Up the wall

I'm waiting for photos to explain what we got up to in the last post.

In the meantime, I've started painting the mural at my best friend Maggie's hairdressing salon. Early days yet, and my moods and feelings are swinging widely between wildly ecstatic and WTF am I doing — how can I possibly get this to work without it looking like someone threw pizzas at the wall, thereby disappointing the entire world?

But oh! The joy bit is really really good. And I haven't really started at all, yet.

And I do so love the chance to work BIG.

This was my bloody big bungarra, which I painted on the front window of our San Diego restaurant before all the fit-out started. That would be mid-2006.

The builders were going to whitewash the windows while work went on inside — I don't know why builders do this. I remember back in the '60s when my grandparents white-washed their windows when they took the curtains down and re-papered the living room. Same thing, I guess.

Anyway, I wanted to do a bit of Aussie art stuff on the restaurant window rather than have it blank and boring white — and it was a huge window — so the builders lent us their hydraulic lift (now THAT was fun!), I did a quick sketch, roped in David and the kids and went for it.

This pic was taken when I had the outline done. Next stage was colouring it in. I don't seem to have any pics of it finished — my hard drive died before I left the US and I lost thousands of pics. But you get the idea.

I remember the same big panicky mood swings between blissful delirium and sweaty-palmed paranoia — so that must be normal!