It’s Thursday night and I’m feeling a bit “hairy”. I’ve been experimenting with a goatee this week, but although people have told me it looks good, I honestly don’t think it works for me, especially as there are a few grey hairs here and there. I’m also desperately in need of a hair cut before the weekend, so I’ll do my best to see if I can fit one in tomorrow or Saturday.
Work of course has been busy this week.
Howevever, it’s also een a reasonably social week. I caught up with Michaela for some “wine time”, as we reflected on our lives, our loves and our work and last night, I went along to ABBAMAIL drinks at the Huntsbury Hotel, welcoming American visitor, Ryan Cameron.
One of my favourite moments, a real magic moment, however, occured on Sunday when Kate and I went to see the Margaret Preston retrospective at the Art Gallery of NSW this afternoon. Margaret Preston is best known for her still life work of Australian native flowers. Although I understand the historical context in which she was painting, there was not a lot to my modern eye, aside from the occasional beautiful work. What really caught my eye was her later work, undertaken in the 1940s and 1950s, when she discovered Aboriginal art through her visits to Central Australia.
What also really surprised us both most was the similarity of some of her later work to that of Chris O’Doherty (aka Reg Mombassa), especially since Kate was at the National Art School at the same time as Reg. Although I had a camera on me, I thought it was wrong to even attempt to capture the moment when Reg, himself, viewing the exhibition, looked at the “Adam & Eve” works by Preston. The moment was an incredible one that I hope will remain in my memory for some time to come as “one of those magic moments”. So if you’re thinking Margaret Preston is just lovely flowers, think again. Although most of those attending the exhibition were, as Kate observed, “women of a particular age and a particular class”, there’s a lot more to Preston’s work than you might instantly imagine.
The big ABBA weekend is on this Saturday, which I’m looking forward to.
And then next Tuesday, it’s the Sydney Blog Meetup which, I’m sure, will also be good fun. Speaking of this blog, I’ve been laboring under the impression that no one ever reads it, but it seems they do. I received an email this week from Cellobella from Perth, who wrote, Wow in one day – 11 people came from your site to mine – so thanks for the link! I get a list of referring websites on my site through this website: http://www.truefresco.org/referrers.htm. Amazing. So if you read this and have never commented, please leave a comment this week, so I can find out how many people actually pay a visit. Or is it just the same person 11 times over?
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