If you have just joined me now you may want to read the travel and art blog “Leaving Sydney Harbor” as this tale is the continuation.   My family and I are now on the Pacific Jewel  a P&O ship sailing from Sydney to New Caledonia and Vanuatu, stopping at Isle of Pines, Mystery Island, Lifou and Noumea.

We departed Darling Harbour and set sail under the iconic Harbour Bridge, passing the Opera house and Fort Denison before leaving the Heads in the evening twilight.  The entertainment onboard was rocking and the drinks flowing as we turned into a long North-Easterly course towards New Caledonia, initially passing Nobo’s Head and Port Stephens before leaving the mainland astern.

PAINTING INSPIRATIONS

Here is a acrylic painting on canvas that I recently painted dreaming of our cruising holiday.

The Pacific Jewel has a capacity of 1915 passengers and 730 crew, it was built the same year my daughter was born 1991, and for you that loves facts and figures its length is 811ft/245 metres with a gross tonnage of 70,310 tons, draft 8.2 meters and the max speed is 20 knots.  Captained by Tony Draper from Scotland and the rest of the senior officers are from England, Italy, Zambia, USA, South Africa, France, India and Bulgaria, so a rich mixture of cultures from all over the world.

The Pacific Jewel can carry the equivalent of five fully laden 747 jumbo jets and is 50% bigger than the Titanic and the same size as the Cunards Queen Elizabeth with a two story show lounge that can seat 800 people.  So it is a big ship – a great ship to work on according to some of the crew who told us that they don’t have too far to go to work as compared to the Queen Mary ll where you need to get up and hour earlier just to be able to walk an hour to work each day!!  Hard to imagine isn’t it.

THE ART OF BEING GREEN

Anyway after we set sail and had a little rest we dressed for dinner which the silver service restaurant required, smart casual today.  Kai’s girlfriend Sam was putting on a brave face and joined us for dinner even though she was looking a little green around the gills – if that is possible for a beautiful Fijian woman!  Poor baby, it wasn’t long before she had to excuse herself and retired to her room with green apples and bread rolls for dinner as prescribed by the crew to ward off seasickness.

Next call would have been the on-board Doctors seasickness injections, luckily Sam found some tablets that seemed to keep it at bay as the injections were $120 a pop we later found out.  Too bad if you had a real bad case and needed a couple of shoots a day!

THE ART OF THE CHEF

The rest of us enjoyed our 3 course dinner and Hillivi and myself were in heaven – we are both Celiac (gluten intolerant) and vegetarian but that was no obstacle as a special menu was arranged and every need taken care of by our wonderful maître de Eroni Vvetibau (Fijian) and Chef Bupendra (India).  It is no wonder that people put on weight on cruises, the food is absolutely magnificent, a wide choice of dishes every night to choose from, everything that you could wish for from every part of the world too.  Oh Chef Bupendra I want to take you home!!

We were spoilt rotten by our waiters Rajesh Dzouza (Indian) and Nathan Legaspi  (Philippine) with our every need taken care of; they were funny as a fit too with all sorts of tricks!  I had no idea that so many things could be made out of serviettes – no idea at all!

THE ART OF THE DIET

There is no wonder that quite a few rather large people were on the cruise – I am not sure what came first though, if they came on the cruise because of their size and leisurely style of holiday or they put on the weight whilst on the cruise because of the wonderful food.   All I know for sure is that when you get home you have to diet for a while – oh how boring I hate diets!!

Here is a quote I like by Woody Allen on the subject;

When we lose twenty pounds… we may be losing the twenty best pounds we have!  We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty.”

Till next time happy painting and sculpting to you,

Love Marie xxx   (c)

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.

Dancing asparagus I hear you say, mmm…well moi have always been a little bit crazy and that probably is and asset when you are an artist! Lol Anyway this painting was the first one that I actually painted, on canvas that is.

MURAL ON THE NURSERY WALL

You see I was pregnant with my first child and was getting the house ready for this little bundle of joy (and as it turned out he was too) I asked my brother who is a very good artist if he could paint me a mural on the nursery wall.

So he came and started, laid down the background of grass and hills and a sky with the start of a train running through the country side.  However at the time he was the drummer in a band called Clowns of Decadence, and they had a very strong following and were always out on tours.  So I would be calling Matt up and asking when he would be back in town, and it would be “oh sorry sis, we are touring New Zealand now and won’t be back for a month.”

