We’ve been travelling through Europe for seven months now and have developed a sort of astronomically high standard when it comes to things to see and do. Mediaeval hill-top towns with charming, impossibly narrow cobbled streets that would have once had me salivating are now generally met with a lacklustre “it’s nice but we’ve seen better”. Ditto for churches and castles. We went to Assisi and didn’t step foot into a church. When we saw photos of the Siena Duomo, however, the newly found HDR photographers in us couldn’t wait to photograph it and it didn’t disappoint.

One of the first things we noticed about this gothic masterpiece was the cacophony of detail in the facade. We’ve both often wondered at the practicality of such lavish detail that is going to be viewed from a great distance. A sculpture that may have taken months to complete may never be focused on for itself but will just blend into the rest!

We wandered the town before entering the Duomo in order to avoid a school group that was just about to go in. I didn’t find the town itself particularly captivating – there was none of the grandeur of Rome, the beauty of Florence or the charm of tiny villages but the piazza was rather impressive in its vastness.

We spent hours in the Duomo being generally overwhelmed by the sheer amount of photogenic goodness and not wanting to miss a great shot. Truly, we would have had lacklustre photos if not for our new found HDR skills given the bright spots of light coming in through the windows and the lamps with the rest being in shadow. Tripods weren’t allowed even if we had one so my shoulder and both of us holding our breath was the next best thing.

I love that those dudes above look like they’re at a rock concert, fist-pumping the air.

Another thing that’s easy to overdose on during an extended jaunt through Europe is religious themed art, especially in Italy. One of the highlights of the Siena Duomo for me was the library which had massive illuminated vellum hymn books on display. To my delight they were filled with creatures and floral designs that could easily slot into a pop surrealism painting today. This guy put me strongly in mind of an X-Men cartoon:

Awesome afro.

By far my favourite little guys were these dolphin-like creatures that I could totally see in a Greg “Craola” Simkins painting – they’ve even got his trademark pearls!

I felt such a powerful sense of kindred-spiritness through this vast span of time with the whimsical soul who conjured up these bizarre creatures. It’s the first time that I felt I could really relate to a specific person from another time period and it made me reel a little bit at the… I don’t know, interconnectedness of it all, I suppose. You can’t get much more modern than pop surrealism in the art world. Like the Impressionists and the Salon, pop surrealism artists are still largely unaccepted by mainstream galleries: That’s how new it is. Yet, here’s some dude illuminating hymn books with these imaginary slightly creepy creatures almost 600 years ago that could be published in the funkadelic Hi-Fructose magazine today. This to me, was much more interesting than seeing an umpteenth Madonna and baby Jesus.

After spending some time pouring over the books Mike asked me if I’d looked up yet.

Thank goodness for zoom lenses and digital SLRs because it turned out there were more creepy creature goodies all the way up there getting lost in the “more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-ness”.

We probably could have stayed and spent another hour or two photographing the cathedral but we were racing daylight so we headed off at peak hour, as usual, for our home for the night – a sosta in the delightfully named town of Poggibonsi.

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Have you ever been really into something and then found out that there are other things like this something and that there’s a name for this stuff and lots of other people like this stuff too? If that sentence didn’t make any sense to you don’t worry about it, the rest of this blog post doesn’t require that you’re orbiting the same celestial body as me to understand it.

I recently discovered that the type of art (apart from mixed media) that makes my heart go thump has a name and its name is “pop surrealism“. Apparently it’s a bit of a misnomer, and hotly contested by some of those upon whom the label is foisted, but it’s a revelation nonetheless.

I met two art students whilst on our journeys in Tunisia who asked me what “art movement” I consider my paintings to belong to. I told them I don’t get that academic about it and said I just paint cute stuff that’s kind of creepy, which left them looking at me blankly. Little did I know this cute and creepy stuff is apparently a valid (to some) art movement.

This discovery happily coincided with a visit to Rome, which happens to be the home of the Dorothy Circus Gallery that sells prints of one of my favourite artists of this style – Nicoletta Ceccoli. It had never occurred to me that art with a focus on strange and innocent yet disturbing subjects could be found in a gallery. T-shirts from Dangerfield maybe, but certainly not galleries as I knew them. This discovery has opened up a whole new wonderfully macabre and seedy world.

