So those of you who read my art blogs regularly know that I met Richard Branson last year when he was in Adelaide, South Australia for a couple of days.  It was all organized by a reporter Paul Makin from Chanel 7 for their Today Tonight program and if you wish to recap on the crazy and very convoluted story of how we finally pulled that off here is a link 189 ART and Kissing RICHARD BRANSON

It is no secret that I have long admired Richard both for his entrepreneurships and also for the man that he is.  Meeting him was great and the fact that he genuinely seemed to like my art made it all the better.  However there is still a bit of unfinished business – I still want to paint one of Richard’s Virgin planes!

VIRGIN DREAMS

Dreams, we all have to have dreams don’t we, goals to work towards and ideas to inspire us?  Dreaming, well daydreaming is an essential quality for an artist and one of my dreams is to one day paint a plane.  Above you can see one of the ideas I have for a Virgin plane and I do have quite a few other ideas too of course.  It would be something to see my artwork in mega size and flying in the sky that’s for sure, I just love to see art on airplanes.

PROJECT MAPPING

I guess the closest I have been to having my work in a large scale was late last year when my paintings were used for project mapping in Warsaw, Poland.  Projection mapping or Video mapping also known as spatial augmented reality is when an image is enlarged to cover an entire building and then superimposed in a light show.  In my case in Poland my artwork was also animated so it was a moving image.  If you want to find out more about that and a bit of the history of Project mapping here is the artblog 205 Projection Mapping & Art in Animation

PUBLIC SCULPTURES

Well I guess also into the category of large scale would be the public sculptures that I have done over the years.  The largest public sculpture of mine spans 44 meters across and is 3 meters high sitting as you enter the town of Balaklava in South Australia’s mid north.  It was commissioned by the Wakefield Regional Council and took some 18 months to complete.  Dale Gathercole and my husband were an integral part as were many many volunteers from the local community who all helped to make it happen.

THE CENTENARY OF FEDERATION GATEWAY

The idea is that the whole sculpture looks like a Federation house, complete with roof and a veranda.  In the center are two six meter by three and a half meter walls, located at 22.2 degree angle to each other which are rendered to look like sandstone with red brick quoins on the corners and around the doors.

One wall represents 1901 and the other 2001.  In the 1901 doorway we see the back of a life-size woman, made from hand-made ceramic tiles and mosaic, strutting through the door in all her finery, long dress, hat and umbrella in hand.  Through the 2001 doorway, she emerges as the modern woman, complete with short skirt, sunglasses and a mobile phone.  This reflects the changes that our society has undergone during the last 100 years.

If you would like to find out a little more about that here is the link 109 Stories behind the Wall – Public Sculpture

RICHARD BRANSON’S PHONE CALL

So why not dream big I say you never know what awaits around the corner, maybe one day I will get a call from Richard Branson saying “Hey Marie, I’m sending my private plane over to pick you up – we really have to discuss your idea of painting a plane for me!”

Here is a quote I think fits well here by H.F. Hedge;

“Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.”

Till next time happy painting or sculpting or daydreaming.

Love Marie xxx

Why not come and have a look at Marie Jonsson-Harrison’s PAINTINGS FOR SALE, GICLEE PRINTS FOR SALE and SCULPTURES for sale or WALLBASED SCULPTURES.  Enjoy an original artwork on your walls or perhaps one on your bed ARTnBED.