Clear blue sunset for Valentine's

It's Valentines day - appropriate for this photo taken on the beach last night.

I wish many lovely sunsets to those exchanging red roses and to those who are not.

Peaches, pears and bottles

Peaches, pears and bottles

I am on a roll, a fruit roll ... just like this time last year. There is something about summer fruit that is art-inspiring.

This painting is an add-on. I painted some peaches last year - and half a bowl. I liked the peaches but the painting always looked incomplete, so I added another canvas above, completed the bowl and added some pears and bottles.

Still life with tomatoes

Still life with tomatoes
60.5 x 80 cm (24" x 30")

There has been a large canvas sitting on my easel for a while, but I hadn't decided what to paint on it.  Then some tomatoes and onions painted themselves onto my Brian Wood jug picture (last post) and before I knew it they had spread onto my large canvas.

Once started I couldn't stop. I painted all weekend and now have a large still life with bottles and tomatoes. The jug planted itself in the picture too and needed three bottles to balance it.

Large painting dwarfs the small one

Addendum on 4 February:the painting is still morphing. It seemed too bland so I darkened the background and foreground.

Today's picture:

Tomatoes, jug and onions

The Brian Wood ceramic jug has been joined today by some tomatoes and onions. Now it looks a little less lonely.

Addendum (19:30) ...
a bottle wanted to join the group

Jug, tomatoes, onions and wine bottle

Hot, cold, windy, calm

Brisbane waters - flat calm in December

Summer is meant to be sunny, calm, warm and perfect for the beach but this year we have alternating extreme heat, cold, storms, wind and floods.

December was hot and cold, flat calm one day and stormy the next. January has been even more unpredictable.

Stormy seas on the beach tonight

The first week of January was so wet a lot of people were rained out of their camp sites or, in the Hunter valley, flooded out of their homes.  (The coffee shops did very good trade as there was little else to do.)

Then came the heat.  41C on Thursday was incapacitating and was followed by big winds and thunderstorms that chased away the rest of the campers and cut power to eighty thousand homes in western Sydney.  Temperatures dropped from 41Cto 22C in a matter of hours and yesterday was cold, windy and wet. Today is still cool with stormy seas.

We are not alone I know; Melbourne and Adelaide have been even more extreme and bush fires in Victoria and Western Australia have razed great swathes of land. 

Our recalcitrant government is disinclined to take action against climate change but lack of demand for coal and gas might force the issue. China, it appears, is leading the way.

The local papers this week

Peninsula News

Express Advocate

Exhibition at Gnostic Manor in Woy Woy

Phew ... 30 paintings hung in two hours. The Gnostic Manor Cafe has a proper hanging system but a very overworked one, with hooks that are sometimes dodgy or non-functional.

Hanging 30 paintings under these circumstances is difficult, let alone in two hours. But they are up and they look fine.

Yachts and swimmers.

Swimmers 1

I think the yachts will be more popular - but you never know. The cafe owner liked the swimmers (as do I).

They have a three dimensional look as I painted swim suits on life drawings and sewed them onto existing paintings.

I have written on the labels that 50% of the proceeds goes to charity (buyers can choose between Surf lifesavers, Bob Brown Foundation, Amnesty International and Medicin Sans Frontier) and today the cafe owner said that in that case they will not take their normal 30% commission. I thought that was pretty nice.

The exhibition is up until 31 January, so if you are reading this and within cooee of Woy Woy, drop in for a look!

(Swimmers on my website.)

Happy 2016

' ... hear a little song'

'One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if it were possible, speak a few reasonable words.'

Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice. 

#acoplayersonthebridge 

Let the joy of life be with you

'Children and Cats' by Sophia  (6 years)

Pene Pati - wonderful voice to cheer you

If, like me, you have overdosed on American jazzed up Christmas Carols, here is something to set the world to rights.

Pene Pati sings Donizetti's  'Una furtiva lagrima' in the 2015 Neue Stimmen competition. (He came second - Bravo Herr Tenor!)

Seagulls do beach judo

Like a flock of seagulls on the beach

but then they took off ....

Summer paintings

I am getting work ready for a January exhibition at the Gnostic Manor in Woy Woy, part of the Gnostic Corner, shops known for alternative style and products. The Gnostic Manor is a cafe with good coffee and four long walls which host exhibitions that change monthly. Since it is summer I am framing up sailboats and water views, but also a series of new works,  beach paintings that are partly watercolour and partly sewn.

It seems to be my month for exhibitions as I also have a set of smaller works up in the Yoga Center in Umina. They tell me they find them very peaceful and have asked to keep them up another month. Below is a card I made of one of them, a small sketch of sailboats on Sydney Harbour, paiinted from a harbour ferry. 

