Monday, June 9, 2008

The Artist in Me

In 1978 I attended Sydney College of the Arts with the ambition to be a Art Teacher. I had grown up with an artistic family, spending many hours with my father painting and drawing. My dad was a wonderful portrait painter and from as young as I can remember the oil paints were on the easel and I was always with dad as the model for his portraits. We would spend hours at the kitchen table colouring in and drawing and writing.
Many school holidays and weekends were also spent with mum attending various art classes, such as stain glass window making, pottery, screen printing and painting.
The walls of our little cottage were full of paintings done by my parents, which always was a topic of conversation for my friends from school and other visitors.
So the burning ambition to be an artist was alive in me and art school was the natural progression for my life.
At SCC of A I learnt to use many different mediums including painting, drawing, glass, clay etc., but life was a little strained financially as I didn't received any Austudy and so working as a waitress in the evenings was tiring. Also moving out of home was the excitement in my life at the time. So hence I didn't continue with the course to receive a degree as a teacher.

So for the next 30 years were spent working and raising children. I was fortunate enough to fall into commercial furniture and spent 20 of these years enjoyably fitting out commercial offices throughout Sydney and Canberra, a very rewarding and profitable career.
I then went on to renovating some lovely old terraces in Paddington, again a very rewarding and profitable career. Then came the mid life crisis of deciding to buy a cute little deli in the village of Bungendore NSW.
My lovely little deli was gorgeous, scrumptious, successful but bloody hard work. A very rewarding career move but I wont mention profitable.
I should also mention throughout the 30 years I have also meet some wonderful people and made some fantastic friends along the way.
So 2008 arrived and I has no career or challenge to grab me, so the artist in me has been reborn.
For the past 6 months I have been studying "form and structure" and landscape painting. After so long it certainly has been challenging and slowing rewarding. Finding myself and finding my loose relaxed personality has been the most challenging. After 30 years of being a business women it is almost like finding the child in you again.
So let the artist in me begin........the journey, hopefully for ever.

4 comments:

Shane said...

Hi My Love

What a great start to your "Artist in me" blog. Not to mention your new experience in the web.

Love Your Man.
Shane

Gemma said...

Hello Jeanette,

What an interesting..should I say 'artistic' blog!! I love your two seascapes - admire the way you get the balance between colours and shapes with your waves and clouds! Are you going to sell them?? I hope to see more words about your progress - illustrated with your art??

Cheers,

Gemma

Madi said...

hey mum
sorry it has taken me a long time to write something on your blog, but here i am writing something now!!!!!!!!!
Great, your art work is improving greatly and i am really proud of you, keep it up
luv ya
madi

Madi said...

delayed comment because it didn't work the first time.Looks terrific, like the choices and way it is displayed. Spectacular.
David
Ps. this may be on madi's account but it is still from david-!!!!