A different 'Beauty'! The Wolf Bride...and Other Tales...Tails?!

I've been busy scribbling, drawing, writing...and painting too.  'Brave New Works' happens on the first weekend of November, and I'm in for the extended, deeper, richer version of 'The Wolf Bride', and decided that while I was at it, I might sneak in some other fairytale bits and bobs, and call it 'The Wolf Bride and Other Tales.'  I've also been experimenting with set/installation ideas, and refining what/how I want to perform this time.  Definitely not stuck in a chair, I want to be up and moving, though I'll have to sit down for the songs.  So I'll need to 'choreograph' movements and mime, and work out how to move from 'singer in chair' to 'actor on stage' fluidly and gracefully!  I recently had the great good fortune to be invited to join a wonderful bunch of creative local women, with arts practices eclectic and wide ranging, in a week long workshop with award winning dancer and choreographer, Clare Dyson.  What a brilliant time we had, with serious play, improvising and nutting out performance ideas around the notion of 'Object as Metaphor'.  And what a joy to spend a whole week with my head in that creative place.  So I've got ideas brewing!  And in the meantime, new paintings!

'Sleeping Beauty' is emerging.

She was going to have bare feet, but then I decided I needed some more red in there 

(and I'm not so great at toes!)

She's a very flexible 'Sleeping Beauty'!  I'm really pleased with the climbing rose twisting out of her hair, creating the thorns that envelope the castle.

I decided it was high time Oberon got his Titania back, as I sold the first one.  I also decided it was high time he stopped looking at younger women, and had a mature Titania more suited to his own age!  

Base drawing (found a photo of a lovely older woman on the web for reference, then changed it around a bit, but it always ends up evolving and morphing in the creation anyway).

Base drawing completed, graphite on canvas.

Acrylic over-painting, face almost complete.

Almost done, bit more detail to do on her hair.

Titania (II) complete.  I don't think she's going to take any nonsense from Oberon!

My Wolf is still speaking, new poems still coming.  I'm not sure how/if I'm going to incorporate these into the performance in November, it may be better to leave them as something the audience can read independently of the performance, in hand lettered poems on the walls, or little books of wolf poems for sale, perhaps.  Here's a new one:

In soft black earth

her heel's imprint,

a fallen shard of sky

in bright spring rain.

One paw on either side

I stoop to drink

the white clouds drifting

in her wake.

I think I will also have some of my little 'Snow White to the Woodsman' booklets in the exhibition, so the next painting might be Snow White.  But I still have lots of 'Wolf Bride' things to do, including one more big painting, a possible new song, and extended narrative, so we'll see.  I shall be busy!

Please remember that everything on this blog is © Christina Cairns, unless otherwise credited.

Post-Exhibition madness!

So I'm back home finally, after a week away looking after my little exhibition, staying with my in-laws and being treated to my mother-in-law's marvelous cooking (I swear if I stayed too long I'd put on about 10kgs!), enjoying the peace and friendliness of the lovely town of Nannup in our beautiful South-West, and some rather odd (and slightly disturbing) Autumn weather.  Odd in that, although we did get some much needed rain (rather a lot actually, I was slightly worried I might open up one morning and find the floor under a foot of water), it stayed stubbornly, UNautumnly warm.  Almost tropical on some days.

But all-in all, I had a wonderful time, lots of lovely people came through and told me how beautiful my work was (always a bit dangerous, you don't want to find your head has swelled so much you can't get it out of the doorway!), and BOUGHT some!  In fact, a lady walked in five minutes after I opened up on the first day (which also happened to be my birthday), wandered around for a few minutes, then came up to the front table and said, "You see that big one down the back?  Consider it sold!"  I think I stammered stupidly for a bit and looked blank, before I managed to answer.  So "Shipwreck Coast - Tethys" now has a new home.  And shortly afterwards a couple came in and bought two landscapes.  I think I wore a stupid grin for the whole rest of the day!  The final sold tally was 7 paintings (3 large, 4 small), 2 larger wood hangers, and a lot of cards and prints.  So costs covered, a small profit made, a very pleasant week spent and a whole lot learnt.  Although, sadly, I still haven't learnt how to tell beforehand what might sell and what won't. It seems to be a complete fluke each time, and utterly unpredictable!

View from the outside, with my extremely last minute prayer flags, and a couple of signs/posters that in retrospect are too small (but these are the things we learn!)

 View from the doorway.  You can just see the red dot under 'Shipwreck Coast' down the back!

Me with very much needed coffee in hand, and a big grin that hung about all day.

