Drought and Myself.

 Continuing the discussion about Drought, I wish to speak about the effects on my life. We seem to spend a considerable amount of time looking at weather maps, reading about the weather and hoping for some good rain to fall. We live in an area of Qld, Australia where the rainfall is supposed to be a bit more reliable than some other parts of Qld. You definitely would not think that at the present time and we know of people in the Wide Bay Burnett region considerably worse off than us.

This is reflected in many of my art pieces. I want to show you a photo I found on FB during the severe western Qld drought a few years back. I cannot acknowledge the owner as it was posted to the Who Got The Rain Group page and I could not "track them down" from there. It was too poignant a photo for me to ignore it. It was taken outside  Longreach showing the bare state of the grazing property with the stark storm clouds rolling in hopefully to deliver some very much needed rain. It shows the flatness of the horizon of outback Qld and it is something every Australian should make an effort to visit at least once in the lifetime ( the Outback as we call it).

I took this photo with me for my Working In A Series Class with Lisa Call (2016) as inspiration. After a few smaller pieces were made at the workshop, she suggested taking a different approach with colour.

I played around with colour  and came up with this piece. I have mounted it on canvas and it has been hanging in our lounge room ever since, where I walk past it numerous times a day and think of drought, Longreach and abstracted lanscapes and of course the WIA Series workshop with Lisa.

I want to show you another drought piece made in 2019 when we were still battling a severe drought in Spring that year. 

 Even in the driest of deserts you can find underground water if you know how to find it and there are enough dollars in your pocket to tap into it. Qld has the Great Artesian Basin under a lot of it and I can vividly recall my first shower at Charleville in 1980  when I was despatched to fill a work vacancy at the hospital there. The absence of a hot water  tap made me wonder at first, then I realised the temperature was fine as is, for a shower. The smell of sulphur was the killer at the time which left me thinking unless you were on tank water for showering we would all smell the same so don't worry about it. I very quickly got used to the water out there.

This piece is titled "Desert Water" showing there is water in a desert, and channels run through it when it rains. 

Now, just to show you my mind sometimes gets away from drought. After I made "Storm Clouds at Longreach",  I made this small 10" x 12" piece titled " Irish Skies"    I like the formation of the horizon in this piece. It was the first piece in my Tracks series where I used 2 different "blade" colours. I went onto make " Desert Skies" after this piece. All of these pieces hang in our lounge room, with only the Desert Water being recently exhibited. I did read somewhere about keeping the artistic pieces that give you most joy in your life, hanging where you can readily see them. Maybe I need to add an extension onto our house as I could add a few that meet that criteria. Do you have some favourite works that give you much joy? I hope so.

Drought and the Ninas

 Living in Australia, farmers are used to battling droughts, floods, bushfires and we somehow seem to manage to survive these extremes when they happen, whether you believe many of the current theories behind their causes or not. Weather is an important topic in our daily lives. This is evident from the number of private weather forecasters which have exploded on social media since the Australian BOM seems to have strayed from its main charter of predicting the weather. Last week the BOM had our area on flood watch, many days before the predicted rain event and again most desperate farmers were let down by the BOM when their predictions were wildly inaccurate for our region. Maybe they are trying too much to be accurate over a longer period before the predicted events, possibly concerned about legal ramifications if they are wrong ( as they always seem to be).

 What's this got to do with art you say? A lot because the weather affects your mood, affects your daily art practice and inspires you. A nice wet day promotes being indoors sewing instead of for me, outdoors working on restoring our house.  My next two artworks are a response to the weather. We hear so much in the media these days about the drivers for our weather, el Nino and La Nina. One meaning drought for us and one supposed to mean rain . I made  two pieces for my 2020 Wondai exhibit showing the weather extremes. I used copper foil in the focal area of the Drought piece to create a further inner frame. The landscape I used for inspiration is the view from our driveway as I returned home in late 2019. Even the ironbark and quinine trees were dying at that time.

When it does rain, the effects can be quite spectacular with the country turning green from fresh grass growth and trees responding. La Nina years seem to occur less than el Nino years so we try to drought proof the farms as much as possible by building dams and finding underground water to use.

This artwork was inspired by the many shades of green which delights the eye after a few decent falls of rain.

This is the view down Trentham Lane. A road leading to one of our paddocks which has a few gully crossings. Most of the time they are dry but occasionally they are like this.

This photo shows the colours of our soil, grass and trees when there is rain about providing inspiration for colour selection for more artwork.

Now the BOM are talking about polar vortexes, MJO oscillations as well,  being climate drivers, I will have to research more so I can find further inspiration in the weather.