I'm studying and it's good ...

​I have been captured by Heather B Swan’s Banksia Men at the Australian National Art Gallery.  Check them out here … http://adelaidebiennial.com.au/artist/heather-b-swann/. So much happens each week, from my return visits to the capital.  There’s the generosity of staff at the CSIRO Australian National Wildlife Collection (this place takes me straight back to my childhood memories of the shed and it’s smells and sights – filled by my national park ranger neighbour who had a penchant for taxidermy) to sitting and studying in the Collections Study Room at the National Gallery of Australia (it’s good to spend time with a Morandi) to lapping up the frequent floor talks across the cultural institutions in Canberra (with just this week a generous share by Charlie Sheard at the Drill Hall Gallery) to all the happenings and sharing at uni with the very awesome fellow students and staff.  And then I return to my home studio and feel just as fortunate and paint some more of those borrowed bones – thank you so much Ray for your generosity and thank you to the licencing section of National Parks and Wildlife Service, advice that makes it all workable.  So what am I doing?  My practice led project is titled “Exploring still life painting as a symbolic or metaphoric vehicle for contemplating issues of environmental loss”.  As an example of what I am working on, one of my paintings this week was a tower of skulls … a rabbit on top of a fox on top of a koala on top of a kangaroo on top of a wombat. My diaries of doings and thoughts and drawings are coming alive and my painting studies filling my studios are propelling me along, one painting in front of the other.