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I’m at the stage in the evolution of my art where every painting is a learning exercise. In fact, I suspect even seasoned artists would say as much in a steal-my-thunder kinda way but I think my curve is much steeper. As an artist I’m so green that the new art and artists I’m constantly encountering online result in me frenziedly attempting a different style of painting every week. So far I’ve tried Wabi Sabi, abstract landscapes, steampunk, mixed media, artography, and oil painting. This leaves me feeling kind of exhilarated and somewhat unauthentic at the same time. Most of the time I’ll notice an element of a painting I like and try to replicate it with my limited skill set. If you haven’t already guessed, the above painting was inspired by Kelly Rae Roberts’ trademark patchwork collages and messy brayered backgrounds. Intellectually I know that it’s not copying, it’s imitation as a learning exercise. I remember seeing art students sitting in front of masterpieces at the Louvre and sketching them presumably for the very same reason.

However, I, like many people, have hang-ups when it comes to making art. There’s a little voice in my head that sometimes suggests that if I can’t render bowls of fruit photo-realistically or if I’m not being a wacko who does weird shit with stuff then I’m not really an artist and I certainly shouldn’t have to develop a style. I suspect a lot of people stop making art or never begin for similar insecurities. There are a lot of practical philosophies that hold as true for art making as they do for life that I can fall back on at this point and placate such insecurities. Enjoying the process and not being in a rush to get to the end is a good one. Another one is that nothing worth doing is easy. Both rock solid, clichéd, but rock solid. However, the one thing that gives me an instant dose of concrete certainty that I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing is remembering how I felt about art when I wasn’t making it. It hurt to look at beautiful things I didn’t create. They gave me a deep-down emotional ache. They made me feel intensely jealous of the person who created it. A particularly exquisitely sexy piece of eye candy could even make me angry in an upset kind of way. For anyone out there who doesn’t know what to do with their lives, doesn’t know what their passion is, think of the thing that makes you feel like that and go out and do it. I suppose this is kind of the dark side of the “do what excites you” coin – “do what pisses you off because you’re not doing it”. No matter what insecurities come up for me in my art making from here on out, it doesn’t matter, because I wield their kryptonite.

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I’ve been thinking about my blog content these last few days. Feeling torn between all the different topics I blog about. Knowing that some of them need a bit of love while others are kinda needy and should back the hell off. I’ve been participating in a couple of online groups that have really sucked up all my blog real estate – In December it was Gwen Bells’ “Best of 2009″ and now it’s Andrea’s “Creating Dreams Come True”. All good stuff but I’ve been neglecting the art and travel posts. My partner, Mike and I have started travelling again after our 2 month hiatus in Hammamet, Tunisia, which got me thinking about how on earth I’m going to keep up with the blogging. Then, just yesterday I met two artists, gave them the URL for my blog and later realised that I don’t in fact have any of the art work I’ve created in the past 2 months on my blog! It really is a shocking state of affairs. One solution would be to simply blog more often but I actually want to live my life rather than just write about it. So, I’ve committed to keeping some sort of balance. I’m going to back off on the Creating Dreams posts and re-direct my blogging efforts to my art and travels more.

To kick this new direction off, I’ve posted THE painting that made me go oh, THIS is the stuff I want to paint. I’m a newbie in the art world and I’ve been dabbling in various styles. This piece was very much inspired by the work of groovy Italian artist Nicoletta Ceccoli. I love how outrageous she gets with her paintings and I’m aspiring to such levels of outrageousness. I wanna come up with some really weird shit. There are quite a few new paintings that I want to share with you guys but I’m going to post one at a time and comment on each.

My next post will be about our travels. I still haven’t finished posting about our time in Sicily and will have had three weeks of traveling in Tunisia under our belts by then so there’s going to be a lot of material to work with.

Overall, I think having too many interesting things happening in my life to blog about is a very good problem to have. However, with my new found direction and discipline I hope it becomes a bit clearer to everyone what this blog is actually about.

