It doesn’t take long for the year to roll around and before you know it is Christmas again!  This year as we often do we are going to see the spectacle Carols by Candle light in Elder Park, Adelaide.  It always inspires the creative process and I am sure many artists feel the same way.

CAROLS BY CANDLELIGHT

These days we celebrate Carols by Candlelight all over Australia in all the capital cities and smaller country towns and they are held on many different dates all throughout December.   This time my husband and I together with our daughter and her boyfriend are planning to attend.  It is great that this tradition has now spread around the world and people gather usually outdoors in parks and sing carols in choirs and usually accompanied by musicians.  Lots of wonderful artists both very famous and up and coming stars do the rounds of the different shows and they are compared for the most part by Radio and Television personalities here in Australia anyway.  The audience of course sing along and everyone has a candle or two which they hold up and sway from side to side with the music at times, a very atmospheric sight just glorious!

ARTISTIC INSPIRATION

As a family together with my mum and dad we started going to the open concert after our son Kai was born and soon joined by the little miss Hillivi and we have only missed a few along the way.  In times gone by we used to arrive early in the afternoon to stake our claim on a spot close to the stage put down a picnic blanket with a basket full of delicious goodies and lovely wine.  It was always a few hours wait before the show began at sunset and we would take turns to stake our claim on the blanket whilst some of us would head up to the city to shop and walk about.  These days we arrive a little later but it is still something we look forward to very much.  However there was one year that nearly turned us off for life when the weather suddenly changed and turned so nasty we thought we would freeze to death.  We still talk about how the coldness that night was equal to shopping down Canal Street in New York at Christmas time, well nearly anyway!  This time the weather is supposed to be nice and warm so lets hope that is the case.

CERAMIC AND MOSAIC

It was this time last year that my art blog and painting featured the acrylic painting of Swedish Lucia which was used for Project mapping on the Swedish Embassy in Poland see this story 205 Projection Mapping & Art in Animation This week however the artwork is a wall based sculpture and made from handmade ceramic and mosaic and features a sing-a-long family around the piano, with some recognizable artists artwork on the walls! (If you look close, you will find Picasso and Miro among others)

Here is a quote I think fits well by Carol Nelson;

“Christmas is a time when you get homesick — even when you’re home. “

Till next time happy painting and sculpting and Happy Holidays to you all.

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.

This week was going to be the one where we finally got to see the Rolling Stones live! Ever since I remember I have loved the Stones, the bad boys of “sex, drugs and rocking roll”.  Well that is before they finally grew up a couple of years ago and decided to kick the bad habits and got healthy.  This  painting was one I did for one of my Japanese art exhibitions in Nagoya and sold to a keen Rolling Stones fan.  The distinctive Rolling Stones big lips logo was designed by John Pasche, was introduced in 1971 and as my naive art exhibition was primarily Cats and Dogs for this show I added some cats to the homage.

ADELAIDE STONES CONCERT

The tickets for the Adelaide concert sold out in minutes and it was just through pure luck that we got some by trawling through the ticket site where only single seats were available.  One seat here and one seat there however we were not to be outdone and had 2 computers set up where we opened page after page looking for 2 tickets in the same area.  And when you are looking at some 50.000 seats in areas numbered from 100 – 500 and then alphabetic rows that is not an easy task.

Well as luck would have it finally we struck gold well figuratively speaking and managed to get 2 seats immediately in front of each other, so we can technically still hold hands lol

WALL BASED ARTWORK

We also purchased at a fundraising dinner the framed Rolling Stones vinyl record and photograph plaque set to commemorate the concert in Adelaide.  Underneath that hangs my grandparents poster for their tivoli and if you want to find out more about that here are a couple of  art blogs; 20. Antonis Tivoli Art and 21. Life in a Circus Tent

Well that was until the sad news of Mick Jagger’s girlfriend fashion designer L’Wren Scott which has put the concert on hold for now.  As disappointed as we are I am sure everyone understands and empathizes with Mick, such devastating news for anyone to deal with.  We are hopeful that the Rolling Stones will announce another date later in the year.

CUTTING EDGE

The Stones formed in England in 1962 and were noted for their long hair and a blues feel to their rock and roll also an air of cutting edge and rebelliousness than that other famous and fabulous band of the same era -The Beatles.

