This is my entry for week 28, and what a week it was. This image was chosen by Flickr to feature on their ‘Explore’ page. To read more about that go to my Art Blog.

As well as painting and drawing, I like to sew. My Grandmother, Gladys, taught me how to sew and embroider when I was a little girl. The very first thing I ever made was for her. It was a little bag for her hair grips, and she kept it in the pocket of her dressing gown until she was old.

Things that make me happiest? Doing ‘Lick and Stick’ with my girl. When Orla had her sixth birthday, I asked people to buy her art and craft things, which they did. This was one of the craft projects, which we did together. A ‘Butterfly Trinket Box’, and unlike most of the kits, it didn’t take hours to dry between each stage. I did all the cutting and Orla did most of the sticking and we chose what would go where together. It was a lot of fun and looks very pretty. It now has pride of place on her ‘fairy’ shelf in her bedroom.

Painting, painting, painting. That’s pretty much it for me at the moment. All my available working time during the day, and any spare time I have in the evenings (which is a rarity) is spent in my little working room painting away (show in June..tick, tock). So, it seemed appropriate to feature some paints and stuff, and this is what’s on my desk at the moment.

However, given the Spring sun seems to be holding at the moment, I am going to get out and about with my cameras this week I think and try and get some good shots of the spring flowers before they are gone.

However, I decided to include as part of my 52 Weeks Project a completed painting. I have a show in June you see, and for one reason or another, deaths in the family, illness, design commitments, I have only really started painting in earnest now. Doesn’t leave me long does it? No. So, this is my second (well sort of first) finished painting. The actual first I completed last year, as that was when I originally planned to have my solo show.

So, here it is. The painting is called ‘Waveform’ and the show is entitled ‘Against the Tide’, the theme being sea based and the subtext pretty much the story of my life.

Just a few days after my birthday, Malcolm McClaren passed away, after a long battle with cancer. He wasn’t that old, just in his  early 60′s, no age at all. I was deeply shocked. Malcolm had always been so full of life, verve, vitality and having such a sheer abundance of energy, that the idea of his being no more was hard to grasp.

Also, Malcolm and what he represented was an intrinsic part of youth. I was 15 in 1977. I was a punk, I saw virtually every punk band of note (and some less so) and spend a good deal of my teenage years and my twenties haunting the Kings Road, particularly when I was a design student. I coveted though could not afford the wonderful clothes on sale in Sex and Seditionaries, and how much are they worth now?

Suffice to say, that though Malcolm didn’t invent ‘punk’ (as many claim), he certainly was a major force in it’s character, look and direction along with his partner of the time, Vivienne Westwood.

It also got me thinking about all the events, changes, inventions and new technologies I have seen come and go in my lifetime. So, off the top of my head, here are some of the most notable events, happenings, to which I was either witness or involved in.

These are not necessarily in chronological order.

• The Cuban missile crisis.
• Nelson Mandella was imprisoned.
• John Kennedy’s assassination.
• The War in Vietnam.
• The first heart transplant took place
• Martin Luther King was assassinated.
• Mini skirts.
• Mods and Rockers.
• Mary Quant and the Quant Cut.
• The Beatles
• Woodstock
• The Internet was created by the military.
• Men went into space and Niel Armstrong walking on the Moon (I watched on my Grandparents television as we didn’t have one).” That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
• Our own telephone. We were the first family in our street to have one.
• Strikes in the UK and the introduction of the three day week.
• Disco music and Saturday Night Fever
• Star Wars
• Huge flared trousers.
• Punk and New Wave.
• The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, The Jam, Blondie, XTC, Joy Division, Siouxie and the Banshees, Elvis Costello,  etc. (saw them all and more, more more).
• New Romantics.
• The invention of the silicon chip, and subsequently; calculators, digital watches etc.
• Colour television was introduced.
• Greenpeace was formed.
• The Golden Jubiliee.
• The hippy movement died out.
• The troubles in Ireland, the IRA and the bombing campaign.
• Brezhnev died.
• IBM introduced the first personal computer.
• Ronald Regan became President.
• Women started a protest at Greenham Common (I joined a huge protest there).
• The first ‘Test Tube Baby’ and IVF.
• We learned about AIDS (I watched Panorama report with fellow student friends, not really understanding what it meant).
• Famine in Ethiopia and Live Aid.
• VHS and Betamax.
• The introduction of CDs and the fall of vinyl.
• Rap and Hip Hop
• The creation of Perestroika in Russia and a new era.
• The fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR (I watched the first people come through the gate on television, we drank beer and cheered).
• Nelson Mandella is freed and the end of Apartheid in South Africa (again, watched with friends and celebrated).
• The terrible wars in Eastern Europe
• The introduction of the mobile phone.
• Solid State Logic and the 48 Track (worked in a recording studio in the West End).
• The World Wide Web, which changed life for ever.
• 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York.
• The wars in the Far East.

There are lots more I know, these are the events I can easily recall to mind as having happened in my lifetime…and it’s a lot.

RIP Malcolm. You helped make my teenage years a more colourful experience.

Malcolm McLaren

Oh, and I speak fluent ‘Geek’ apparently. I didn’t  know whether to be proud or vaguely embarrased (quite chuffed really).  I always thought I was one of the ‘cool’ kids (and cool girls didn’t go out with geeky boys).  But as my friend Ian aka zilla774 says, ‘its cool to be an internet geek.’

