Groundbreaking

Welcome to Monday Mornings. Each week there’s a new featured canvas to meet and learn more about. Check out the original artwork, the Messy Bags that came from it and get a little insight into its personality via the Listening, Watching, Scrolling section. 

This week’s featured canvas is Groundbreaking.

I come back to this style once or twice a year. It’s deliberately accidentally floral. Kinda floral but also not. Has hints of flowers without being flowers.

They’re always fun to paint and always feature a lot of colour. The more clashing the better.

The bags from this canvas will be available in the next Messy Bag release on Wednesday 23rd of September.

WATCHING: On Becoming a God in Central Florida. Kirsten Dunst as a Florida water park employee in the 80s trying to make money in an MLM (multi level marketing) that isn’t called Amway but might as well be. Kirsten Dunst. Florida in the 80s. Scams. How many more boxes do you want to tick?!

LISTENING TO: The Dream. A podcast investigating MLMs. Did not at all expect it to be as engaging and entertaining as it was!

SCROLLING: Helle Mardahl. The shapes, the colours. Dreamy.

In The Weeds

Welcome to Monday Mornings. Each week there’s a new featured canvas to meet and learn more about. Check out the original artwork, the Messy Bags that came from it and get a little insight into its personality via the Listening, Watching, Scrolling section. 

This week’s featured canvas is In The Weeds.

I accidentally became obsessed with trying to understand how O.J. Simpson was never punished for murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. There were so many events and people that added up to O.J. murdered them and he got away with it. A lot of it (most of it?) had nothing to do with the victims at all.

How is this canvas related?

It’s not really. But sometimes what is happening in my head and what I am painting get linked for the rest of time. This is one of those canvases. Every time I look at it I think of Nicole Brown Simpson, Marcia Clark, O.J.’s lawyers. I was listening to a book about the murders and trial as I painted. There are big chunks of repetitive shapes, colour and line. I’d find empty spaces and make the same mark repeatedly, too engrossed in the details of what I was hearing to want to step back and reflect.

I went back and forth on whether to share what was actually happening with this canvas or just make up some story. Something to make it less, well, less about terrible murders. But it is what it is.

The bags from this canvas will be available in the next Messy Bag release happening Wednesday 23rd of September.

WATCHING: The People vs O.J. Simpson.

LISTENING TO: The Run of His Life by Jeffery Toobin.

SCROLLING: Colourful Home Vibe. I have been having some really strong feelings about wanting a pink wall in our house of late. Specifically, a pink breeze block wall. Until I can make that happen I’ll just keep scrolling their feed and daydreaming about walls like this one from @too_many_cushions.

See ya next week.

Inside Chaos

Welcome to Monday Mornings. Each week there’s a new featured canvas to meet and learn more about. Check out the original artwork, the Messy Bags that came from it and get a little insight into its personality via the Listening, Watching, Scrolling section. 

This week’s featured canvas is Inside Chaos.

It feels like a somewhat accurate depiction of the insides of my brain. Some parts don’t make sense. There’s lots of clashing. Everything is screaming for attention and telling you it’s the most important and needs your attention. I have a lot of trouble prioritising and ordering tasks. Very easily distracted. There’s always a lot going on.

There’s no bags to show you yet because this one’s a brand spanker. It was cut up last week and is almost done being turned into bags. I don’t have a firm date for the next release of Messy Bags but it’ll be in the next few weeks. You can sign up here for email notification when they go live or keep an eye out on Instagram for all the details.

WATCHING: Dirty John Season 2, Betty Broderick. Yikes. Don’t know what else to say.

LISTENING TO: 99% Invisible. A palette cleanser for the brain. 99% Invisible is a podcast discussing the invisible design elements that make up our every day. Like, how did Skid Row come to be? Why are Black and Gold labelled products a thing? The mundane made fascinating.

SCROLLING: Iris Scott. She finger paints with oil paints. FINGER PAINTS!

See ya next week.

Nonsense Part 2

Welcome to Monday Mornings. Each week there’s a new featured canvas to meet and learn more about. Check out the original artwork, the Messy Bags that came from it and get a little insight into its personality via the Listening, Watching, Scrolling section. 

This week’s featured canvas is Nonsense Part 2.

Canvases can start a few ways. Sometimes it’s specific colours I want to use together, sometimes it’s about the tools I want to use (brushes vs the squeegee) and sometimes it’s just the realisation that I have 37 almost empty pots of colour that need using. This canvas was one of those, a bunch of clashing colours and no direction beyond reclaiming said pots.

Here’s how you can tell whether I love a canvas or not: Does it have 173 photos of all different angles and pieces on my phone? Well then I love it. Does it have 2 blurry and incomplete photos of it on my phone? Well I hated it and couldn’t wait to be done with it. This one started its life in the You Are Not My Favourite pile. I couldn’t wait to roll it up to hide it away until it was time to cut it up. But as happens not infrequently with these unloved canvases, in cutting them up I find new pieces and details that I adore. The bags that came from this canvas are some of my favourite of 2020. Now I look at the blurry photo and wish I had a piece or two to hang on my wall.

WATCHING: Black Monday. 1980s on Wall Street. Everyone is over the top. So much marble, so much brass. And cocaine.

LISTENING TO: Someone Knows Something.

SCROLLING: Ken Done Gallery. OBVIOUSLY.

See ya next week.

Alone But Not Lonely

Welcome to Monday Mornings. Each week there’s a new featured canvas to meet and learn more about. Check out the original artwork, the Messy Bags that came from it and get a little insight into its personality via the Listening, Watching, Scrolling section. 

This week’s featured canvas is Alone But Not Lonely. It was painted in April 2020, just as the world was imploding and everything was scary and unknown. (It’s now almost September and lol everything is still scary and unknown and I guess we’re all learning to live with realising just how little we know about what the future will hold.)

This canvas was painted specifically to be turned into wall hangings. I wanted them to be small in size but not in personality. I’d been painting canvases with larger and chunkier details in the months leading up to this one and it was a challenge to try and scale the detail back down again. It took almost 2 weeks to finish as we were in the early days of school at home and then Easter holidays with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Trying to keep mid sized humans feeling safe and sane as a global pandemic upended their lives meant not a whole lot of studio time was available so this one happened in spurts. I almost always have no idea where each canvas is going to go beyond the colours I’m going to use. This one was different and I had a very clear idea of what I wanted it to be before I even picked up the brushes. There’s pathways connecting small groups, groups isolating alone but together, some with boundaries, some without. It’s bright and happy, contrasting and clashing.

The wall hangings have been and gone but there are still Messy Bags of this canvas still available.

WATCHING: Schitt’s Creek. Funny, delightful and easy, exactly the kind of TV you need during a pandemic. Or any time when life is Just Too Much.

LISTENING TO: The Dating Game Killer. I don’t know why listening to terrible stories about terrible crimes is a thing I do a lot. But it is and will continue to be.

SCROLLING: Ladies Who Paint. Murals, walls, pools, basketball courts, painted by the ladies. It’s wonderful. This DREAM is by Alex Proba.

See ya next week.