HALL OF FAME

They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and are on everyone’s list of the Greatest Artists of All Time with estimated album sales of more than 250 million dollars.  The Rolling Stones celebrated their 50^th anniversary in 2012 and last year embarked on a series of concerts in the UK.

BEST STONES SONGS

Whilst I think every one of the stones songs are great my personal favorites are the following; Miss you, Beast of Burden, Can’t get no satisfaction, If you start me up, Emotional rescue, Waiting on a friend, Let’s spend the night together and You can’t always get what you want.

So here is a quote by the Rolling Stones I think fits perfectly here;

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”

Till next time happy painting, sculpting and listening to music.

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.

For an artist Adelaide in South Australia is a wonderful place to live, it is a buzzing metropolis for the arts with various festivals and exhibitions and excitement.   We just manage to get over Christmas and then it starts again with the Adelaide Fringe which is the largest annual arts festival in the Southern Hemisphere.  It’s on for 24 days and nights and starts in the middle of February and spills into March – March itself is known as mad March as we then also get the WOMAD ADELAIDE which is a world music festival and also the a tad more highbrow Adelaide Festival where you can catch a performance like The Ring Cycle by Wagner.  Added to the mayhem of March is also Symphony under the Stars and the annual Clipsal 500 which sees the racing car drivers from all over the world descend on little old Adelaide to go round and round and round.  Mind you they arrive hot on the heels of the Tour Down Under which saw all the bikers fresh from Tour de France, who always seem to have to slog their way up impossible hills in 40 degrees of burning sun, their reward is to be celebrated and join in to all the festivities the city has to offer and that is plenty.

This photo was taken at the SALA award night by talented Adelaide photographer Julie Camilleri from Captured in Time Photography.

THE ADVERTISER BUSINESS SA CONTEMPORARY ART PRIZE

This sculpture is called “The Last Catch” and a little unusual for me as normally I am always doing colourful ARTwork, but sometimes it is nice to surprise the audience a little.  It was selected as one of the finalist in The Advertiser Business SA Contemporary Art Prize for the most outstanding work in any medium in another of the famous Adelaide Festivals called SALA which stands for South Australian Living Artists – so it is for those among us that are not dead yet! LOL and if you want to find out more about that Festival here is a link:

FRINGE FESTIVAL

In any case one of my personal favourite is the Fringe Festival, it is a little more grungy, less high brown and more edgy with performances from artists of all kinds from all over the world.  It usually features over 4,000 artists with more than 900 events that are staged in pop-up venues lanes, unused buildings, warehouses, parks, restaurants, theatres, hotels, art galleries and cafes.  What is on offer is EVERYTHING, you name it is there!

ART FORMS GALORE

Adelaide Fringe starts of with a free street parade and opening nights celebrations and parties and then you can choose from all sorts of contemporary work in all the art forms such as circus and physical theatre, dance, film, theatre, puppetry, music, visual art and design, cabaret and of course comedy.  I have previously told you about “The Old Fellow” Rod Gregory:  and now let me tell you about the young fellow Jon Bennett.  He is actually the son of our children’s school teacher Mr Bennett (as he was known to them) they both had Ray as a teacher in primary school and a sweeter are more caring teacher is hard to find.  Ray and his wife Mary are lovely people, very religious and always care for the underdogs and take in foster children and try to make a difference.  But as things happen in life things don’t always go according to plan and that is where Jon Bennett comes in – he is a master of storytelling and has you spellbound with his recollections of his life during the bad times and the good, all whilst having you doubled over in laughter.

COMEDY WITH A HEART

So below is my take on seeing his show the other night and if you get a chance to catch his show when he turns up in your part of the world I highly recommend it.

“Home grown comedian with HEART”

I was busting with pride the other night attending the packed out performance of comedian Jon Bennett son of local couple Ray and Mary Bennett of Pinery.  The show was called Fire in the Meth Lab and yes for some of us who know the history of that event it does sound very controversial and if you are easily offended it is best not to attend.  However for everyone else I really urge you to go as Jon has an incredible knack of taking you on a journey laughing most of the way but also tearing up which usually does not go hand in hand with comedy.  Jon whilst being small in stature has an incredible stage presence which has taken him across the world performing in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton as well as touring all around Australia Apart from having had a wonderful night what I took home from his performance was the fact that Jon loves his family very much and I hope they are very proud of him, they certainly should be.

