On Line Study. 03/15/2010
 I find on line study to be a great way to learn. I love learning from experts in the fields I am interested in and have no time for and little patience for hobby classes. I have never totally stopped educating myself and last year I studied on line, for my certificate in Bone Health, as an addition to my current health science degrees I originally graduated with in 1967. I have continued to keep my health science degree up to date, until recently when I have begun to extend my interest outward, towards, Creative Arts Therapy, Eco Therapy, Fitness and Aging Well. This year I have begun a new field of on line study and I love it. I am, being challenged in a way I find will encourage me to do the work I need to do, to learn the information that will help me achieve my future goals and be able to use the information to help others. Education is rewarding in so many ways. While I am educating myself on line, I can do all my study in my own time; this fits in easily with my current carer duties. I am totally convinced, having experience it for myself, that online degree courses are a great way to achieve the credentials I am seeking. I know there are online universities that offer a wide range of degree options that are well worth investigating further by anyone interested in obtaining a degree qualification. I mention Western Governors University, because it is a non-profit online university, and certainly, for me, cost is a considerable consideration, (though not as important as quality of tuition), when weighing up where I chose to do my studies. Anyhow, ‘take a look’ if you are interested in obtaining a degree on line. The two artists, who visited me today, asked me, ‘what advice I would give a starting out artist’. I said, ‘get a qualification, preferably in an essential service. My reasoning is that if you have a profession to fall back on should times be tough, you will be able to respect your art, enough to not fall into the financial crisis trap of painting trashy bread and butter paintings. Art needs to be, kept free, of financial pressure to be ‘art’. Work done under financial pressure to produce income becomes craft, skilled craft at best, manufactured product, at its, worst. Artist integrity is easiest to maintain when the basic essentials of life, are secure, due to having professional qualifications. Even if you become financially successful artist, and never use the qualifications you earn, professionally, an education, is never, wasted.   I proved I have overcome decades of ill health and injury and reclaimed my fitness by bush walking to the Pinnacle today, in the Grampians, today. I just missed a group of artists painting en plein air (in the open air), it would have been great to see them. Confront myself with what I once had the courage to do and did well. Today would have been a great time to paint outdoors, it was slightly overcast, not too hot and mid week, not too many people around, much easier to paint without too many on lookers. Privacy is not easy to achieve when you are painting en plein air. I think I would prefer to create in private, like a hermit and only come out in public to exhibit or teach my art. Being with Reg, is different, it is not the same distraction when he was well, he does a great job ven now, 'protecting me' from interruption from others when I am creating but not in a teaching situation. He understands my need to be alone with my subject and not affected by any external influence I do not want to enter into my creative work. Today I was doing some creative work and two artists wandered in to our camp to ask questions and watch me at work and Reg, understanding my need to focus on my work, did lots of the talking so I could keep working. He is a huge help to me this way. A lot of people do not understand why I do not paint a lot any more. It is because I only want to paint at my best and I paint at my best when not distracted by others. That is not easy when you are a carer. The nature of caring for another involves watching over them, a lot of the time, that does not allow for the total passion of concentration I crave when I paint. Just the same, I have all the paints with me and I am painting 'in my head', but satisfying myself with writing essay length articles for my creativity for the moment. I tell myself, 'The paintings will come :-), I just don't churn out bad ones, I'll wait until the moment is opportune, for me to creatively paint to the standard I'm happy with, knowing there will not be any distracting while I work'. lol, I have a friend puts her dog in to the vets to be minded, so she and her husband can do their own thing. I need to find a carer for my man, one day a week, and make that my painting day or try to teach myself to paint small simple work that does