I have long been a fan of Richard Branson, I mean what is there not to like?  He is handsome, rich, and successful, cares about the environment and his family, extremely cool and seems like a genuinely nice guy.  That idea was strengthen in the late 90’s when I read his biography “Loosing my Virginity” which was an excellent read and one I thoroughly recommend.

BEFORE PAINTING

As I lived in London for a while during my modelling years I really identified with the lifestyle and the “goings on” in his life although our paths never crossed back then I still did have my fair share of the jetset life.  But seriously, what I think I admire most in him is the way that he has retained his unpretentiousness and seems still very humble and unaffected.

ARTWORK “SPOT THE VIRGIN”

Some years ago when we still lived on the farm I after rereading his book decided to paint an artwork called “Spot the Virgin” with lots of brides and of course one or two of Virgin’s airplanes.

PAINTING AIRPLANES

I am always dreaming when I paint, day dreaming that is and after I finished the painting I had this crazy idea – I would love to paint one of his planes in real life!  Very much an impossible dream no doubt, how do you come to the attention of Sir Richard Branson?

So I figured first step would be to give him one of my paintings as a gift.  That sounds pretty easy right?  Oh how wrong one could be.

PR PEOPLE AND THEIR SELF INTEREST

Unless you live in the same city or at least the same country, this is almost an impossible task.  There are so many minders in the way, PR companies, Personal Assistants, Secretaries, Security personnel and the like to try to stop you at every corner.

At one stage I had the painting all boxed up and ready to send to Necker Island but changed my mind at the last minute as I wanted to be sure it actually reached Richard himself.  Another time Mark from Giclee link who commissioned me to paint “London2012” was trying to arrange a meeting with Dicky Baby in London, but in the end that fell through too.

PAUL MAKIN AND TODAY TONIGHT

So in stepped my knight in shining armour; Paul Makin from the television program Today Tonight on Channel 7.  I mentioned my wish to him plus that I knew that Richard Branson was shortly coming to Adelaide and Paul said “Leave it with me”.

A week later Paul got back to me and had made the necessary arrangements, but even the best laid plans can go astray and after plan A,B, and C had fallen apart, we pretty much thought it was all over apart from waiting for the fat lady to sing.

However don’t underestimate an investigative reporter when there are plenty more letters in the alphabet and sure enough Paul overcame all the obstacles; a sway of minders and PR people including a PR girl with big claws that thought Richard Branson was her personal property.

MEETING DICKY BABY

We held our breaths with duck tape at the ready (you know in case we saw anyone starting to sing) and finally I got to meet Richard and gave him the painting all captured on camera by Paul.

I will reassure you girls he is just as yummy in real life as he is on TV and a really nice guy to boot.  He took all the time in the world to say hello and admire my artwork, chat and kiss!  Meanwhile his so called PR people were frothing at the mouth much to Paul’s and my amusement!

I really enjoyed the kisses and next time I see him I will have to take a leaf out of Bianca Wordleys Blogs book and smear my face with chocolate – maybe then he will linger even longer!

Here is a quote by Robert Burns that I think fits perfectly here;

“Love’s first snow-drop –  a virgin kiss.”

Till next time happy painting and sculpting.

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.

215 ART and VIRGIN DREAMS

ART AND TELEVISION

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.

Oh boy what strange 6 weeks I have just had!!  Life happens to you whilst you are busy doing other things as John Lennon said.  Normally I sit in my art studio with an amazing view, the house perched up high like an eagles nest, high above a train track and overlooking a valley, beach and sea as far as the eye can see going all the way to the horizon.

Really wonderfully inspiring for an artist and probably why a lot of my paintings lately have been aquatic scenes.  Well our wonderful world was interrupted a couple of months ago with the Transport Departments electrification of the railway line.  Not something we had anticipated would bother us too much, we had seen the artist’s impressions and they looked just fine.  A couple of poles 50 meters apart and a few wires – not much to whinge about and you cannot stand against progress.

So the drilling started and then surprise, surprise they struck rock (we live on a mountain DOH! Why they didn’t anticipate that is beyond me.)   The drilling went on and on for weeks, day after day, 3 days drilling in every one of the 9 holes outside us, 7am – 5pm seven days a week.