Here is a quote I think fits well here by Mary Hirsch;

“Humor is a rubber sword – it allows you to make a point without drawing blood”

Till next time happy painting and sculpting and laughing.

Love Marie xxx

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

When you are an artist who paints on a full time bases you occasionally feel that “THIS” is the best painting you have ever done and that is how I feel about this acrylic on canvas painting called “London2012”.

GICLEE PRINTS

It all started in March this year when I was approached by Mark McCormick from Giclee Link who commissioned the Olympics artwork.  Giclee Link is a young and new company founded on the principles of quality, transparency and fairness both in the way they treat their artists as well as the retailers they deal with.  Mark says “It’s our mindset that karma and the adage; what goes around comes around, will be in play”.

Mark and his partner Pam are committed professionals in the art and photography space and come from a background with Getty Images and The Art Group (UK largest publishers).

I have had tremendous support from Mark with links and images of all the buildings and preparations going on there in London, things that only the locals would have known about, which made it so much more fun for me.  I loved the collaboration and sense of humor that we shared!

FABERGE EGGS

For instance with the Royal Jubilee celebrations London was awash with Jubilee Eggs – which are a cross between Easter eggs and Faberge eggs.  In any case there was an Egg Hunt for the people of London and some took the hunt very seriously auditing their efforts on a mobile database.  There were apparently 209 eggs in total however some had been stolen and other damaged.

So that is why if you look closely on the painting you will see a Cat bugler running off with one egg and another thief in Soho with another as well as a big stash of stolen eggs in the apartment next to number 10 Downing Street.

THE ART OF AUSSIE HUMOR

Another bit of fun I had was with the controversy over the proposed basketball courts to be built in the Waltham Forest.   This area is a beautiful place where the locals treasure the natural habitat around the river and where you find the canal boats that are often pictured on postcards.  Leading up to the Olympics there was protesters there and some of them tried to stop the builders by blocking the path of their vans, so of course I had to paint that.  I actually had named the builders The Big Tosser Building Company – as us Aussies are always poking a bit of fun at the authorities and the fat cats, lol, however the Brits did not appreciate the joke so now they are just called Big Toms!

GICLEE LINK

The London2012 image has been made into Giclee Prints in a limited edition of 95 and is available through Giclee Link as the wholesale company who welcome Retail galleries, Interior and Furnishing Retailers, Multiple Retailers, Interior Designers and Online Retailers to stock their prints.

UNION ART

As well as Union Art who welcome everybody who are interested in art and specialises in limited and open editions prints, photography, sculpture and original works of art.

UNION ARTISTS

Union Art represents only the very finest contemporary, established and emerging artists in the business.  What impresses me very much about Union Art is that collectors and enthusiasts can browse their collection at any time through their website , however the added bonus is that they are available to offer help or answer any questions over the phone between the hours of 10am – 10pm 7 days a week!  They offer competitive prices together with efficient and friendly service so call them now! (London, UK, 08455441452) You may also like to visit Union Art on Facebook.

COMMISSIONED ARTWORK

I know a lot of artists do not like to do commissioned work, they feel that it is limiting and cramps their natural style.  I actually feel the opposite – it often makes me stretch myself and paint topics and themes which I may otherwise not have thought of.  Of course it is also nerve racking too, what if the client does not like the finished product and yes that is something that has happened to me too.  However all is not lost then either, in my experience as there is always someone else who will love that artwork.

RESEARCHING ARTWORKS

I really felt part of the Olympics whilst doing the research and hoped to include as many sports as possible, look closely and you will find; High Jump, Pole Vault, Running, Shot put, Discus, Javelin, Sailing, Synchronized Swimming,  Rowing, Swimming, Diving, Wind Surfing, Show Jumping, Beach Volley Ball, Basketball, Cycling, Gymnastics, Tennis, Soccer and Water Polo.  Then of course there is the concert in Hyde Park as well as the goings on in SoHo, the new model of the London Double Decker busses, the Prime Minister and his wife at number 10 as well as the Queen in a spot of bother and of course all the people from all the different races and cultures around the world.

Yep everyone is in London 2012!

So here is a quote I feel goes well here by Henry Ford;

“Coming together is a beginning.  Keeping together is progress.  Working together is success.”

Till next time happy painting,sculpting and partaking in sports to you all,

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.