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Recently, I attempted to create a series of very girly pretty paintings for my new born niece’s nursery. A couple of them turned out great but one was just kinda dark and creepy and definitely not appropriate for a child’s bedroom. The above painting isn’t that one, but it’s definitely in the same vein. Although the painting didn’t quite go to plan, it took me somewhere much more interesting. I had an epiphany upon it’s completion. I’ve found my style. I didn’t produce the pink and cheerful painting I had in mind because that wasn’t what was wanting to come out and it’s not what inspires me. Interestingly, one of the paintings for my niece that did come out very girly and pretty will never adorn her nursery wall because I don’t feel comfortable putting it out in the world. I’m so aware of how much it isn’t my style that I feel uncomfortable with it, even though I’m happy with how it turned out aesthetically.

I’m really excited to create more paintings with whimsical, yet dark and creepy subjects. Think enchanted furry animals, porcelain doll ladies, hoop skirts, and little girls, all Mirror Mask-esque. I’ve got a whole bunch of these portrait style mini oval canvases that are perfect for introducing my new creations, one by one. I’d love to give them names and personalities and stories. I hope you all become good friends.

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I’m very excited to be a part of Andrea Schroeder’s new online group “Creating Dreams Come True“. Turns out, our first assignment is to start a list of 100 things we want to do, be, or have! Her theory (in direct opposition to mine) is that to come up with 100, stretches you to dream bigger and really expands your ideas of what is possible. So, in the interest of being open to new ideas and having a bit of fun, I’m going with it. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. Go on a hot air balloon ride somewhere spectacularly beautiful
2. Successfully sell my collage papers on Etsy
3. Successfully sell my paintings and digitally altered photography on Red Bubble and Image Kind
4. Find my community and make true friendships with other creative, kindred spirits
5. Build a wardrobe full of flattering, quirky, beautiful clothes with lots of skirts, gorgeous footwear, and accessories
6. Have several side projects that earn an income from our travelling – photography, e-books, blog, etc
7. Learn bookbinding
8. Be an accomplished artist
9. Be an excellent conversationalist
10. Own an original Heather Haynes painting
11. Learn how to make pottery
12. Learn to sew
13. Create a children’s book
14. See the aurora borealis
15. Travel Canada in our motorhome
16. Travel New Zealand in our motorhome
17. Make friends in every country we travel to
18. Accept, forgive, and let go
19. Learn the story of my adoption
20. Go paragliding somewhere spectacularly beautiful
21. Practise yoga
22. Join a lively, fun, and friendly book club
23. Patronise contemporary and jazz dance productions
24. Patronise the theatre
25. Own a cozy, rustic cottage in the hills with a studio and an open fireplace
26. Continue to travel Europe in our motorhome
27. Hike the Alps
28. Patronise classical music concerts
29. Attend the Venice Carnival
30. Experience the midnight sun
31. Live in Ireland
32. Live in Paris
33. Live in London
34. For Mike and I to meet our target monthly income from our creative endeavours alone
35. Get to know my brother’s fiance and be a part of my niece’s life
36. Practise meditation
37. Travel Tasmania, Australia, in our motorhome
38. Feel strong and powerful in my body (I totally plagiarised that from Andrea but her wording was just so perfect!)

Wow, over a third of the way there and there’s still such a long way to go! I can see what Andrea means, I really am going to have to get a bit outrageous to make it to 100!

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December 24 Learning Experience

What was a lesson you learned this year that changed you?

1. You must live it to learn it (bumper sticker much?). Life lessons are not something we can be given. They don’t make sense on that fundamental, your gut know’s it’s true kinda way until you’ve worked your own way there. Only then will you be open to it and see the wisdom of it.

2. The consequences for a functioning alcoholic who has a family that has an immense capacity for denial is exactly zero. All of the consequences fall on the family. The functioning alcoholic does not experience shame, or embarrassment for his behaviour because of his masterful use of denial. Denial that he has a problem. Denial that the problem is serious. Denial that there is anything he can do about it. Oh, and there’s that pesky black out side effect of drinking that means he doesn’t remember anything to be ashamed of. All of the shame and embarrassment falls on the family. Like antisocial personality disorder the negative effects of his behaviour are predominantly preserved for the blameless loved one’s.The thing is, he doesn’t know any of this if nobody tells him.