not require concentration. I do not know if I can do that, or want to do that, it would be like becoming someone else and not someone I would admire. I am a dreadful ‘art snob’. If I do not have time to paint well, I prefer not to paint. Do you know, I have taught time management skills, I have the ability to do anything I desire and I know that small work is not in itself, inferior work. I WILL get over this 'hang up', I have had since closing my Buninyong Gallery to care for Reg full time. He is not, stopping me, I am stopping myself. I WILL, make a commitment to overcome my inhibitions I have allowed develop these last few years and get out and en plein air, paint again, while I am here in the Grampians. Off my but, stop talking about it, and 'do it'.  A Brief History of Art Styles. 03/14/2010
History of Art Styles Prehistoric: Paleolithic (30,000BC-8000BC) Neolithic (8000BC - 1000BC) Bronze Age (2000BC - 1200BC) Western:
Should Friends Drop In or Call First? 03/13/2010
    My walking shoes and hat were on, my shoulder bag had the essentials, including the filled water bottle, when I saw Indigo, ‘stiffen’, and take up ‘pointer dog’ stance. I looked up and there quietly observing me was six guests who had dropped in without a warning, asking if they could stay for a morning tea with us. Hastily we reshuffled our plans and put the kettle on and they stayed for a chat or a photo shoot anyhow as they were exceedingly vein guests, primping and posing and for endless photos. After our coffee, they turned away in disgust saying they did not like my no left over breakfast scraps camp site and they moved on without telling us when they would next turn up totally treading so softly, unannounced and give me a start like that. Lol, it was funny. One moment they were not there, then the next thing these huge five baby emus and their daddy were in my camp. You have to love emu law. The fathers do most of the child raising workJ. So should guests arrive unannounced?. Lol J       Our Special Place: The Grampians, Victoria. 03/11/2010
 Reg and I had a whirlwind courtship after a friendship that began when I was forteen and Reg was twenty. My darling man tells me he fell in love with me then but waited until I was an adult, before 'testing the waters', with a letters sent from where hwe was living at the time, Dampier in Western Australia. When I replied, he quit his job and set of to Melbourne sending me love letters about returning to his 'girl', from each overnight stop he arrived at. I fell in love on our first date, the first Wednesday in December 1967, the year I had turned 21. We were engages (secretly), on the following Saturday, our second date, then we promptly planned our honeymoon and lol, we left on the 1st of January, 1968 for our honeymoon in the Grampians. Oh yes, we did get married, a respectable, 6 months after our first date, in May 1968, we did not want to be foolish and not get to know each other a little more before making the commitment in a church in front of family and friends. lol. Well that is how 'we got together', and why the Grampians is such a special place to us. Reg and I also spent his long service leave there. Our daughters attended the primary school at Halls gap and we hiked all over those mountains for a second time. When I had my stroke at age 32, I set climbing to the top of Mount William in the Grampians as my goal. I did it two years later. I wonder if I could do it again at 63. WOW :-). that would be a challenge I might seriously think about :-). I think I might accept that challenge. I have painted heaps of art works of the Grampians as I LOVE this place. We will be staying for one week, from this Saturday night 13 March 2010, at the Grampians Gardens, Tourist Park.  What Phone Will I Buy? 03/06/2010
 I have never adapted to using my mobile phone for internet use. In fact, I have never even learned to send text messages on my mobiles phone. My main excuse for not doing that is that the keyboard on my several years old, mobile phone is too small to allow for easy texting. I intend to upgrade to an Iphone or a full keyboard phone, I am not sure what I want. I am currently looking around, trying to decide what phone to get. Many of my friends are buying an unlocked phone so they have full choice of internet provider and I am unsure if I want to do this or to get a phone for a discount price along with a two-year plan with a phone and internet provider. When any of my friends chat, about their new phones, I am ‘all ears’. I am letting everyone know ‘I will be in the market for a new phone soon’, as I want to learn all the advantages of the different types, so I make the best decision for my own use, one that will give me additional use, especially ease of texting, but will not greatly increase my monthly expenditure. I hope to learn more from my own friends, before I make this decision.  Tinnies. 02/27/2010
