Tag: Deidhre Wauchop Artist

I knit for the colour fix

Fingerless gloves have been distracting me, so I shamed myself this morning by taking a photo of them (note some of them haven’t even spawned a twin before I moved on to another idea). I tell myself I have to knit to get a soft and soothing colour fix.

Deidhre's fingerless gloves

Shame expressed and failure noted. Now to get back to painting!

I’m doing some small acrylic paintings, working with ideas about folds, and illusions related to patterns in folds (I think). Influences on this work include origami tessellations, origami sekkei, woven patterns and perhaps—much further down the track—a broader metaphor related to Platonic allegories. I’m looking for an Allegory of the Divided Line for Dummies for just this purpose.

I was having trouble with visualising and representing the folded pattern (see thumbnails from progress recording below), hence I hid away in lovely gloves for a short time. Today I’ll mock up a folded pattern, using Japanese stamps on cardboard, and photograph to use as reference. I hope that breaks the block!

Deidhre Wauchop painting

😣 Day 948/53

The child is why

Inexplicably, I thought about Milly-Molly-Mandy this morning. I was a distracted kid and didn’t like reading much, but I loved Milly-Molly-Mandy.

That thought led me to revisit her life. She was busy, independent and interested in lots of things. My life at her age was similar—I lived in a seaside suburb of Newcastle that may well have been an English village; I had a loving, relatively uncomplicated family; I liked making things; I had enormous freedom and loved exploring outside; I was always finding and scoffing mulberries, loquats, mushrooms, honey suckles and even wild onion grass; I tolerated fishing and adored swimming; I collaborated with friends to make up games and songs; I had to do ‘chores’; I learnt to cook; I looked after and loved my pets; I valued and saved my pennies. I was also bratty but that doesn’t fit into M-M-M’s story.

I’ve been going on for some time about how much I love my simple domestic life; musing about how different it is for me since I retired. Today I realised that this life isn’t new, and the child is why. That M-M-M child is just a sentimental version of my more constructive current self. That M-M-M child is also why I’m doing and making—doing and making up for lost time.

I remember when I was 5 I practiced writing my name in my books. Not just in my books, but also in as many books from the family bookshelf as I could, before getting caught and stopped (bratty kid!). Here’s an example:

It’s a pretty strong statement—a signature of considerable size. Practice made perfect!

Mmm…using my fingers to count that it is Day 984/17 📔😳