3. You cannot be authentically yourself and try to make everyone like you at the same time. The two are like oil and water. They are mutually exclusive states of being:

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

- ELBERT HUBBARD

December 25 Gift

What’s a gift your gave yourself this year that kept on giving?

I gave myself permission to dream big. To be impractical and ridiculously optimistic and do what excites me no matter how green I am. I gave myself permission to want more than a secure, comfortable, unchallenging subsistence.

December 26 Insight or aha! moment

What was your epiphany of the year?

First of all, can I just say that I find the phrase “aha! moment” extremely aggravating. It’s just so clunky and we already have a perfectly good, elegantly French sounding word for it. Can we all just agree to say “epiphany” and be done with it? Well, with that out of the way… My answer here is intrinsically linked with my one above. It’s funny how much overlap there has been with my answers. i guess the significant things in one’s life all share the same roots. First, some background. I’m very new to the art world. I left my social work job in Australia to travel around Europe in a campervan with my partner 6 months ago and have recently let myself dream of having a creative business. It’s obscenely early to be thinking of starting my own creative business but it’s the only thing that makes sense. I’ve read two self-helpy type books – one on creativity (“Taking Flight” by Kelly Rae Roberts) and one on lifestye design (“The 4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss). Amazingly, despite their vastly different scopes and styles the two books actually have many philosophies in common, which was something I didn’t recognise straight away. One of these philosophies is to dream big. So, this “dream big” message just popped into my head a few weeks ago and you know, I’m not sure I’ve ever really had a groundbreaking epiphany (or at least none that I can remember) but this probably came close. I realised that in terms of my career I haven’t been dreaming at all let alone dreaming big. I haven’t even let myself think about art in terms of a career because it’s way too much pressure, and absurdly unrealistic. But you know what, as soon as I let myself imagine doing art for my career it made sense. Saying it out loud to my partner for the first time was really hard! I felt embarrassed and vulnerable and was kind of hyper aware of his reaction. In light of this epiphany I started re-reading “The 4 Hour Work Week” and realised that that book has the same message! It was like reinforcement from the universe that I’m on the right track.

December 27 Social Web Moment

Did you meet someone you used to only know from her blog? Did you discover twitter?

I started my blog this year and I am in love with it. I get ridiculously excited when I get comments (hint, hint). I get excited when I read other people’s blogs and I feel like I could have written their article myself because it’s so in tune with what I’m experiencing, feeling, dreaming. I’m amazed at how much we all have in common. One blogger who I commented to about this replied “Ithink we all have really similar thoughts and feelings when we are being really honest” and I think she’s right. I’m continually impressed by the level of honesty and openness in the blogs I read and I aspire to that. I love how blogging has changed how I experience things in the “real world”. I pay attention more. I take my camera when I go on walks or just down the street. I reflect more. My blog is very new and I can’t say I’ve made any friends through it yet but I have hopes. Big, big hopes. I’m really excited to join twitter, something I haven’t done yet but it’s on the to do list. I’d like to join a few other creatively oriented online communities but the vastness is a bit overwhelming. Any suggestions? You could leave a comment (nudge, nudge)?

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December 19 Car Ride

What did you see? How did it smell? Did you eat anything as you drove there? Who were you with?

Oh wow, the last 6 months have been one big car ride. Since we picked up our motorhome, “Nettle”, in the Cotswolds, England we’ve driven her through a bit of English countryside, across Wales, all around Ireland and Northern Ireland, back across the UK, from the top of France to the bottom, from the top of Italy to the bottom and then a little bit of Tunisia in Northern Africa. That’s a lot of driving. Of course, some legs have been better than others. I really can’t narrow it down to just one car ride so I’m gonna go ahead and say Ireland and Northern Ireland was one big awesome road trip. I could write a very lengthy blog article just on this one prompt! I’m going to be very restrained and just dot point a few highlights with 1 photo each. If you feel an uncontrollable desire to read about our journeys in elaborate detail check out my very diligent partner’s blog.