 I thought these tinnies, laying above the high water mark at Phillip Island, were great material for an artist to paint so I am putting them here and letting my readers know they are welocome to use them if they wish. Remember though that unless I give permission for you to use them, other pictures on my website are copyright to me and should not be used.     Portrait Artist, How My Career Got Started. 02/23/2010
 Wedding Day, portrait in oil pastels by Kathy Shell I am often, asked, to tell people when I first became a portrait artist. I had been studying life drawing and figurative clay sculpture at Swinburne Technical College in the evenings and I was working as a housekeeper and carer for three young children during the day to earn my night school tuition and wagging secondary school so I could do what I wanted to do. I was twelve and very determined that I was going to be a professional artist and I was not going to waste my days learning algebra, geometry and French, which I never intended to use I had chosen to do an Intermediate Certificate and a Commercial Art Certificate through, International Correspondence School and had been able to select my own subjects, something I could not do back then in the traditional day school system. On what was my last ride home from secondary school on my bicycle, I was wild with excitement, singing, ‘no more schooling, no more books no more teachers, dirty looks’ as I approached the crest of the hill for the final downhill stretch to the turn off to my home. I was in a state of euphoria, that I had cheated the truant officer, of the joy of hauling me back, to a bricks and mortar school, where art, was suppressed. I wondered what it would be like to sail down that hill without doing what I had always been instructed to do, ‘apply the brakes’. I decided to find out. I reached our street corner, swung into it at full speed, streaked across the road, hit the curb, somersaulted off my bike through the air, flew over the nature strip and footpath, over the fence and landed plonk in the middle of someone’s recently softly turned cushioned earth. I came out of my stunned state, with the understanding of ‘well that is what happens, when you don’t apply the brakes’. I remember someone coming to my aid. With pride always having been my greatest sin, I brushed their concern away by holding back my tears, brushing myself off and collecting my bike, saying something stupid like, ‘ Ha- ha, I meant to do that’, and getting my wounded self and bike, home without letting on to anyone the pain I was in. I have no idea how I walked home, because after that I could not walk for months. My housekeeping job was gone, all I could do was watch over my three child charges in my child minding job. I also needed to keep the three children I cared for, near me, so I could watch over them, so I spent all day, every day, for weeks, drawing these three children playing near me or sketching solo portraits of their faces, which they loved and sat posing for time and again. I had adults dropping in to see my work and buying it from me. Horray! No more housekeeping jobs. The children were disappointed when their full time sketch artist recovered enough to improvise for myself a pair of crutches from old sporting equipment found in a shed and I could begin to get around again and back to my usual routine. That is my usual routine that no longer involved dodging truant officers thanks to my portrait art income now being able to pay for my correspondence schooling lessons and a routine that now did not include testing out what would happen if I did not apply the brakes when advised to. J Now I think of it, I still flaunt that rule slightly, just not when out on the highway or when driving. J Well that was life back in suburbia in 1958. No convenience of mobility products to help the average injured child get around, or places where you could research the best product for disability needs, such as mobility compare , back then, or if there was, it was for the rich kids.  Artifacts seller, a pastel pencil portrait by Kathy Shell Jane Sutherland, artist, 1853-1928 02/22/2010
