Nourish Me

dessin

Mid-way through this blog's now 9-and-a-half-year existence we lived in a beautiful, rambling house in Elsternwick. On Saturday mornings, Peter and Anselm had a life drawing session thing going on in the loungeroom. Afterward, we would talk, nothing being off limits as artists like conversation to be, but Art was the reason for it all. I loved those lunches. I felt a part of something smart, occasionally funny and always deeply creative. Anselm spoke a lot about the French word dessin, a word that means both design and drawing, concepts the English language separates as though the two are not inextricably linked. It's an idea I've filed in a small space my brain reserves for the kind of wisdom you know that, one day, you'll want to draw on.  

There's a book called Drawing Projects that's been a constant companion in recent months. Reading an interview in the book about the process of artist Kate Atkin, a woman who was put on report at college because no-one could see what she saw in the photographs she presented one semester, I had a moment of resounding clarity. On a whim, she drew from a photograph one day:

In making the drawing the most incredible thing happened, like an epiphany. I literally felt drawn to this kind of  magic, and discovered how to express myself., it was incredible. I could barely talk about it without welling up. I still feel a bit like that, I get strangely weepy about it if people get me going, it's like a tap into all my most excited feelings.  

Well. That's exactly how I feel right now. I well up when I try to explain how happy dessin and my burgeoning understanding of it, and of the maturity making pictures again has delivered into this little life. 

 

you know, went there

An odd thing happened last year, a thing held close to my chest for fear it wasn't quite real: a new friend inspired me to pick up a brush and just get on with the business of seeing once again. Always knew someday it'd return, longed for it if I am honest, and 2014 was a year full of lessons and troubles and deep creative conversations. Had I been warned early on, I would most definitely have ducked some of those, an old, old strategy I've long outgrown, but I faced stuff, explored things I'd ordinarily be afraid of. You know, went there. And yet here I stand, alive and well in 2015, with an engagement ring of sorts on my left hand, a slew of wisdom gained from a series of vexing sleep problems (some actual sleep, finally, as well) and an appreciation of the true value that werking offers. Happy. Disciplined. Relaxed. Those are my resolves for 2015. You?  

 

kitchens i have loved

A few days ago, chatting with Fiona and Ganga about moving home, I realised that I've moved 15 times in the 20 years since that first awful student house on Cleveland Street, next to the petrol station, right near the corner where the semi-trailers would turn, compression brakes hissing all day and night, making their way to the airport. 

That's a lot of kitchens. 

Some I have fond memories of - a galley kitchen in Clovelly with Em, and the huge slate-floored number we shared in Camperdown in third year - some not - the less said about the dark one in Bondi, the better, though I dearly miss my then-flatmate Shane - but each of them offered some kind of lesson. The one in Peter's drawing of me up there was the first really grown-up kitchen I've had, with its view onto a neighbouring orange tree, wooden benches I would lovingly oil in big, sweeping arcs, and the first dishwasher I'd ever loaded. I hardly knew what to do there, it all functioned so smoothly.      

I've worked with gas ovens, electric ovens, and scarily wonky ovens. One particularly stubborn beast I had the pleasure of learning twice over in different cities. (Obviously the cheap-skate landlord special.) I've had electric elements that take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get going (equally, an age to slow down), and gas burners that, if one wasn't careful, could singe the eyebrows of innocent kitchen bystanders. The one thing that all of these situations has taught is that, no matter what, food is cooked when it is cooked.  How often I've wanted to write, "bake at a moderate temperature until cooked", no hand-holding, no precision, just ready when done. Wonkiness, you see, is the best of teachers. But I'd never dream of leading anyone astray. We all learn in our own way, at our own pace.           

Still don't really like dishwashers. Rather do it by hand, not in order to martyr myself to some antiquated kitchen cause, but because I like washing up, it's what I know, and I like the rhythm it gives to the day.  There are times when you give in to the machine, but really I just like to get my hands in there, to get them working. Come winter, hot sudsy water warms cold fingers, too.

Mostly what I've learned - perhaps the best lesson of all - is that it doesn't matter what kitchen you have. What matters is that you use it, that you cook and feed and be kind to yourself in it, no holds barred. There's no better cure for almost anything life can hurl your way than a well-cooked, home-made meal. Glad we're staying put for a while.

Reindeer

Escaping the paddock.

For Holler of Tinned Tomatoes, who, this month, asks that we have some festive fun.