Country Mouse City Mouse

First Blossoms

2012-02-24T23:14:00.003Z

A little look at life today

2012-02-23T23:17:00.000Z

I used to carry a little camera with me everywhere I went until it broke. Now my phone does the job.
Today in photos:

Spent the day with country mouse and little mouse. Had lunch in Very Healthy Food. Yum Yum.

Spotted these brilliant chairs by Tom Campbell in the lovely Flower Shop on Douglas Street. More about him later.

Our studio through the window

Cappuccino and planning on the Boardwalk with a sleeping mouse

Kerstin

it's raining in my house (not really)

2012-02-23T21:35:00.000Z

Funny how the rain always manages to find its way into my pictures. Although things seem to be drying out a bit. Maybe I'll paint some sunshine next (although then it might start raining again).

But we'll not let that bother us will we?

Creative Blocks

2012-02-21T12:55:00.002Z

This blog is not only about our art, it is also about everyone else's art. I think about creativity alot and about what blocks our creativity. I have also shepherded/ coaxed/ strongly encouraged a few groups through the process of The Artist's Way. This book and programme can really help people to launch themselves into their creativity.

One crazy idea that exists about art and doing things in general is that you have to start young. Look at Grandma Moses and Bill Traylor
to start with.

In a way everyone starts the same and wherever you start, if you enjoy it someone else will love it too. I think drawing should be taught and encouraged like reading and writing. The joy of making images and being able to read images should be given to everyone. When someone says "anyone could do that", I think that person has not built on their visual vocabulary. The more you read, the more you understand. The more you draw the more you can savour the 'imaginary' 'imagery' worlds, ie. the more you understand.

Look at these!


Paintings by Bill Traylor who started old (and broke)

Detail and full picture by Astrid Walsh (country mouse) who started young

Either way, if you start it's party time!
Kerstin.

Some Things Stay Great

2012-02-21T12:26:00.003Z

The best things in life stay great no matter what the global economy is doing.

Family...

being a sky pilot

Rain

Picnics and Prams

You said it!

Dressing up

Horse Riding


Spectacles

Becoming a swan and then flying over the lake to ride your brown horse with the black mane and tail wearing a long dress with a hoop and a yellow bonnet

Giraffes

Speaking of books with secret lives...

2012-02-21T09:57:00.000Z

This beautiful illustration comes from "One Short Story To Be Told", in which a petit prince-like character (with long hair and tatoos) goes on a mission to rescue short stories from the desk drawers and hard drives in which they languish. There is only one copy of each story, each individually bound with the love they deserve and each given an individual send off with a party, after which they travel the world and make their own story. You can follow the path of the stories here One Short Story To Be Told. You can even harass the people who currently have one of the stories to hand over the book so you can be part of adventure. A little bit kooky, a little bit brilliant!

Kerstin

Appreciating the Pencil

2012-02-19T21:18:00.001Z

I love you most of all pencil drawings. Have you tried it recently? A pencil and piece of nice white paper. Draw like you are a child. Scribble, colour in, turn the page upside down.

This is by Bill Traylor, see Foundation for Self Taught American Artists
he had 22 children, unless that was a misprint. He may have only started drawing at the age of 85.

Forget Me Nots by Kerstin

Dead Flower

Strawberries and Egg

Flowers in Ballydehob garden Series by Kerstin

I love pencil drawings.

Kerstin

The hidden life of books

2012-02-19T15:00:00.000Z

I came across this excellent artist. His name is Brian Dettmer. I love the idea of using something that already exists to create something totally new. I tried to alter a book myself but without half as much skill! So many books have become obsolete these days. It's lovely to see someone breathe new life into them. That's very much related to your previous post City Mouse! Lets give old things a new existence.

Another artist who uses books in her work is Su Blackwell. Magical is the only way to describe it.

Ideas I almost had

2012-02-19T12:43:00.000Z

I read about this in the Irish Times Magazine http://www.thepeoplessupermarket.org/
I really hope this spreads to Ireland and one opens up next door to us.

I also think someone should invent a house minding website, where people can live in some of the empty properties that are sitting sad and lonely waiting for someone who will love them. You could call it www.adoptahouse.com or www.loveyourhouse.com. There are many properties decomposing fast and many people who would love to live somewhere for free and who would keep those properties beautiful. Like http://www.mindmyhouse.com/index.php/ except for longer. I'm sure there could be contracts drawn up. Like very friendly squatting.

If I were running this country I would offer artists and creatives from all over the world that they could come to live for free in Ireland. Entice them over. Then, like a run down area of a city the creativity would breathe life into the country and it would turn into a super trendy, beautiful, vibrant place to live. Which it is already, but there is so much potential. Come on Enda!!!

from

In the garden

2012-02-19T12:24:00.000Z

What's the weather like?

2012-02-18T17:01:00.000Z

Vier Lichtlein!

2011-12-18T23:54:00.000Z

A few photos of last year. It was all blue and white. This year I will remember christmas time as golden sunlight with a few heavy showers, most of which I missed.

