" Just me who lives here ".....at La Boudoir Dada.

Returning to Australia from a decade of living in Europe.....I found a most wonderful spot on the wildly beautiful Merri Creek. Surrounded by like-minded neighbours with a fondness for gardening.....it was surely a small paradisaical find. Arriving here in the hottest summer ever I decided to write a letter to The Body Corporate to ask if I could create a garden. The small block of apartments was devoid of any plants or vegetation.....just rubble and concrete. A letter was sent to me explaining the joy of such a thing....The Body Corporate was delighted to have me make a garden.....and they were sending two horticulturists with soil and boulders......to get it started. Wonderful weather and very friendly work ethic mixed with a love of all things planted....we worked solidly for a week......my skin was a beautifully bronzed tint and life was new and filled with a sense of good will.

Cypress trees with roses and bucket loads of geraniums red and white alike..........creepers and sweet gardenia's were planted ........tomatoes and basil with mint and fragrant french sage.......festoons of jasmine and lilly pilly fill the air........ late afternoon and early morning.

Outside was now a stunningly glorious place to be and I found myself dining "alfresco" most evenings and very early breakfasts aplenty.

Each day over the fourteen years of my stay here........enriches my beliefs in the good earth and all its properties.

The interior of my apartment has remained true to my love for all things late 19th Century....including auctioned objects from London and Italy......Rome was literally covered in beautiful found pieces of wreckage.........living alone has been my mantra......the small rooms are filled with my work...each area and corner has a small stack of organised folders and work diaries......many are constantly looked at by my many students on a daily basis.

Life is private and often the sound of Edith Piaf tends to bellow out on a Sunday morning .......whilst I wander around the garden on my balcony. I have an antique watering can I purchased in an outer suburb of Scotland......it has hand painted thistles on it and a fabulous pouring handle..........it sometimes reminds me of my dad......he would have loved it.

Home has been the heart and soul of my everyday. Cooking and preparing for my friends and students....is an obsession ...a trait which I inherited from my Grandmother......always pickling and preserving. This portrait of the Christ figure was doctored recently to portray my devotion for Yves Saint Laurent......a perfectly long silk cord lifts it to the centre of my curtain rail.... so as to hang close to my collection of Russian Icon books....I love the oval shape.

My work has kept me from engaging in a big social life..... Openings of Exhibitions......seem to dominate each and almost every Tuesday night and this does not

 appeal to my nature......I don't want to see many Contemporary exhibitions as I feel disconnected to them.......art ...when you make it yourself requires thought and something of the deeply personal takes over.........for someone else to grasp that is rare indeed.......go look at it if I must.....I do... but often when there is no one around. Reading about other artists and the work they make ......leaves me reeling with curiosity and wonderment. I'v just finished reading about a well known Hungarian Photographer who lived in the Jewish Quarter of the Marais .....as a child he would visit the flower market and wait for the evening light to descend ......he would draw the stalls and make notes about the night skies.

As long as I remember...my dear old dad and I were fascinated by the twilight.....and we would sometimes stroll out to the back garden at night to smell the garlic bushes.......bright purple and flowers galore.

I treasure my time and place.....my many good friends and all kindnesses shown to me.


Just me who lives here.

Napoleon's Eye.: "Just me who lives here ".....at La Boudoir Dada S...

Napoleon's Eye.: "Just me who lives here ".....at La Boudoir Dada S...: Returning to Australia from almost a decade of living a truly full life in Europe......this small wooded area in leafy Northcote, has been ...

Have MERCY........cause I aint lookin to be saved.

D&G

                                                                                        

He walked right on in and sat down with a huge smile and an immaculate white shirt underneath a D&G Jacket.

Without uttering a word he just smiled and handed me a C.V.

I thought you were the woman I was looking for...he said.

I could feel his eyes watching me read his life and all that that entailed it was nerve racking.

Cleanliness is next to crisp white sheets and this guy had a very good smell.

How long have you been a figure model I asked.

Well let's see ....about 25 years ago....I started at Uni when I needed the money.

When can you start?!

Tomorrow would be good.

Yes that would be perfect!

I have a house in Bonnie Doon it might serve us well to get to know my surroundings then you can decide on whether to take me on.

