For dramatic beauty: Remove Fear. Add height.

Fear is often irrational. And frustrating. And even embarrassing.

I’ve been afraid of flying for over ten years. It hasn’t stopped my from traveling, but it has definitely hindered my enjoyment of it.

After a recent ‘almost’ incident – where I flew five hours from LA and then the plane turned around due to fuel pump trouble and flew five extremely stressful hours back – I find I’m largely cured of my fear. It seems just ‘getting through’ that flight has done what counseling and hypnosis could not.

So on Friday, on my third flight since the incident, I actually sat next to a window. I haven’t done this for as long as I can remember.

I was rewarded with clear skies – and the sort of beauty you can only really get from great height. We flew over the East Coast of Australia and I was able to see everything from mountains to farm lands to the distinct Byron Bay Lighthouse.

It was a reminder that fears often rob us experience. Some fears are healthy – but many are not. Irrational fears inhibit us taking ‘risks’, which are necessary to achieve any sort of creative goodness.

Getting past our fears ensures we’re fully able to participate in this messy but rather wonderful thing called life.

 

 

Friday colour palette- it’s grey out there

A palette for Melbourne winter. Rug up.

Winter clouds, storm coming, blackest night, red velvet armchair, Baileys on ice

Looking for more colour combos that work? Here’s 7 different pairings with teal, how to work with copper and 10 individual colour palettes for red.

Juan Sánchez Cotán: A modern muse for still life

Juan Sánchez Cotán lived 400 years ago, yet his still life paintings feel much more recent – modern even. And they continue to inspire other contemporary artists. Here are some modern takes on his most famous artwork Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, 1602

Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, 1602, Juan Sánchez Cotán

Paulette Tavormina

Cabbage & Melon, After J.S.C., 2010, Paulette Tavormina

Paulette Tavormina is a fine art photographer whose work is heavily influenced by seventeenth-century Old Master Still Life painters. This one is part of her Natura Morta series. As she says in her artist statement:

‘The Natura Morta images I have made in response to the Old Masters are intensely personal interpretations of timeless, universal stories. Years from now, I hope that the photographs I create will affect someone as deeply as the Old Masters’ paintings have affected me. In one of these paintings, the artist included the words “Eram Qvod Es.”  The translation resonates within me: “Once I was what you are now.”‘ PT

Ori Gersht

Pomegranate, 2006, Ori Gersht

Ori Gersht is an Israeli artist exploring themes of beauty and violence through his Pomegranate series (you can also see the video here). As he says in this article:

‘Violence can be very grotesque and also intensely attractive. What interests me is how the two—beauty and violence—live side by side, and how moments can be created and erased almost simultaneously. Destruction is painful, but at times it can be very cathartic.’ OG

Richard Kolker

After Juan Sanchez Cotan 1602, 2014, Richard Kolker

Richard Kolker reconstructed Quince, Cabbage Melon and Cucumber as a computer generated graphic; and he explains why here:

‘Juan Sanchez Cotan’s 1602 painting, Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, although 400 years old, refers to many of the visual signifiers of a computer generated image. The preciseness of the composition and Cotan’s handling of light, together with geometric forms of the fruit, themselves, that reflect the geometric primitives which comprise the building blocks of the 3D computer generated space, led me to construct a response as a way of exploring the three dimensional space of the virtual, computer generated environment.’ RK

Denis Gadenne

A la manière de Juan sanchez cotan copie, 2012(?), Denis Gadenne

Kristoffer Zetterstrand

Graham. Oil on MDF, 2003, Kristoffer Zetterstrand

Links:

• More about Juan Sánchez Cotán on Wikipedia here
• Paulette Tavormina’s website is here
• Article on the Smithsonian about Ori Gersht’s Pomegranate series here
• Article on ESPY about Richard Kolkers’s work
• Denis Gadenne’s website here
• Kristoffer Zetterstrand’s website here

All images belong to the artists.

Changing your creative tools

I recently started a new marketing role with an online stationery store: NoteMaker. (As a firm stationery addict, it’s a little like letting a drunk free in a brewery really!)

Anyway, on my first day, I was shown the ‘stationery cupboard’ and I was able to pick some gorgeous notebooks. When it came to writing instruments, my new colleague exclaimed – “lucky you, there’s a blackwing” and handed me a pencil.

My first thought was – what the?! I’ve been writing in pen since grade three and using a pencil never even occurred to me. Not wanting to seem ungrateful, however, I took it. And have now been writing with it for two weeks. And I love it!

The pencil is the Palomino Blackwing – and it really is the best pencil I’ve ever written with. It does not smudge, stays sharp for AGES and is super soft to write with.

Turns out this pencil has other fans too – John Steinbeck, Steven Sondheim and animator Chuck Jones to name a few. So I’m in good company!

After a little bit of research, I discovered its roots go back to the 1930’s when it was first introduced by Eberhard Faber. In 1998, after several corporate acquisitions, it was discontinued…but fans began paying as much as $40 on eBay for a single Blackwing pencil!