 Medium:pastel, Blue and gold: portrait of Dorothy Sutherland (1908) by Jane Sutherland. One of the artists whose work I most admire, is Jane Sutherland. Jane Sutherland 1853-1928 was an artist and art teacher. At age seventeen, her father George Sutherland, who was a drawing instructor and artist exhibiting with the Victorian Academy of Arts, encouraged her to enrol in the National Gallery Schools. She studied under Thomas Clark, 1871-1875, Oswald Rose Campbell, 1877-1881. Eugene von Guerard in 1877, and George Frederick Folingsby, 1882-1885. She is an artist of the same era as Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin and painted with them at the Box Hill artist Camp. See:- her work 'Obstruction, Box Hill' in 1887. She exhibited in 1878 with the Victorian Academy of Arts and the Australian Artists' Association. She later exhibited with the Victorian Artists' Society.. She also exhibited works in the federal exhibitions in 1899, 1903 and 1906 at the South Australian Society of Arts, and along with Clara Southern, and May Vale, exhibited in the First Exhibition of Australian Women's Work held in the Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne, 1907. Jane Sutherland, Clara Southern, May Vale and Jane Price also exhibited together in a 'Private Exhibition of Pictures' held in November 1905 in Frederick McCubbin's home, in Shipley Street, South Yarra. Fredrick McCubbin was ‘gentleman’ artist of whom I have a great deal of respect. Many of the male artists. One in particular, went out of their way to strive to prevent private art galleies hanging the work of the great woman artist’s of the day and this makes Fredrick McCubbin’s efforts to strive to put right, the professional disadvantage these women artists struggled under, even more noticeable as he himself was ridiculed by his male counterparts for both this and his own devotion to his family. Jane Sutherland and her close friend, Clara Southern, were pioneers of the plein-air movement, and they sought to advance the professional standing of women artists. Jane Southerland was considered the leading woman artist of the Heidelberg School. Jane Sutherland Biography Jane Sutherland - Obstruction, 1887 Jane Sutherland - Girl in a Paddock, c. 1890 Jane Sutherland - The Mushroom Gatherers, c. 1895 Jane Sutherland - Daydream, c. 1895 Emanuel Phillips Fox - A Love Story, c. 1903 Jane Sutherland - Portrait of Margaret Sutherland as a Young Girl, c. 1905 Heidelberg School Background Around 1904, Jane Sutherland suffered a mild stroke, after this, she stopped painting large on location landscapes and adapted to painting small oils and pastels, of her garden local surroundings and portraits. It was during this time she painted the beautiful 'Portrait of Margaret Sutherland as a Young Girl', c.1905. She continued painting, exhibiting and teaching art, with the assistance of a family member, up 1911. A Gem Amongst The Junk 02/21/2010
 I went to a market at Cowes in Phillip Island today. I did buy some beautiful strawberries at a great price but in the under cover area, there was a stall that looked more like the tip shop than a market and it was a rare hooch potch seemingly put together by someone with little idea what they had. I bought 8 DVD's for $60. Highly likely they might be copies as the covers looked very tacky. I did not think of that at the time, I was just pleased to find some quality movies at one of these stalls.  There semi hidden by the plastic stacking chairs, second hand childrens soft toys and old armchairs was a weaving loom.  I asked how much they wanted for the weaving loom and I was told he thought $100. If I was a collector or reseller instead of a downsizer I would have purchased this piece of history. I can remember learning to weave when I was in my teens and my sister in California took up weaving prior to changing over to quilt making. I do not know the age of the weaving loom but I did think it needed a new and better home. I see beauty in the craftsmanship, involved in making a functional piece like this. I have been told that the owner of the loom for sale is Geoff Trigg Ph 0422749964  Cowes Market Don't let first impressions fool you, there were a few gems to be found in this clutter, for someone with an eye for a collectors item. Organisation name: Cowes Market Address: Lot 59 225 Settlement Road (Melway ref. 634 C1) Suburb/Town: Cowes Postcode: 3922 Phone: (03) 5952 2894 Description: Every Sunday 9am - 2pm. (8am - 2pm in summer). Sells art and craft, plants, fruit and vegetables, cakes, food to eat, trash and treasure. 50 stalls in winter, 100 stalls during Christmas holidays. Some stalls undrecover. |  Kathy and Reg Shell and Indigo will bestaying at Grampians Gardens Tourist Park for one week from 13th March 2010, for one week Advertisers, This 160 x 160 advertising space, could be yours. See our advertising page above then contact Kathy to arrange your advertising package.
Readers please accept a very small amount of advertising through my website, this helps pay my web and internet set up costs. I strive to provide quality reference material on my web sites. I keep the add content as unobtrusive as possible and have integrity in that all opinions expressed within my own web sites are my own.. What is RSS
Kathy Shell on Facebook Kathy Shell, Australian
|
RSS Feed
| Blog: |
| Art of Kathy Shell |
Topics: |
| Art, creativity, life |