We have been chopping down trees, planting trees, planting natives, painting walls, removing bits of walls, clearing decks, planting around a pond, and heaps of weeding. We have taken on a massive old old garden, the kind I had when I was little. We have a beautiful creek, a pond with frogs and a bridge, an owl, big dragonflies, pademelons, potoroos, wallabies, possums, a scarlet robin and heaps of native birds including a thrush. I couldn't help but paint about it. Our daughter is painting all the animals and our son the leaves but I wanted to paint 'about it'. To begin again, to start something new, to be on the edge of something exciting and changing. To bring together all the parts of yourself; your family, your beautiful childhood memories, your skills passed down to you and carefully put them together. A favourite plant forgotten and found again, an old log full of life, the friendly garden spiders that scurry when you weed, digging up an old path, the white painted glass on the green house is brittle and crumbling... I couldn't paint it all but I wanted to paint about all the love that goes into a home; by yourself, and the memory of your parents and your childhood home, and by the people there before you. The stones they laid, the wood they carved, the plants they tended are all beautiful acts of love and genorisity that go into building a home. It takes many hands to make a home.
*Check out our new artwork on the first page of the latest Peppermint Magazine, Blue Caravan!