So a bunch of artists – and pencil addicts – from across the world lobbied the makers to revive the iconic brand. Palomino responded and re-introduced the Blackwing pencil, both in its original form (the “602″) for devotees, writers and everyday users, as well as a modified version with a slightly softer lead for artists.

So my new pencil has a rich history of inspiring creative people!

Writing with my Blackwing has also served as a reminder that it’s usually a good thing to challenge your perceptions and try something new. After all, a little change up in your creative tools could be just what you need to prompt your next great idea!

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Check out this awesome little ode to the Blackwing below.

Mad for madness: from lunatics to eccentrics; more idioms

Madness often goes hand-in-hand with creativity. Most of our great history-changing ideas started life as a crazy rambling. But there’s a fine line between a little ordinary madness and full-on crazy, and an even finer one between acknowledging someone’s eccentricities and insulting their intelligence.

I’m comfortable with acting like a lunatic at times. Particularly when I find condiments in the kitchen without their lids screwed on. You might say I go as crazy as a sack of ferrets. That’s the thing with madness, we all have some experience of it, even if just for a moment. And it really has got some of the most wonderful idiomatic expressions associated with it. But be warned, madness is not fun for everyone. And if you do call someone ‘a few sandwiches short of a picnic’, you should expect to be walloped by a large fish, or cream bun, or whatever happens to be handy.

Some synonyms and idioms to do with madness (in English):

• Bananas
• Bonkers
• Kooky
• Zany
• Crackpot
• Cuckoo
• Crazy
• Beserk
• Moonstruck
• Fruity
• Unhinged
• Round the bend
• Off the wall
• Out of one’s tree
• A sandwich short of a picnic
• A few beers short of a six-pack
• Not playing with a full deck [of cards]
• To have bats in the belfrey
• To have kangeroo loose in the top paddock
• As crazy as a sack full of ferrets
• Out to lunch
• As nutty as a fruitcake
• As mad as a hatter
• As mad as a March hare
• The lights are on, but nobody’s home
• To have a screw loose
• Not the sharpest tool in the toolbox

Some equivalent idioms from other cultures (translated to English):

• Bulgarian: ‘His plank clatters’
• Chinese: ‘As unclear as a leather lantern’
• Croatian: ‘Crows have drunk her brain’
• Czech: ‘It’s splashing on his lighthouse’
• Danish: ‘To have rats in the attic’
• Dutch: ‘She sees them fly’
• Estonian: ‘The roof rode away’
• French: ‘To have a spider on the ceiling’
• German: ‘Are you still ticking on time?’
• Hebrew: ‘He lives in a movie’
• Indonesian: ‘Shrimp brained’
• Irish: She’s as lively as an animal in March’
• Italian: ‘To be lacking some Fridays’, ‘To have drunk up one’s own brain’
• Latvian: ‘The damper is out’
• Polish: ‘He’s missing the fifth stave’
• Portuguese: ‘She’s got wind in her head’
• Serbian: ‘Hit with a wet sock’
• Spanish: ‘Crazier than a feather duster’
• Turkish: ‘His goats have fled’

My favourite has to be ‘crazier than a feather duster’ because let’s be honest, feather dusters do look ridiculous and I can’t use one without feeling the urge to break into song – which is not only a bit mad but also painful for any ears in the vicinity.

Some notes on ‘lunatic’

And you can’t mention madness without getting the moon involved, the orb condemned with creating our crazy ways. ‘Lunatic’, ‘lunacy’, ‘loony’, ‘crazy as a lune’, ‘moonstruck’; we have culturally associated madness with the moon throughout history.

In part this has to do with the superstition that if you are struck by moonlight while sleeping, you will be sent mad. Partly is has to do with the moon’s cycle, and the effect it has on our moods. Werewolves are the most sensitive to this cycle. There have been studies that have shown that at particular lunar phases, suicide rates go up, accidents increase and more babies are born; then there are others that show no correlation at all, it’s all moonshine. Regardless, the myths around the influence of the moon persist and they are rooted forever in our language.

‘Mad as a Hatter’

One of my all-time favourite idioms. Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter character has become so iconic you could be forgiven for thinking that this phrase originated with him, and while he definitely played a part in popularising it, it was already in existence and was probably the inspiration for his famed hatter.

Hatters must have been an eccentric bunch, but the thing that tipped over the edge into madness was mercury. I believe that hatters used mercury for a number of things, particularly in the production of felt. Being exposed to mercury vapours in the process frequently led to mercury poisoning which in turn would often manifest as dementia. Hence, hatters were sent mad by their own tools of the trade.

Links

Thanks to these articles for the information above:

• Thesaurus.com (search on crazy)
• Omniglot has some great lists of idioms
• Wikipedia article on ‘Mad Hatter disease’

And here’s our article from last week on idioms for ‘kick the bucket’ and one on the moon. And here’s an Alice in Wonderland-themed hen’s party for those of you pondering Lewis Carroll.