The window from the balcony
Bandon trees by country mouse

Quiet evenings painting

Snow outside our house

Advent Advent ein Lichtlein brennt, erst eins, dann zwei, dann drei!

2011-12-12T00:40:00.000Z

In other words, three candles on the advent wreath (whether you are religious or just like christmassy traditions).

Stage 1: Getting it Together

2011-12-01T22:59:00.001Z

My life has changed somewhat since having the baby. I have so much less time now. I want to get organised so that I still have time to make things. It is possible that I might even make more of my time than I did before. If I have you, my invisible audience, watching my progress I think I will try harder! And maybe I will inspire someone in their own attempts to make room for creativity. I want simplicity, order and beauty in my life, that means sorting out my
1. COOKING
2. HOUSE
3. FINANCES
4. PROJECTS
I am not naturally organised in the kitchen and I often don't know what I want to cook or what I need to shop for. The little mouse is a very good incentive for cooking healthy food.
I don't have all that much stuff but I still need to do a good clear out and find room for the surface clutter. I would like to get more systematic about de-cluttering so that I can spend more time decorating our little apartment.
On the money front, I believe money is the big metaphor for our times now and getting straight with it will make me wiser. Like creative blocks, money blocks show us where we need to bring some awareness to our lives. This is a big important project!
Which brings me to art, creativity, making things, plans, goals and ideas and how to actualize all of these and still have plenty of fun time with the little mouse.

Is there anyone attempting similar moves towards clarity?

behind my house

Toronto

2011-11-13T22:08:00.001Z

I get a bit sleepy when i put the little one to bed. I was going to write about my utopian vision for the world. Maybe I will have a good nights sleep before I tackle that one. I also want to introduce myself properly soon.

I feel like this process began in 2008 when Astrid and I went travelling before my wedding. When I read other people's blogs I think about Toronto. I have always been drawn to writing diaries but have some mental blocks about them. When I was young I wrote them, but seemed to feel I needed to write down everything I ate, or I might forget the precious memories. Later on I swept all sentimentality aside and said to hell with memories, we live in the now! When we travelled in Africa I wrote letters to my mother, that way I had to stick to the point. Maybe with this blog I can find a balance.

So here are a few photos of Toronto. In October 2009 we flew to Toronto for the first bit of our world tour. And beauty of blogging is: I can post pictures of what I ate! Yay!

No. 1s and Michael D. Higgins

2011-11-11T23:18:00.001Z

I celebrated 11 minutes past 11 on the 11/11/11 on the couch with my number 1 girl who was born on the 11/1/11. Then Astrid and I had the elevensiest elevensies ever and watched Michael D. Higgins being inaugurated. It felt like a new beginning, really and truly. At the same time it felt like a connection to all the good things of the past was reestablished. An artist I know said to me that it made her feel like she was allowed to be an artist again, without art being a commercial venture. One commentator talked about how the language of economics was basically meaningless. Michael D. will make the words mean what they say again. I am so relieved that a different interpretation of the world has been re-discovered, having woken up from our / silly season/ celtic tiger. Heaven and hell can both be found on this earth and I think poetry is a way to get your head around it! Well now its 12.22 am, on the 12/11/2011, that's pretty auspicious too I think.

Art.

2011-10-20T22:45:00.000+01:00

Art.
This blog is about art. It is about our art and your art, how to make it, understand it and live it. We want to share what we have created and that which we admire. We want to talk about ideas, pass on practical skills and have a place in which we can actively worship creativity and imagination.

In his Introduction to 'In the Time of Shaking: Irish Artists for Amnesty International', Ciaran Benson, (Professor of Psychology in UCD and Art Critic) talks about art as being based on the human capacity for sharing. He says that 'art is our most ancient technology for vividly sharing meanings'. When the work of art is done it is "nothing less than a transformation of some part of self's relation to the world, some reconfiguration of feeling which becomes available for memory, and is then integrated as a valued element into the constantly reconfigured stories that are our lives, and those of our communities."

I never knew what to make of the idea of art, let alone what to make of what I was doing. I felt uncomfortable about my urge to draw something and then show it to someone else and say 'look at these funky lines'. I have never been able to explain what I do. Well, according to Dr. Benson I am totally normal. Human beings from very early on have had the ability to share attention. This means that when I point at something and you look at it this is a very complex ability and perhaps the foundation of human cultures and art.

In a developmental context, we can see how this works when parents direct their child's attention to particular aspects of their world and show the child how it should attend to these parts of their world. They tell it what is important and how it can feel about it. Culture and art do this for society. When people say 'look at this!' or 'I like this' they influence how our individual and collective stories are shaped and shape us. Let me quote one more time "good art brings great inventiveness to the ways in which it attends to the subtleties of individual and social consciousness and to their objects of attention. This creativity extends to the ways that it uses media of all kinds to embody shared meaning and to constitute new ones. It is driven by an endless curiosity about the ways in which human beings create their lives."

Thank you Ciaran Benson for this way of understanding art. I like it!