Georgiezine

Has been a busy week, travelling across three states, seeing Gretski again (pictured, getting all shy), avoiding conflict, embracing the opposite of conflict (peace, authenticity, being in the moment?). Adelaide was so so, there were good moments (watching the kids play soccer, Gus calling my name from the top of the playground cubby house, Ash saying "Thank you Georgie" multiple times and seeking my style assistance with his fisherman pants, buying new-to-me affordable clothes at Hype and Seek (oh the smugness of wearing recycled clothing!), reading The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toeuw who is a genius Canadian writer, seeing my sister, spinning the colour pods in the night light with Ned and Gus (see photo), seeing my friends, hearing that one had passed her exams!). Then with a massive head cold, we travelled across the border to Melbourne, proving to the disprovers that one can get to Melbourne in a days driving. A and I stayed at St Andrews at Baldessin Press, which was ...

so it's been 3 weeks since my last post (Didn't that sound like a Catholic confession!) Spent last day in printmaking bliss, playing around with etching styles using copper plates (so easy! thought what it would be like doing the pressing by hand could be interesting) and having access to a very expensive press. Teacher kept talking up the cost of repairs if we broke it, to justify why we weren't allowed to touch it... she was a bit of a bossy sort, but her prints were good. The studio is good, I like being around the "high level" artists and seeing what they're working on, one was doing a very cool triptych of old 1800s sailing boats (what do you call the boats that are Horatio Hornblower era), large sails and arrangements of triangles and cables and criss crossing lines and an impression of a map/globe; even better was the way that she'd begun her painting, where everything was an impression you had to form and guess at. But definitely a boat. Have been ...

Gus the Elephant was a print for Gus, when he was going through a stage of asking for presents "that are just for me". Empathising with the fate of the second born, I posted him this print in the mail; he has it on display in the loungeroom. The windmill prints I am still developing, trying to work out what colour combinations to use. These have all been printed on butchers paper, thus the "speckiness" of them, and I'm not quite happy with the tank. Might try and pick up some more tools today at lunch. Looked at my Margaret Preston book last night (lovely birthday present from my Mum), and was so impressed by the colour and carved detail of her woodcuts, many that were no bigger than 30cm. She had it!

One of the hunter island members, Diane Foster went to a print-off-athon called Central West Print Focus January 12–15, held by Bathurst and Orange Regional Art Galleries . I found her tips for lino printing from her review of a workshop held by Tim Winter: "I attended a colour relief printing workshop at Tim Winter’s studio in the historic Railway Hotel in Stuart Town – NO AIR CON, NOT EVEN A FAN, but I survived! Tim, together with Greg Hyde, showed us a range of colour relief printing techniques...It was in the middle of no-where with a large country pub, several houses and a public loo which we had to use – all very quaint. Tim pays $10 per week rent for several rooms and a kitchen. More rooms are available for artists to rent. In this workshop we used oil-based inks squeezed from large cartridges. Tim prefers to buy ink in these cartridges rather than tins which can get a skin and go off easily. We also used slightly damp Stonehenge paper (unusual for relief printing) as it pr...