Lorrie Whittington on the importance of art — The ARTISTScenter.

Interview for The ARTISTS Center

Entitled ‘Lorrie Whittington talks about business and art’.
The lovely Bill has posted the second part of my interview, and it reads rather well. Comments and feedback are always appreciated.
READ ON…

But, it could have been better. Reviewing my years resolutions I can safely say that few of them I was able to accomplish.   I did not lose two stone, I didn’t get fit,  I didn’t spend less time on my laptop, I wasn’t significantly nicer to my husband. There are others, but these will suffice.

However, rather than being negative, let’s look at what I did achieve.

1. I built my own online  shop on Zen Cart. A LOT of work, not just coding but understanding how a pretty nifty ecommerce solution worked.

2. I bought a new camera and filters, and learnt a lot more about the technical process of photography.

3. I improved my artistic skills and got better (in my opini0on) at painting, and sold quite a bit of art, both online and privately.

4.  I entered two very big national competitions. One photography and one original art. I wasn’t placed in either, but it was a valuable learning experience from both, and I plan to re-enter this year.

5.  Went to South Africa and survived the horrendous flight. Also, actually drove there, first time I have driven a car in a foreign country.

6.  Bought the Gocco printer I wanted and worked out how NOT to make  a mess.

7. Played my flute more than I have done for a long time.

8.  Forged some new friendships and reinforced old ones. In particular, Nicola Humphries; a lovely warm and friendly human being. Also, Andrea Roberts; kind, patient and generous. Lastly, my oldest friend Felix Muckart. We ‘found’ each other and I was able to let go of ancient hurt and heal old scars.

9.  Rebuilt two of my websites from scratch, one using a CMS and another (this one) on WordPress.

10. Bought a very good printer and started selling my own prints for my artwork.

11. Coped better than expected with my little girl starting school, joined the committee and actually made things for the school fair.

So, not too shabby. Here is what I intend to achieve in 2010.

2010 Goals and Aspirations:

1.  Be a better friend to my husband, who deserves so much more.

2.  Be a better mother (always striving) to my Orla, and spend more quality time with her, and less time on my laptop etc.

3.  Remember to count my blessings and live every day to the fullest.

4.  Continue to improve my artistic skills both technically and spiritually,  and explore new mediums. Go back to my roots somewhat and undertake new work with traditional subject matter, e.g. life drawing. Also, work my way through my Photoshop and Painter manuals and utilise my Wacom Intuos a lot more.

5.  Find one or two good, friendly and trustworthy galleries to showcase my work.

6.  Put on my own art exhibition. Not as hard as it sounds, I did it before when I was younger, I can do it again.

7.  Enter three competitions this year, both photographic and art.

8.  Play my flute every day.

9.  Start singing again.

10.  Lose two stone and start training and cycling again.

11. Cut down on my chocolate consumption and eat a healthier diet.

12.  Build a fitted wardrobe in our bedroom and redecorate my studio/workspace.

13. Save up enough money for our trip to South Africa next Christmas.

14. Start hanging all the lovely art and photography I have collected in my own home.

So that’s it.  Here is to a better year for all of us.  Striving to be a better person, and more creative. On a positive note, a gallery owner recently told me that my art was ‘an antidote to the recession’. I take that as a compliment and to be very encouraging.

EDIT:

Jessica Doyle, my talented friend has just written her 2010 Goals and tagged me. So, later on today I will tag some friends also.

Portraiture and Botox
When I went to art school many years ago, well before the advance of digital media, a popular medium for life drawing and portraiture was the use of pencil and charcoal. Pencil work, particularly involving very fine detail became a speciality for me, and I developed a sort of ‘photographic’ style. Not loved by my tutors I hasten to add, as a more bold, dynamic and more contemporary approach was generally favoured at the time. I didn’t care.

Anyway, though I don’t do so much of it now, particularly life drawing and nude studies (too much of it at art school made me hate it), I had been asked recently by someone if I would be interested in a portrait commision, using pencil in a detailed and fine art style. However, when I said I might be, and that I may need to do some studies first and take some photos etc, my subject then said, to my amazement, that she may want to have some Botox filling in done. I thought initially that she was joking, and to my dismay, she wasn’t.

I tried to point out why this was not a good idea. My argument was such. Botox carries with it a recognisable signature. It distorts and interferes with the dynamic of the face, and also changes the texture and patina of the skin. I myself can spot even a skillfully Botoxed face a mile away. This may be due to being an artist and because for so many years, study of physiognamy was very important to me, and still is.

She wasn’t convinced, and I realised that what she wanted was not in fact a portrait in the traditional sense that would capture an impression of self, but a photographic representation (why she didn’t just get a photographic portrait done I don’t know). I then told her that I could do a piece digitally using a photograph of her face, and do a ‘paint over’ with my Wacom (tablet and stylus), and that she needn’t go to the extreme of having her face injected. She said she would ‘think it over’.

I thought a lot about this. I know in Hollywood there is a backlash against the use of Botox as it intereferes with an actors ability to deliver facial ‘nuance’. But, it also bothered me that this woman felt the need to undergo what in my opinion is still a pretty radical and untested (in the sense that there is as yet no evidence of potential side effects from long term use, as it it still so new) procedure just because she wanted to look good for a drawing!!!

Strange world!