In the meantime I was getting fatter and fatter and fatter, and being a bit of a perfectionist there was no way that my baby was going to arrive with a half painted nursery.

So I thought to myself there is nothing to do but roll up ones sleeves and get on with it and start painting .

Now there were a couple of things wrong with that idea, one was that I had some complications with the pregnancy and should be mostly having bed rest.  The other was that I could not paint my way out of a paper bag!  I mean that literally, you see both my father and my brother are fantastic artists, very skilled and can do anything, whatever I had ever tried to draw or paint was usually laughed at, well not in a mean way but probably slightly mixed with pity,  lol.

ART IN SCHOOL

On top of that during my school years in Sweden I would be receiving maybe an F for Art,  I remember distinctly having to paint a still life; fruit bowl and mine was very hard to figure out what it was.    Us naive types find it very hard to see perspective (and hey maybe we don’t want to, maybe the world is just better when everything is close and within your grasp!)  In those days you were only considered good in art if you could reproduce something like a photograph.  So therefore I had not drawn or painted for years.

But as I was a woman on a mission and nesting,  watch out!  I got the paints out that my brother had left and off I went, and you know what, with an eye blink it was lunch time, too busy to eat. Kept on painting although I would lie down on the floor from time to time and look at my handy work (doctors orders you know) I blinked my eyes again and now it was night.

FEELING LOVE & HAPPINESS THROUGH ART

The next morning I woke up, feeling so very excited and energetic and I did not know why, I was 8 months pregnant and usually exhausted, so I laid there and tried to figure it out.  Well you know what, it was LOVE, I had fallen in Love and not with another man, no with painting.  I did not care what anyone else thought of my handy work, but I loved it, I loved painting it and I loved looking at it and it made me feel good.

That was how it began and if you are curious how this led to my life as a full time artist in the Naive genre here is a link for that art blog 114 Elders Fine Art Gallery.. never give up

So take heart you budding artists out there, don’t let anyone say you can’t and that you are no good, if it makes you happy then DO IT.

This saying by Winston Churchill fits very well here;

“Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”

Till next time happy painting and sculpting to you all!

Love Marie  xxxx                                              (c)

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.

This acrylic on canvas board painting is called La De Da Shangrila , it was inspired by my birthday celebrations in Bali. If you look closely at the artwork you will find me in the middle on the balcony in a blue dress drinking a cocktail,my cousin Dan and his partner Johnny are on the left.  Hubby is doing a spot of fishing in the yellow boat and our kids Kai and Hillivi are in the middle on the foreshore waving to you and friends are all around us.

THE ART OF AGING

So another birthday was waiting in the wings, my thought has always been that bring them on-they certainly beat the alternative!! But do they have to come so thick and fast, lurching from one to another without getting a chance to catch my breath?  Just did the big one a year and a bit ago, was feeling quite depressed at the thought – you know would I suddenly lose my sex appeal, age overnight, fall apart, loose my figure, become disinterested in the opposite sex.  My motto has always been as far as the opposite sex goes ‘Just because I am on a diet, doesn’t mean i can’t read the menu, right?lol  Nothing wrong with just looking!  So I thought long and hard about my “Problem” and realized ageing was only just in my mind.  Nothing that drastic had happened to the exterior yet.  I decided there and then, I was not going to do the big 5 0, I was going to turn 25 plus 25.  I went to bed very happy that night and have not felt depressed since, it’s all just a state of mind.  Hope you enjoy this painting La De Da Shangrila of my fantastic birthday party in Candi Dasa in Bali.

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS AND VINCENT VAN GOGH

My darling husband Bryan organized the whole thing, 2 separate 25^th birthday parties two nights in a row, the first party in our favourite restaurant, Vincent (yes the artist) and the other on the roof of our time- share.  We had invited some of our closest friends to come and celebrate with us and our kids of course.  We were 13 all in all, and had the most fantastic time with a big banquet, great band the 3 amigos (which turned into 4)  the wine flowed all night and even a few of the staff joined in the festivities with lots of really mad crazy dancing.  Our guests stayed with us for a week and we so enjoyed showing “our” Bali and its wonderful sights and smells and treasures to our friends.  The night of my actual birthday was spent climbing a volcano, so that we could have breakfast with an amazing view, followed by snorkeling and daily massages and lots of fun and partying.  Lots of inspirations for more painting!

So hey if you are about to turn 50 or any other number- I highly recommend it.  As I said before, it certainly beats the Alternative.

Till next time happy painting and sculpting to you all!

Love Marie xxxx

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.