painting club

So I've started a mini oil painting class at home.

Made up of three enthusiastic mothers looking to harness their painting genes, and keen to dabble their week's stress away.

My qualifications? Only the few semesters' worth of painting classes and holiday-time painting with Joan Kelly, some of the happiest times I had in art school. They were the times I really felt like I liked ADM. They were the times I really felt like an artist, what with the airy painting studio, large easels, and my stained apron.

And I remember the first lesson she taught: how to see. How to see the many subtle colours on a white object. How to see light and shadow, how to tell yellow light from blue light. Painting class switched my view of the world from 8-bit VGA colour to billions and billions of colours.

It's been fun, buying more easels, buying starter kits, setting up.

And today, Lesson 3, was spent across the road at the lake for nature painting. Not my favourite painting genre. But you never feel like an artist until you're setting up your easel by a lake like they do in your imagination of Austen-time artists.

Sad Faces

I was named the "Dark artist" back in school, because all my portraits inadvertently turned out sadder and gloomier than everyone else's.

Never mind that I wasn't angsty, gothic, or depressed.

The shadows on my faces were always sharp, their eyes angry, and my professors and classmates would laugh at me.

Now I steer away from harsh shadows and try to paint in pretty colors. But there's an inevitable leaning towards the melancholy, as I consciously or subconsciously make their faces look like they're wet from just crying.

Sad is beautiful to me.

But yes, I am painting again, and that can only be a good thing.

The Unending Weekend

1. Feel-good stories

I hate to say this, but after going to a few too many weddings this year, I'd lost my "aww" for them. This one over the weekend, however, sent everyone in weepies, and not because the groom involved was something of the Prince of our peasant church. A sweet love story: bad boy comes full circle and marries his childhood friend, someone he was afraid would never see him "that way". Couple looks fresh and glamourous together, groom cries thinking about how far he's come, wedding banquet is seventy-five tables full of people they hardly know, and it's a western dinner with lobster bisque and tenderloin steak. Some people are born into beautiful weddings. And I, I was one of the receptionists, who the couple probably won't recognise. Anything to attend the Royal Wedding.

2. Photo Studio Surprise

Between church and sunday school and the wedding dinner, I made it to Joy's birthday surprise. Two hours of hamming it up under studio lights, trying to perfect the hair-flip. It takes skill to choreograph a hair flip so it looks glam, and not like it's a) a lightning shock of Einstein hair, or b) like you're chinning the camera. Despite our most valiant efforts to pose, our photographer kept saying, "That's GOLD," meaning it was...really bad.

3. Exhibition at Broun

And in the middle of all that, I lent this old drawing to Broun cafe for a lovely little art/music youth event. It felt like something I hadn't done in a long time, listening to a band play a full set of covers, and enjoying it over old-fashioned brownies and ice cream.

At the end of it all, I promptly fell sick. But I'm all rested now, and almost ready for the next wedding of the month. Almost.

There's a thank-you dinner for all the peasant ushers, and ironically, three of us have already replied that we can't because we're helping out with other weddings this weekend.

Friends, please don't all get married in the same year when it's your turn, ok?



The most exhausting Saturday I've had in a while. Took a first step in pushing myself out onto the fine art scene, and I am happy. :)

More can and will be said about the people I met. For now, let's just say that if I'm to carry on in this industry, my heart must be buried in the purest of things, and stay childlike.