painting and drawing and printing and dinner parties

Last Tuesday night P and I sat around her table painting and talking and painting. Whilst my painting skills have gone rusty after a year concentrating only on literal drawing (for lino printing) or life drawing, I still enjoyed getting absorbed in the brushwork, trying to come up with colours I wanted to use, a palette that inspired me, peacock colours that could be used for an Australian outdoor setting and ways to paint the clouds that weren't just blue or white.

At the bbq on Sunday I asked Angie, who seemed like the type, if she dabbled in the visual arts. Yes, she did. Five years spent studying environmental architecture, several years at school perfecting her life drawing (all done in white, with a knife, carving the human form out of paint) and one piece exhibited at the Melbourne Museum. Well, we were impressed. I have to settle with an art work I made for the son of someone who is the "ideas" person at an arts organisation here, a lino cut of himself as a clown, age six. It's framed and hanging on his bedroom wall.

Finally, I have been trying to flex my sociability muscles, to compensate for my existential angst. Have organised a mini-dinner party with me, my flatmate, Tennis Buddy and TB's flatmate. The idea is that our flatmates are our pseudo partners, as evidenced by the fact that both of us have been calling up flatmates, after tennis, to say "Hi Honey, I'll be home soon, is dinner ready?"