Sometimes in life nothing happens for a very long time.

Out of the heavens fall angels from time to time.

DAVIDO.

"No Iceman Cometh"....and doth not then taketh away.

A woman named "Dora Maar" was led to believe in love .....with... not only "The King of Paris"....Pablo Picasso but also with the most unconventional man alive...at that time.


Her life was about her work her mind her subjective convictions.
A life filled with her own sense of wit and drama. Her fame was loving a Monster.
After Picasso ...only GOD.
Thats what was written.
She turned to Catholicism when they ended.
Ravaging distortions have ever shaped the popular idea of her character.

Her voice, too, is remembered...deep and trembling.
As a Surrealist ......she held her own once again.
Man Ray......said she was the best.

Men have a way with words.
Not all men believe in the power of females and most of us are keen to listen to our lovers tongues.

Delayed...is often about isolation.
You wait in the cold.
Unaware of the rest of what the world is doing.
Cold sets in.



In the secret of myself to my secret self
living you have me live-
In this room I've lived out madness fear chagrin
the simple waking of a summers day
Exile is vast but it's summer, silence
in the sunlight a place where the soul
invents only joy a child on the road to his home....

Cerca.

Davido.

His path is uncertain and he listens and smiles together = insieme ....as his eyes stay still and his breath
quietly sounding like whispering ......Davido coils and becomes close to my soul.

Rino Stefano Tagliafierro - 'B E A U T Y'

Seeing is Believing : Endless hours looking into Portraits.

With the on going ever present wonder of sight....I feel blessed to be able to lose myself in the story behind any number of superb paintings and drawings. Recently sitting in a very contemporary chair at the National Gallery here in Melbourne.......my eyes trail around the room and stop clearly at the most evocative of all the works hanging on the wall......"The Japanese Gown"...by Philip William Steer. His model is viewing herself in the mirror in a very bohemian dress coat....a kimono. The colours are so demure and she is poised and comforted by her vision of herself.....I stare at it for a good hour or so.

So much time in the drawing before the painting....all encompassing knowledge in the handling of the fabric and the folds....his eye seems fixed on the garment details and her reflection in the mirror....its a true likeness reflected...that's hard to do. Years ago I was taught by a wonderful drawing teacher..."Anita Furey"...back then the classes were six hours long and my love of drawing figures was indeed heightened by her constant suggestions and movement of her quick demonstrative hand on my work...."like this...she said"...and with her way of showing and my confidence restored.......I learnt to observe and configure from her generous nature and  her pursuit for professionalism. 

Memory of the quietness of that Studio......as Anita did her rounds and we all concentrated so hard at gaining her praise and attention. My portrait of Margo James has made me look at her face almost everyday day...usually in the mornings....I'm tempted to change things, but feel it may not be like my clear idiosyncratic memory of her.....so I don't. She phoned me to say I had captured her long drop from under her nose to her mouth......its small observations like that which make the likeness appear.

The School of Fountainbleau around 1596....shows ivory-like figures .....intimacy and a strange insight into the lives of these elegant French ladies.....painted by an anonymous French Master....its a point of cultural history than art........it projects the way they were living and sitting in what seems to be a fashionable theme........my placement with these two portraits is about taking them again....and re-placing them individually.........two distinctive rings are made.

 The beauty and poise in painting.......I see so much of......has its own resonance ......hands and positioning of the body and its gestures.....creates a soulfulness within the work.....I recall standing in front of Elizabeth the first...the Tudor portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in London.....the garment detailing alone made me feel sorrowful.......she was clad from head to toe.....pale and distant.....an extraordinary painting to see......certainly one I will always remember......those portraits are alive in that place.

Eugene Delacroix.......this portrait had me reeling with excitement.....from the first time I saw it.....I imagine it is about redemption...or longing for a loved one....his handling of her skin and her thin mouth.....her eyes like white ponds.....glisten like two pearls.Like all great portraits, they grasp something in you...the viewer.....you become an explorer and a  disciple at the same time.