Highlights:

• Brightly coloured flowers growing wild along the sides of the roads and clinging to steep hill sides

• The in-between bits – they were just as beautiful as the destinations we were driving to

• A spontaneous detour that took us through the Wicklow Mountains and the first place that made me go “this is why I’ve been dying to travel all my life”

• The Giant’s Causeway Coastal Tour – A driving tour described in “The European Driver’s Handbook”

• Connemara national park – stark, breathtaking, rugged

• Dingle Peninsula -You could believe in faeries and magik and elves in this enchanting place.

• The Ring of Kerry (which was actually pretty disappointing to be honest, but the second half of the drive redeemed itself)

December 20 New Person

She came into your life and turned it upside down. He went out of his way to provide incredible customer service. Who is your unsung hero of 2009.

My partner Mike, and I were befriended by a local Sicilian whilst hiking in the Mt Etna national park one day. He was on his way to a celebration of Sicily’s patron saint with his Alpine club and invited us to come along. There was much eating and singing and dancing. Our new friend and a friend of his then invited us to go see a few of the local natural sights with them another day. Of course, we couldn’t believe our luck and were more than happy to accept the generous invitation. As they showed us the sights they would point out which plants were poisonous, which were good for haemorrhoids, and which ones can crack lava with their roots. They picked various exotic fruits and berries for us to eat along the way. We were then invited to a road rally and then another road rally, dinner at a very special seafood restaurant, a trip to a food expo at Italy’s largest shopping centre with our friend’s mother and partner, and a road trip to a wetland park where flamingos were pitch stopped on their way to Africa for the winter. We’ve been invited back in the spring and summer for some special annual events and have been offered a house to stay in rent-free.

I’ve never met someone so friendly and open and generous. He has almost 700 friends in facebook and I’m not surprised. I’m so unused to such genuine kindness from strangers I frequently found myself entertaining uncharitable thoughts about what could possibly be in it for him and how this could all be a scam, an intricate long-con. I have trust issues. He certainly did come into my life and turn it upside down, as did all the other Sicilians we met who went out of their way to help us. My entire perception of human kind will be forever altered for the better for having met these uncommonly kind Sicilians.

December 21 Project

What did you start this year that you’re proud of?

I have big [for me, not world domination big] plans. I’m so excited. I’m working on them everyday and I’m loving every day. I’ve plunged myself into creating an online creative business. I’m learning how to use photoshop so I can create collage papers to sell as pdf’s on etsy. I love them so much that I look at them every now and then throughout the day. I’m painting every other day and I hope to sell my paintings on Red Bubble. When I decided I’d like to sell prints of my art work on Red Bubble I thought maybe I’d have something good enough in a couple of months. Two days later I had something I was super proud of and am more than happy to put out there in the ether to be looked at and judged and maybe rejected. I’m also learning how to digitally alter photos and am hoping to sell these on Red Bubble also. Just a month ago I hadn’t even entertained the notion of selling my art and now I have an action plan, baby! I feel so energised and things feel so right. I feel like for the first time in my life I’m doing something that I can excel at if I just give it my time and hard work.

December 22 Start-up

What’s a business that you found this year that you love? Who thought it up? What makes it special?

This is very biased of me and it’s also something that I’ve already blogged about so I’m sort of cheating.

December 23 Web Tool

It came into your work flow this year and now you couldn’t live without it. It has simplified or improved your online experience.

Since starting out on this crazy new slow travel lifestyle of ours, Mike and I have been keeping tabs on our expenses so we know how much we need to earn to feasibly do this indefinitely. We’ve been religiously using an iphone app called “iExpenseIt” – terrible name, I know, but it’s a good app. Thanks to this nifty app we know that slow travelling in expensive Italy cost us on average $48 (AUD) a day and since we’ve been in Thrifty Tunisia we’ve been making do on $27 a day. That’s cheaper than living and paying rent in Melbourne, Australia. Add a 30% buffer to cover savings and unforeseen expenses and we need to earn $62 a day (based on expenses in Italy) to continue living our dream. It feels so liberating to know how much we need to be earning and aim for that instead of aimlessly earning as much as we can. If you’re interested in this kind of lifestyle and philosophy, check out The Four Hour Work Week.

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