This is the lady who bought 'Tethys'...I'm probably stammering "sorry, WHAT?...are you serious?!"  And my two munchkins in matching 'galaxy pants', which they love and will wear till they just about stand up by themselves!

A blurry munchkin in front of the cards and prints.

My girls spent quite a lot of time in the gallery with me, they were good as gold and did some gorgeous drawings themselves.  So I put them up on the wall too, and they got at least as many comments as I did!

Talesingrs in the display cabinet.

Small paintings, including a couple of blank spaces where two little autumn leaves were sold and went home with their new owner straightaway.

'Rain Coming' in the corner, one of the two landscapes that sold.

The back wall after I decided to shuffle things around and put something that hadn't sold in the 'magic spot'!  The landscape on the RH wall, was hanging where 'I am the Temple' is hanging, and it sold as well.

'Titania' also sold, she was the out and out favourite of all the Midsummer Trio, I sold quite a few prints and cards of her as well. Always interesting to see which ones will prove the most popular, and seemingly impossible to predict! I might do another (although different) Titania, because I think the other two actually need her, they don't work on their own so well.

Cordelia in the corner, for when I got bored sketching or stitching.  I got some very nice comments about my music as well!

So now...all I have to do is clean my house (my family room looks like something exploded in it, the bathroom is looking feral, and I have boxes and crates and bubblewrapped paintings that all need to go somewhere!), then I have to start working on the next exhibition...because they've asked me to come back in August!  Oh dear, here I go again.............!

And finally...

Puck...with my Fox mask.

I'm still not 100% happy with this one, but I think it's mostly to do with the fact that Puck is such a rich and many layered character, with so many emanations from myth, folklore, pre-christian religions and so forth, that I could spend the rest of my life painting versions of him and still not get it.  He is, for me, also the Green Jack, who is the Green Man, and Herne/Cernunnos, and Robin Goodfellow, and probably Robin Hood, and Pan, and Loki, and many others too.  So not an easy chap to define.  But then, I don't really want to define him...that would diminish him.  I like his mutability, his changeability.  That's how he adapts and survives...even now.  He's still out there, I'm convinced of it.  I certainly hope so.

Oberon, King of Faery.

Well, I started working on Puck, but being the Trickster and Shapeshifter that he is, he refused to be pinned down.  So I left him alone to have a think about it (he AND I!) and went on with Oberon.  Hopefully he will be a little more contrite and co-operative now, and let me get on and finish his portrait, otherwise he won't get to hang in the gallery next to Titania.

So here is Oberon.  Looking a little alarming perhaps, but then, the King of Faery is no sweet little thing with glittery wings.  Faeries are not to be trifled with, and I've always thought Oberon had a bit of a dangerous streak (it's a pretty mean trick he plays on Titania) and he's always seemed to me to be the sort of faery you DON'T want to get on the wrong side of!  So here he is imagined as a kind of night faery, with crow feathers and skull, and eyes that can look right through you.  I THINK he's finished, but as with Titania, I'm still unsure whether or not to add some text down the side as I did for the Green Jack.  I rather like them as they are, so I might not.

Right, time to wrestle with Puck and try to get him to stand still so I can get a good look at him!

First painting for 2013...

I've been doing my usual trick, painting in my head instead of on paper or canvas.  It's fine for a while, tossing ideas around, mentally turning things around about to see how they look from different angles, or in different styles/media.  But ultimately there's no substitute for getting down to business and starting.  Because it's only then that the real magic starts, new ideas/directions appear, paths to take that you might never have discovered if you just kept going over the same ground in your head.  But still, I keep doing it and then find that actually starting gets harder and harder.  I have a little exhibition booked for late April, and though I have some work, I need to do more for it.  So I've been turning my brain in knots thinking about all manner of overly ambitious and complex possibilities, when there really isn't time for that, and what I really need to do it just get started on something, anything really, to start the year off and get back into the creative flow.  So today I stopped thinking and started doing.  This is the result.  Titania.  With gum (Eucalypt) leaves!  Acrylic, graphite and pencil on 20cm x 20cm canvas.  Though I don't think she's quite finished yet.  I might add a quote from the play down the side.

I recently saw another production of Midsummer Night's Dream that was rather lovely.  I've lost count of how many I've seen over the years, I think it's my favourite of Shakespeare's plays.  One of the most memorable was way back in 1990, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson's Renaissance Theatre production in London.  Wonderful stuff!  So I think there will be a Puck (though of course, the Green Jack is another version of Puck), and possibly an Oberon too.

And for an excellent blog post on the need to stop thinking about painting, or writing, or whatever, and get on to doing, check out Terri Windling's latest blog post On Beginnings.