painting native whitebait and the truth about rain...

1. An Aspect of Rain

I noticed an odd thing today as I lay in bed looking out the window once again at the rain.
Against the sky the rain was invisible, but against the darkness of the triangular shaped pine the rain was clearly visible.
It made me think - just because you can’t see something, it doesn’t mean it is not there or doesn’t exist.
Like God, sometimes when things are ‘grey’ we just can’t see Him or feel Him or hear Him, but that does not mean He isn’t there.
And when I see things that are different that what others see, does that make me crazy or ‘wrong’ or ‘weird’, or is it just my brain looking at things in a different light than someone else might?

2. The Painting of the Native Fish...
It is odd how paintings evolve sometimes.
Today I noticed one of my freshwater native whitebait (Inanga) was in the last stages of life (3 ish years old), so fished it out of the tank for some photographs. They have gills covers the colors of an irridescant paua. Decided to take the opportunity to paint it also. Wanted some form of balance and also to use the new color palette so painted a fish in each third of the canvas (they have a lovely diamond scale patterning). It was rather cartoony and noticed the bottom fish was looking rather anxious. Suddenly thought if I turned the painting on the side and gave each fish a top hat it would end up being quite a stylish and humorous work—the white bellies making them look like they are wearing tuxes. As it has evolved the fish have a rather guilty air about them, as though they have been evicted from a club or something or are sneaking off somewhere to do something a bit naughty and are scared of getting caught...
In the first image you can see the actual fish in the bottom left corner...before the top hats were added...
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painting painting painting painting

Have been working hard this week - last weekend completed 'Arohanui' - just need to do the sides - in the above pic you can see the initial sketch done in June 2008 - all very mathematical using thirds and circles and triangles and horizontal and vertical lines to get the layout just how I needed it to be...

I have also started working on a recipie book... see below for the title page in acrylics (have removed last name for internet purposes - so not really a big white rectangle in the top of the painting...

and a paint effect tukutuku panel box, just because I could and because I was learning how to do it so thought i'd start on something that didn't matter if it was not 'quite right'

And begun working on a painting called 'waiting for the Harvest'...(the one with the cabbage)

Over the week have done a few bits and pieces - caught a nice sunrise from my bed the other morning - reminded me of the ripples on a David Hockney pool...

Bought some 'gauche' the other day and used it to illustrate a page of the new recipie book - interesting to watch it dry as it is so Matt in a[ppearence and gives a lovely flat coverage, on the black pages of the reci[pie book it looked like cheap tempera paint so not that great. On white paper however the effect is quite different.

And today I've been trying to capture a vision I had this morning of an unusual object called a Tajine - using a limited colour palette of Paynes grey, gold and titanium, - drawn in a very styalised style and added a 'foot' for it to stand on

Have since GOOGLED taghine (how I thought it might be spelled) and found they actually do exist and are moroccan cooking vessels! Spelled tajine.