Painting Dreams by Julie Cahill

The Crux of It

I hadn’t painted on paper since school, back in the previous century, and never on canvas, until I received a precious gift in 2020 from a friend whose tubes of oils and acrylics in the colour spectrum released my joy in painting. So in 2020, the year that bore witness to Australia’s catastrophic bushfires, tragedy and faux-pas associated with COVID-19, and Donald Trump’s over-due plummet, I got lost in colour.

Here Was My Chance

I have always been creative. Take my grade four class, for example. The motley crew of misplaced Britons like me, freckled with the odd Aussie, once created an under-water collage. As you can imagine, there were many wonky fish, all types of elongated seaweed and long-gone coral. My contribution was a full-sized patchwork mermaid, a dumpy, lumpy arrangement of mismatched fabrics, and no prime example of the legendary siren. 

My mermaid caught the Head Mistress’s attention and was duly framed and hung on the wall outside the school office. Another mermaid arose from my new range of acrylics, a selkie if the truth be known, a gift for another creative, Jodie O’Regan whose next opera will centre around selkies from Horseshoe Bay.

An Unexpected Calendar of Writing and Art

Creative writing has been my bag for years; prose and poetry. It’s the love of story for me, you see, whichever way it gushes forth. Not every girl had a father named Patrick Murphy, and story clings to my Irish heritage. Not every child flew dragons through her father’s words. How I watched his lips form the letters. I feel them still soft upon my face . . . and too…the sharp whiskers of my loss.

Last year, I was honoured to be featured as one of Lindy Warrell’s guest writers to showcase my poetry. This year I am invited as . . . wait for it . . . an emerging artist.

2020

July 9th

Husbands can be handy beings. Mine discovered and taped Bob Ross’s video, ‘The Joy of Painting’, while channel surfing.

Well, if ever there was a teacher, Bob was it; explaining the fundamentals of painting in lay terms. He died in 1995, but his legacy lives through 6,000 paintings and hundreds of how-to broadcasts which he starts with words like, Today, we will paint a happy and carefree sky where clouds float free.

Talk about subtle entertainment, talk about brilliance. Bob Ross has taught thousands of people to paint realistic three-dimensional landscapes, including little old me.

Inspiration

So, there I was feeling more chuffed than a Tibetan Monk.

‘Who is up for a ladies’ art day?’ I asked Facebook where I display my triumphs and disasters on even-par. A fortnight later ten artists gathered at my home, which in all honesty would inspire an entire colony of ants to wield brushes.

Hindmarsh Valley has become my family’s paradise, hills rolling in front and behind the house, highlighting the splendour of seasons. Pockets of winter mist produce the atmosphere of Brigadoon, the fictional Scottish town which appears once every hundred years.

Scorched summer grass turns to gold at days’ end.

Spring rebirths the land when redgum and wattle tapestries weave with the mews and bleats of new life and prolific wildlife sneak onto the canvas.

Delights appear from every angle.

Queen of Audacity

So, after thirteen short weeks from that day of collective painting, with 142 paintings under my belt, I hosted my own art exhibition in our small slice of paradise.

Attendees were mainly family and friends, so there may have been one or two sympathy buys. But the day was a celebration more than anything else. I dressed as a cheeky elf, one of the expo’s themes.

I have been dreadfully ill for an awfully long time with Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue, but, for me, both writing and painting are therapeutic. Writing expels the metaphorical demons; painting provides a joyful distraction.

What Lays Ahead?

Do we ever really know?

I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sort of gal, now grasping opportunities from the easel.

My novel, Ten Pound Poms, rests in drawn-out-progress, as commissions for my art stack up like Tupperware. I have already finished the cover for Russell Westmoreland’s upcoming novel. Still, Waters will be the sequel to The Grave at the Top of the Hill, both murder mysteries set on the Fleurieu Peninsula.  Russell is an established writer who recently gained second place in a prestigious writing competition.

Another literary award winner, John Shultz, (another Sand Writer in a group of which I am a member) also invited me to collaborate on art for his upcoming novel. The aim is to align paintings with chapter titles. Fingers, toes, and eyes crossed that I can meet the challenge.

Busy, busy. See you . . . never.

Having said that, I must include my own current project of pairing written and visual story. 

Picnics with Mermaids

Here is a prose piece that aligns with my mermaid paintings, one of which is used here as background to the text.

Tip of the Brush

To date, I have sold 13 paintings and completed several commissions, with new works on the go. And my days, notwithstanding untimely spurts of demise and re-emergence, brim with stories spilling sideways as colourful as my pictures.

To date, six months after grazing my first canvas, I have painted around 150 canvases, coasters and boards. I’ve sold 17 large works, completed seven commissions (another is nearing completion), and experienced great joy giving many works as gifts.

• 

• 

• 

AUTHOR BIO

CONTACT ME by Messenger here.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Photographs by Kate Punshon, a member of Sand Writers.

All text and images are the property of Julie Cahill.