To like something and to talk about that like.......is discerningly private.

                                                                 P O E T R Y......of like.

                                                             
       Inherent from my ancestry.... shape and silhouette become my everyday observation.

                                                                       I Like.

   

She lived by what society through at her... as she aged her world became more and more eccentric.
                                                                           I Like.

 

Artisans create adornments for chances.... which by wearing will only signify undeniable importance.
                                                                            I Like.

     

Simple hand-made wooden Dachas houses where the owner grows the flowers and arranges and records in watercolour paintings......Russians are great nature lovers as am I.
                                                                           I Like.

I like many ideals of beauty.....from my family I inherited the rituals of process and placement. How watching my father make something out of discarded wood... only to have all who saw his creation want the same thing for themselves.
The gentle art of whitening linen in cold salted water through several stages of soaking.
Quiet crackling of wood burning under an old copper whilst persimmons fall from the laden back fence... in winter.

In a plane I like that moment before take off... seconds before the throttling sound of angular ascension into the sky.

Landing somewhere you've never been before....hearing the people in a desert land yell out their wares.
Smiling at majestic pyramids as you stand on the land of The Valley of The Kings.
                                                                         I Like.

                                                                          I Like.
I like to look at Le Eiffel Tour from many different view points in Paris. To walk the stairs to the very top and to hear your own footsteps....hold the rail and pace yourself...glance across at all of the city in front of you....stop and take in the ground area from above....always wear your most glamorous clothes and heal sounding shoes will echo and remind you that you are there....amidst the tower your final steps to the top......and it sways in the parisienne sky....with utter joy I adore the moment for all eternity.....I like a hundred moments all in a second.......a leisurely descent and evocative rumblings of motor vehicles and life and the heady smell of petroleum.


I  L I K E ........all my decisions in my observational world they belong to me... for to like is to see.


                                                                      P O E T R Y

                                                                   La Boudoir Dada.





                     

Napoleon's Eye.: What maketh the Artist stay forth...."Dada's Artis...

Napoleon's Eye.: What maketh the Artist stay forth...."Dada's Artis...: Walking rather slowly down a lane in Rushall......yesterday, I came across a piece of an old mantel clock....someone had thrown it ...

What maketh the Artist stay forth...."Dada's Artistic Artillery"

Walking rather slowly down a lane in Rushall......yesterday, I came across a piece of an old mantel clock....someone had thrown it out as hard rubbish. I was amazed to find the mechanisms still dinking with sounds. As I held it in my hands and moved it back and forth......the chime of it instantly took me back to my childhood and my Grandfather's work shed in the country.

Leonard had boxes of parts from all kinds of things.....clocks

, cars, transistors, cutlery, electrical devices and many many screws and bolts.

Grandfather gladly went into his shed most mornings filled with discarded remnants of the past. He was an Artist of sorts. Combinations of rubber stamps and half full bottles of ink. watercolour tubes and old printers blocks.....detritus of the publishing trade.

I was fascinated. The shed represented a world I loved to be in.

He was a WW2 Veteran .....drove a water tank through Syria across deserts and blown up terrain.

I loved my Pa so much.....he showed me how to operate my first silver watch....."This is the mechanism"....he said.

He was an individual investigator.

Elaborated on....diversified Dada artillery.......for my eyes only.

All along my art school path....I was told endless stories about postwar Cologne.

What was it all about really....I thought. A new idiom. The Dadaists drew from the material world and psychological terrain. They would articulate their radically altered sense of self and society.

My Pa was a backyard Dadaist ...so to speak...always weaving the pictorial with his unique productive synergy.......I was there and very young....but somehow his shed and the memory of his bits and pieces ..... a strong hold is inherent.

My work is filled with a semblance of memory and desire to create my own eclectic placements and installations......contradictoriness of my own systems....I enjoy the absurd and the unconscious. When he passed away I received two very memorable pieces belonging to him......a silk dressing gown and a pair of metal cuff links.......so light was the metal you could have easily swallowed them whole.

I saw him wear them a couple of times and as a child was aware of his well groomed presence each and every morning.......they were his fathers.....my great grandfathers.....now placed in England whence they came from.........for safe keeping.

Cosmetic device.

I am a DAdA related collage artist.

Madam Dada belongs to the exterior world.

" Dedication....... to all we see and see..... is but a dream "

Dedicated to the many poets and audacious rambling Surrealist Artists......................... past and present.

I see the sea.

I look at books.

I observe the absurd.

I walk the stork.

I trust in must.

I chase the waste.

I tremble to assemble.

I search and lurch.

I applaud such reward.

I smell the hell.

I wander the yonder.

I skate my fate.

I worship Bip.

I create the ornate.

I clench to French.

I touch my crutch.

I smother my other.

I dance the trance.

I shelter and swelter.

I fall in awe.

I operate to moderate.

I cry to die.

I crumple the disgruntled.

I huddle and cuddle.

I flick the switch.

I object to abject.

I shiver my timbers.

I shy away why.

I fear the fear.

I resurrect the dissected.

I agree with algae.

I devote the bespoke.

I sample the ample.

I treasure the pleasure.

I speak the bleak.

I frequent the elegante.

I hand the man.

I forget my regret.

I flower the sour.

I follow the swallow.

I varnish and tarnish.

I return to sender.

I shudder in the larder.

I remember to surrender.

I ride the tide.

I toss my loss.

I felt the pelt.

I stare that bear.

I kiss and miss.

DaDA at La bOUdOIR DAdA.

avec Madam Dada.

"The Silent Looker."........... does not utter anything.

The soul still yesterday wept is quiet- its exile suspended

a country without art only nature

Memory magnolia pure so far off

I am blind

and made from a bit of earth

But your gaze never leaves me

and your angel keeps me.

In the little Laurent Prache Square beside the church of Saint- Germain-des-Pres, there stands a monument to the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. 

The Recluse.

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 walking 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.

Fraction.

Far off is less distant than the ground, the biting

bed of air,

where you stop, like a harrow

on the reddening earth.

I remain above the grass, in the blinding air.

The ground erupts ceaselessly towards us,

without my moving off

from the day.

Nothing.

today,

is trampled.

I don't subsist in the naked air.

On the road growing.

Madam Leonor Fini.

Melwitz Folino

Leonor Fini.

I rested in the arms of my arms

I slept no longer

It was summer winter day

An eternal shiver of thoughts

Fear love Fear love

Close the window open the window.

Identity.

La Boudoir Dada.

DA da DA.

AmOre.

" 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.