Sail boats in Sydney - blank card by elizabethgw

Three inspiring gentlemen

Today I went to a discussion hosted by the Anglican activist pastor, Father Rod Bower. If you follow Australian politics you might have seen one of his church signs questioning the wisdom of our elected politicians as they are regularly shared on social media.  With him were Julian Burnside QC, well known as a human rights advocate and thorn-in-the-side of successive asylum-seeker-mistreating Australian governments and Professor Patrick McGorry, psychiatrist and mental health advocate and the grandfather of Australia's wonderful 'headspace' program which helps teenagers with mental health issues.

Salar Hs (left) performs with Gosford musicians

The afternoon also included cross cultural music (Iranian/Australian) written for the event by Iranian violinist Salar Hs and Caitlin Yeo. (They got a standing ovation.)

The discussion was billed as being about the impact of past, present and future border protection policies on the well being of asylum seekers seeking protection in Australia. Australia has an abysmal record in dealing with asylum seekers and I would have thought it obvious that ill treatment would have a very negative effect on them but I went because I have wondered at the strength and tenacity of Julian Burnside for some time and was interested to see him in the flesh. 

The church was overflowing. More chairs were brought in and still more, but there were still people standing. Despite it's activist pastor, Gosford as an area is not known for being particularly progressive and seeing the church so full of people wanting to hear about this difficult subject was heart warming. If there are so many concerned people here in the boonies, then there is perhaps hope yet for Australia.

Patrick McGorry

McGorry spoke about mental health and told us about a woman he treated and continues to treat who was a refugee from past horrors in South America. She still needs periodic treatment 20 years later. 

How the young men (and women and children) on Nauru and Manus are going to fare is hard to imagine. The worst of it is that the Government is torturing these people deliberately, as a sign to others  not to try to get to Australia.  McGorry said he had been in the UK recently for the world cup between NZ and Australia and was startled to discover that every one of the neutral observers he met were backing New Zealand. Such is international distaste for Australia nowadays. As several people said, our reputation is being trashed for a great deal of money and at the cost of people we should be protecting.


Julian Burnside, a man who has agitated for asylum seekers for years is an inspiring and passionate speaker. When people asked afterwards what one should do, he said "don't vote for either of the major parties".  (The Greens Party is the only major party with a humane asylum seeker policy.)

Julian Burnside

There was some discussion about whether Australia's unresolved issues with aboriginal people might be part of the problem. I am inclined to think it is a significant factor because if someone already has a scale for humans and ostracises one group it would surely be easier be easier to persuade them that another group is similarly unworthy.

I had thought that the discussion might have been an exercise in preaching to the converted but afterwards my seat neighbour turned to me and said with a horrified look on her face, "My eyes have been opened. I can hardly believe what I have heard."

It seems that this issue is one that will have to be won person by person because what it needs is a change of heart from that mythical silent majority we all hear about. The media is caught between a rock and a hard place as our government refuses to answer questions about asylum seekers, but perhaps a tipping point is being reached. (Burnside said he will be delighted to represent any doctor who breaks the most recent law past by the government which makes it illegal for doctors (or anyone else) to disclose abuse to children they may observe on Manus or Nauru.)

The discussion was filmed, I understand for the ABC TV Compass program, so hopefully many more Australians will hear the arguments of these inspiring people.

Christmas Lights

My neighbours across the road take their Christmas display seriously, touring America to see what is available and spending lots of time in planning. On 1st November they cover their fish pond, move some plants and start installing the lights then on 1 December comes the big 'turn on' celebration. Every evening thereafter they bring out the deck chairs and sit admiring their handiwork and chatting with the people who come to see the show. 
I used to be rather dismissive of such displays but I have seen all the people who bring their children for a look and now I view it as an example of a 'public good'. (See the Christmas trees sing in the video below)

Just lucky for me though that Christmas comes only once a year.

Pinchgut Opera - why the critics rave

Program cover

Pinchgut Opera is an unlikely sort of name for a company that performs Baroque and early Classical operas but it sticks in your mind, especially when it keeps reappearing with rave reviews.  Yesterday was the first time I have seen them perform and now I know what all the fuss is about. They are just so refreshing!

As I watched them perform Grétry's L'amant Jaloux I couldn't help thinking that their performance must have been very similar to those in the Baroque period. It is a fascinating glimpse into that world, as well as begin a comical and ravishingly sung romp.

The opera is part spoken, but unusually (for me at least) that didn't detract at all from the performance. Perhaps it was because the parts were spoken so beautifully and so theatrically? Perhaps people who sing gloriously (and they all did) bring a special resonance to spoken parts?  I am not sure, but they were all so captivating that the spoken and sung parts melded seamlessly into a whole in the most wonderful way.

Pinchgut was established in 2002 and performed an opera a year until 2014 when they put on two operas. I  heard one of those two (Iphigenia) on the radio and had been so captivated that I decided I must find an opportunity to see them this year. Now I have seen them once, I shall definitely have to go again.

Final bows