In honour of the recent beginning of summer for all of my Northern-Hemisphere readers. :-)
The Drawing Room at Towsend House
What a beautiful room! The richness of the colours, textures, and patterns. . .
At the beginning of last year I wrote up a book list for myself. . . I thought I might as well do it again this year! I only ended up reading a fraction of the books from last year's list - naughty me! Hopefully I'll manage better this time around. . .
Okay - my reading list for 2010. The first 10 titles are books that I have to read for book club. I've already read most of them, but I'll be re-reading them for book club. . .
-And I intend to make yet another attempt at tackling Shakespeare. . . figuratively, not literally, of course.
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It's another fairly ambitious list! If I am able to read only half of the books on my list, I'll be happy.
Edit: added a couple of Burney and Edgeworth titles that I forgot to include in the list. . .
Think Australian landscapes: think harsh sunlight, the bush, the outback, desert, sand, vivid blue sky. These are some of the images that come to mind. A "sunburnt country", beautiful, but harsh and sometimes cruel. This isn't always the case, however!
At certain times of the day - mainly dawn and dusk - and in certain weather, Australian landscapes (and cityscapes) take on a different face altogether. The relentless sun finally goes down, leaving gorgeous pinks, golds, and mauves, in its wake. The bush takes on a magical atmosphere, full of shadows and soft hues. Gum trees can look somewhat ragged in broad daylight, but at sunset, they come into their own, their colours and forms blending in beautifully with the soft sky.
Enough of my poetical soliloquy. . .
My point is, what I love about this week's artist - Ramon Ward-Thompson - is his appreciation of and ability to capture the softness and the atmosphere of the Australian landscape when subdued by soft light or rain. There are very few other contemporary artists I know of who approach Australian landscapes in this way.
Inspired by this beautiful book which I found at the library (and which is now sadly out of print, or else I'd probably buy myself a copy), I'm going to start a series of posts on my blog over the next few weeks. The artists I'll be featuring are: Australians, active during the 20th-21st centuries, and most of them will be artists who paint in a representational, or realist, manner.
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Featured artist for this week: Richard Weatherly. Click here for his official website, or here for Wikipedia.
Forest Flight - Click here to view full-size reproduction
In the book I borrowed, there was another similar painting to this - like this one, it featured three Crimson Rosellas, but it was done from a different perspective - the canopy of the trees, rather than the ground. It had the most wonderful sense of flight and movement. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it anywhere on the internet - but nevermind, this painting is also very beautiful in its own way.
Dance of the Water Fairy - Click here to view full-size
What an exquisite picture. I'm not 100% sure which bird it is. I think it's some kind of storm-petrel. My dad or grandfather will probably know exactly what it is. . .
. . .What you feel when you finish breakfast and brace yourself for the morning's chores and schoolwork and. . . suddenly remember that it's Saturday!
GoodTell me what you think! I was searching for a painting to use - I was pretty much at my wits end! - then I thought "Yeah. . . I'll try this one, just to see what it looks like. . . " -- I think it looks pretty good, myself! But let me know what you think of it!
The painting I chose - Miranda - The Tempest by John William Waterhouse, is a picture that has been very special to me for a long time. A few years ago, the calendar hanging in our lounge/dining/school-room featured artworks by popular 19th century painters - mostly Impressionists. One masterpiece for each month of the year. They were all very beautiful, but there was this one painting that particularly captured my imagination, and it was the same one which you now see at the top of my blog. This was before I knew who John William Waterhouse was, and before I had heard of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream - and yet this beautiful painting held me enraptured.
So, it seemed fitting that it should now feature as a part of my place in cyberspace!
Satisfied
Hello. . . time for a long-overdue post!! I have been somewhat distracted of late - myself and all seven of my siblings have had a nasty coughing virus for the last few weeks. That is - some of my brothers and sisters have had it for some weeks, I have had it for a few days. We're not sure whether it's whooping cough or not - whatever it is, it's horrible! :-(
I have been doing a lot of reading over the last few days. Yesterday I finished Jane Eyre - it was the first time I had read it. I thought it was wonderful - I enjoyed it very much! Now I think I'll read something a little lighter - some Janette Oke, perhaps - before starting another classic.
I recently discovered through a friend a fantastic website, which some of you may already be familiar with: BookMooch! It is one of the largest book-swapping websites in the world. I'm still a bit amazed that I hadn't heard of it before - but I'm glad that I have now found it.
Finally, for all you art fans: I stumbled upon this website just this afternoon - The Art Renewal Center. I haven't had a lot of time to look through it, (I only found it half an hour ago! :P )but it looks very fascinating. The ARC is radically anti-modernist, dismissing most 20th century art as inferior, including such revered artists as Picasso, Matisse, and Pollock. Hm! I wouldn't dismiss all modernist art so lightly, but I do admire them - the ARC, I mean - for championing the art of many forgotten 19th century masters.
That's all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with some more substantial posts during the week to come! *cough cough cough* I'm so sick of coughing. . . :-(((
Nerdy
Cranky 
