Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Re-awakening of the BLOG after long absence

Black Clown Fish (76.2x101 cm)

Beaked leather jacket

New easel

Dog

Unfinished Clown Fish, still needs lots of work ...

Lolumanu Beach pre tsunami

Turtle - split scene

Starfish and Black Clown Fish

Pig

"Groper" Bucket Dredge, Tangalooma Wrecks, Moreton Bay / Matai and Child in Canoe

Black Clown and annenome

Clown Fish


Dancing with the whiff of your own mortality does strange thing to a person. Having just been through the ringer with pneumonia in the right lung and looking at the very specky x-rays, it just makes you think – how close to the edge, this time. What about the next bout or some other infection. Six lots of antibiotics just to deal with one lung infection …… .
Anyway that is the sermon over and done with, been lots of stressors about lately.

To anyone who is following this blog ramble, my sincerest apologies, my time in the last three months have been taken up with writing and re-writing some events from the distant past. After several hundred re-writes it has been submitted as part of an application.
When something goes desperately wrong, you search your memory banks of places you have worked. What were the triggers of your spiral into un-health. Mine may have been working for five years in an un-airconditioned building next to chemical extractor fan from the next hut. Certainly working around F111 aircraft didn’t help.

Anyway back to the Pacific Story and it’s Adventure –
The last post was up to New Year – 2010 had showered us with visitors, some left just before New Year. Tonight my Grand Children turn up with their parents from five time zones away.
January was pretty good and most of February (only two lots of antibiotics), March was a total disaster health-wise.
F gave me a Flip HD Video Camera with a 10m U/W Housing. Just the machine for making logs of your travels and surf logs of your waves. An absolute top piece of kit. I have made a few video DVD’s of HASH and a Umu preparation (Hot Stone oven). Some student video things also are in the prep stage.
Samoa is getting back to normal with lots of re-building on the south-east coast. F has been excited that she has been a small part of expanding people’s horizons and opportunities.
My painting has expanded to larger canvases – 76x101cm (one finished and one to finalize) and preparing 76x128cm. The walls of the lounge room and hall keep changing colour and the bedrooms have been seconded to take the overflow. Never a dull moment around our place, as Black Clown Fish are all the rage. I have finally got a free-standing easel on wheels – just a dream to work with – lots of adjustment, certainly beats the old table bound easel.
I now have over 60 tubes of paint from 200ml to 37ml tubes. The latest efforts have been with knives instead of brushes, so the paint goes on thick with ridges and valleys. You don’t want to brush up against one of these in the dark, they can actually hurt uncovered skin.
The Grand-kids (B7, B3) turned up with their parents and have jumped off a waterfall and swum in the warm waters of the South Pacific – lots of other adventures await them …….
All the best from Samoa, hope you like the paintings
R&F