PAINTING HAPPY PAINTINGS

Well to cut a long story short, painting happy paintings is impossible with over 83 decibels of incessant drilling 15 meters from your doorstep.  As is just living life and apart from tearing our hair out to add to the drama now my husband and I were fighting too.  So hubby got that fed up and cross he went out and told the workers off and that is when we found out what was actually happening on our street.

5 MONKEYS WITH A COMPASS COULD HAVE DONE A BETTER JOB.

Our street one of the most scenic streets in Adelaide had been selected for special treatment, not poles 50 meters apart for us.  No the “so called experienced” (cough, cough) engineers from Halcrow designed this by Google map from Queensland with no visual consideration as to where these structures would be best placed from an environmental and aesthetics stance.  Instead the Tensioner Hubs (overlaps) has been placed more like a game of “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” with an astounding haphazard lack of forethought.

STATE OF THE ART

I would like to point out though that it is not the POLES that we object too, we are well aware that we would have poles all the way along the railway line for the wire to sit on with this old and antiquated system.   The South Australian Government who is clearly misinformed call this a “State of the Art” design (LOL) perhaps they should have done a little bit of Googeling themselves.  It is not too hard to find out that the Noarlunga/Seaford Rail Electrification was actually first designed in Hungary before World War ll and trialed back in the 40’s before it came into widespread use in the 1950.  So the statement ”State of the Art” is terribly misleading as there are multiple much better designs available across the world this Century.

THE ART OF THE OVERLAP

No, what we are strongly objecting to is that the Transport Department in their wisdom has picked our street to erect the Tensioner Hub (overlaps); which will consist of Portals, Junctions, Gantries, Tensioners, Double Poles with cross Members, all set very closely together some 20 meters apart and others with 1 – 2 meters apart.  Made from huge steel beams,  7.5 meters tall and 350mm wide with lots of electrifications gadgets hanging from them.

NOT ROCKET SCIENCE IS IT?

These so called “Tensioner Hubs” (or overlaps) will then be erected all the way down the line to Adelaide at a distance of approximately 1.6 km.  So there are a lot more people all along the coast line who will be unfortunate enough to get one of these monstrosities outside their houses.  Our objective is to get these unsightly structures placed in a less obtrusive position wherever there is an alternative place suitable, as there is here some 100 meters away from the presently planned position.  We have enlisted several independent engineers who verify that the structure can be moved without any safety concerns or other issues.

STATE OF THE ART SUPPORT

We have had strong support from Nick Xenaphon (Independent) Vickie Chapman & David Speirs (Liberal) and Amanda Rishworth (Federal Labor)as well as the Messenger Newspaper, Radio 891’s Matt & David and 2 episodes by Paul Makin from Today Tonight.  The recent Today Tonight showed the Labor Government’s Ministers and Transport Department’s cronies as they really are; inflexible, uncaring, misleading and arrogant.

And so the infrastructure started going up 10 minutes after the TV crew left and officials left, as the workers and trucks must have been sitting waiting in the wings.  So the “Big Cheeses” who after 6 weeks of us begging  finally came to our street, were only here to give us lip service in the most insincere way.

It did amuse me to see they had employed a few security guards to keep watch, one stationed outside our house and the other by the vehicle entrance.  Funny how frightening my threat must have been to the powers that be, to chain myself to the railway track.  We put up a sterling fight and Power to the People I say!

ART AND POLITICS

Here are a few of quotes I think fits perfectly here;

“When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders.”

(Veterans Fast for Life)

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”

(Voltaire)

“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.”

(Clarence Darrow)

Till next time, when I should be back on track (pardon the pun) and telling you some happier stories, Happy Painting and Sculpting to you all.

Love Marie xxx

Footnote:  I would really like to thank all of you involved in fighting this cause, you all did a fantastic job and everyone played their part and never wavered.  All spent hours researching railways, electrification systems, best practice, environment, the law and the like.  Countless meetings, protests and media calls and never mind all the hours of writing emails, letters and making phone calls. For a small group who really didn’t know each other before all this we did a fab job.  Thank you Bryan for getting us started and Richard for being the good cop against my bad cop (although I did like your analogy of me being the bull at the gate and you the limp squid too, lol:) Thank you Ursula, David, Susan, Denice, Keith, Jenny, Steven, Dot, Paul, Dawn, Nicky, Sam, Kai, Tonia, Jan, Graham, Nadine,Paul  and everyone else that helped.  You are all stars and at least we did get a slightly less offensive monstosity erected, well done!   Big Hug, Love Marie xxx

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