Just finished this for an exhibition locally. It is of my daughter (irish/scottish heritage) with a doll that sits on our kitchen window sill. The doll is tiny. It is one like tourists buy. You can get the boy warrior one too. So totally not 'PC'. But I love the look on the dolls face...like she watches everything going on in the house....behind them is our home town. The town itself a meeting of Maori and Pakeha as far back as the early whalers in the 1830's. Five hundred metres from our kitchen window is where some of the first English settlers landed when they arrived in our town. I like the irony of it all. I liked playing with the scale of the figures. Unfortunately my family said they just didn't get it. Never mind I like it.
A drypoint from a series done earlier this year. Still on the theme of nostalgia that I have been stuck on for a while now. Really enjoyed playing with the idea of the line of the etching marks against the red sewn line. Do you remember when Mum's knitted matching hats and jersey's for their kids? I do. My mum did. Real wool ones that scratched and prickled at my neck. recently I started collected knitted soft toys. Yesterday I got a knitted 'Big ears' (you know...from Noddy) at the hospice shop. So exciting.
try 'googling' graffiti knitters and see what you get! So very cool.
Here are some more of the caravans from the 'Caravan a day' project last summer. Just imagine how they would go in that retro caravan caravan I plan to make over! I tried to make the backgrounds sickly sweet colours like sherbert lollies....sickly sweet is sometimes how we view the past-through rose tinted sunglasses! It was a challenge to make the backgrounds so plain. I tend to feel most comfortable with clutter and wild juxtapositions of pattern and shape.
Every year we go camping at Raglan. Last Summer I started doing 'a caravan a day' series. I have always wanted to buy an old caravan and "retro-fit" it. One of these days I will.... So.... in the early morning I would pick out my caravan from the camp ground. Then during the day I would find reasons to walk past it... lots and lots of times.... to look at detail and take it in my head back to the tent where I would continue with the painting. I wasn't allowed to go to bed till I had finished the painting. 'Oxfords' were my favourite.... and I wanted to do a 'sprite' but couldn't find one. Oh! The games we play with ourselves!.... But I was so proud of the little colony of caravans that built up in the tent. I wonder how many people on holiday I made paranoid with my staring intently at them and their caravans. I am getting so excited by the coming camping trip!