Black used by Manet.....like Lautrec ...is wielded like its butter on the softest bread.......to produce a silhouette like nothing you've ever seen. Manet the Impressionist......that's what he did....made a big impression....using black. Matisse is the other marvel....Henri's use of black was riveting. The black servant in Manet's"Olympia"....and Olympia herself wearing a black bow...draws you into the era......a highly fashionable era too!....he was the Couturier of painting....and so was Toulouse Lautrec......just got it right every time.

Self portraits are done when life gets hard. I find great pleasure in the delving act......an act of the hidden inner sanctum.... revealed like nudity....unashamed. Its like a pure instinctive quality.....that needs an outing.....I find it fascinating when people like the portraits.......they make their own observations and responses....often seeing something personal or something so detached ....... Black seems appropriate here....with a midnight blue shadow encroaching.

The Recluse.

This is a portrait of Dora Maar by Pablo Picasso.

I call this portrait the recluse because that is what she looks like here. Dora endured his wrath......after her affair with him.....she turned to Catholicism.....never to see him again....she was the most prolific of the Surrealist women artists.....alongside Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini......I think this poem by her speaks of her silences :

In the secret of myself to my secret self

living you have me live

In this room I've lived out madness fear chagrin

the simple waking of a summers day

Exile is vast but it's summer, silence

in the sunlight a place of peace where the soul

invents only joy a child on the road to his home.

Dora Maar...1970.

Portraits: As their eyes stare out I want to wear the gaze on my fingers.

There is a very good second-hand bookshop opposite Melbourne University....it has been there for many years. My friends and myself are frequent browsers of this eclectic array of world publishing, something this highly charged global community prefer to ignore now that the internet rules the visual world. I buy old catalogues from this store regularly to cut up and make my Historings from. I accept this as my way to unleash the little portraits back to life......a life ornamental in a world lost to the decorative......

Bleeding hearts.

Portraiture has forever been my most treasured indulgence, as an artist. When I was much younger I remember seeing a portrait of a young girl by Amedeo Modigliani...a Jewish/ Italian painter in Paris around the time of the early 20th Century.

Whilst I knew nothing of art or what the painting meant.....I was entranced by it. The full coloured eyes were very unusual....just filled up with colour. As I stared into the painting my thoughts were to go home and try to copy this image.....I knew I could draw but to try and paint a portrait with paint...was something I hadn't even thought of doing.

My Grandfather had given me a book on portraits for a Christmas present...in that book I saw the paintings of the wives of Henry the VIII .....I was besotted. It was a catalogue from the National Portrait Gallery of London.

Anonymous French painter.

Eyes and the the softness of the skin in the paintings was exquisite.....often there is a pearl or a dark red ruby to observe..........I was hooked at every glance.

Collecting books since I was eleven years old....I have managed to keep most of them close to me. I spent many years living in England and working in the publishing industry....this allowed me to grow my collection on a very wide scale.

In 1985 I decided to do my Post Graduate in painting at Sydney University.

It was at that time and in that year.....I painted 48 portraits and created 72 drawings.

Royal Portraiture.

The sitters over the centuries ......some as young as five years of age.....look out at us with a sense of the unknown.

Dressed in their royal finery.....the delicate detail of the fabrics and embellishments, tells us of a time where the mercantile trade was fervent.

Silks from the east.....gold lace from Spain and handcrafted buckles on velvet slippers.....sewn by hand.

Historings by Melwitz Folino.

       

A Self Portrait by Tom Alberts....at La Boudoir Dada.

Compilation of portraits to be made into Historings.

I need to like the person I'm drawing or painting.....most of the time when the person is sitting in front of you.....it becomes very spiritual.

I like to stare at paintings for long periods of time.....a certain amount of internal decision making occurs.

It has everything to do with your inner world....and that's why each and every portrait... has its very own soul.

Deceit by Melwitz Folino.

The portrait above was painted knowing that my love for a person was being compromised at every turn......I was flooded with despair and could only appear to imagine a swift and sorrowful end ...I was not far off........it's as I tell it......art imitating life and my life no longer felt like my own.

The subtle powers of the portrait by some one like Kathe Kollwitz  and my most admired artist of all....Adolph Menzel....are beyond painting ...they transport you they sense doom they show you pain you become racked with emotional unease yet you love and get swept into that world and all that that world is showing you.......such is the power and perfection of the portrait.

Armlette by Melwitz Folino.