My new Etsy shop is open!

Dear Readers

I hope you are well! Some exciting news.....

My new Etsy shop opened a few days ago. It is called "Barney Street". It's my new label in head wear, and (coming soon) hand printed textiles.

Check out my new shop and see what funky caps I've designed for everyone. Unisex style is the order of the day, plus comfort and portability. Fisherman's caps or fiddler's caps, you tell me! 

You can fold Barney Street caps into your coat pocket and keep going! Great for busy, stylish people on the move. They keep your head warm, too.

See you on Barney Street...

My new Barney Street logo

Me modelling the charcoal velour Barney Street cap!

Hot summer

Dear Readers

In Australia at the moment it is hot. VERY hot! The grapevine which grows all around the back covered area of the house is growing crazily. Every few days I have to go out there with scissors and cut a way out into the garden, making a green doorway. There are bunches of grapes forming, too. They will be juicy red table grapes, and will be ready to pick in mid-Autumn.

Sometimes, when the leaves are newly forming on the grapevine, I make dolmades. How delicious! I feel very lucky to be able to grow such an amazing plant where I live.

This image I painted depicts just a tiny section of the grapevine, with all its twists and turns.

PS Happy New Year to you all and thanks for checking out my blog! You can also find me on Instagram: @alisaperks  

Grape Leaves. Gouache image by Alisa Perks.

Snow gum forest

The New England region of New South Wales, Australia, is high country at 1,000 metres above sea level. Here you can find forests of eucalypt trees such as snow gums. Near Bendemeer is a huge area of eucalypts whose iridescent trunks reflect gold of the early evening light. Their shapes are gnarled - no two trees the same shape. They grow wild and to their own, individual form.

The image below is a painting in gouache, where I depicted these forests in their beautiful depths.

Eucalypt Forest by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.

Rainbow Cake

I'd like to try and make a rainbow cake. They look so beautiful! It might have purple icing, like the one I've illustrated below. That would complete the spectrum.  This picture is actually a snipped-out detail of an illustration I painted for a storybook character I invented earlier this year, who is a bit of a gourmand and adventurer.

Rainbow Cake by Alisa Perks, gouache on paper.

To Canberra

A road trip to Canberra was the inspiration for this image below, which I painted in gouache on paper. It documents winding mountain roads, meals and accommodation, the car, things we saw on the way. I wanted it to look like computer icons, as if you could press one to get more information.

It's fun to try and get the gouache to portray other substances and surfaces, like computer screens or even sometimes, biscuits! But more about that another time...

To Canberra by Alisa Perks, gouache on paper.

Motel Carpark

Dear Readers

Here's more evidence of my fascination with motels. This is a motel we've stayed at numerous times, although we don't need to now, because we moved to the town where this motel is. 

Motel 1 by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.

The owner of this painting said, "This painting tells me all I need to know about motel carparks".

That reminds me...

I must clean the bathroom!



Bathroom by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.

This was our bathroom in a house we rented in Lismore. How glamorous.

Woollen cakes in Queensland

Our recent travels in the "South Western Area of South East Queensland Western Country" (I think that's what it's called?), were incredibly interesting.

At Jondaryan Woolshed, the biggest working woolshed in the world, I found a glass cabinet full of knitted wool cakes and sandwiches. What a delight! They are so beautifully made.

Here are some of them:

Yummy woollen cakes and sandwiches at Jondaryan Woolshed, Jondaryan, Queensland

And we searched for the ghost town at Koorongara, south of Milmerran, but couldn't find it. It remains a mystery to us.

Shortlisted and lamingtons

Dear Readers

I have just been shortlisted for the inaugural New England Illustration Prize. This competition is held by the New England Writers' Centre, in Armidale NSW. As well as encouraging and supporting writers, the Writers' Centre have begun to encourage illustrators with their practice. 

The shortlisted and prize-winning illustrations are on show at Gallery 126, Jessie Street Armidale until 18 July 2016.

Entrants to the competition were asked to create an illustration inspired by a poem by Sophie Masson.

The Writers' Centre intend to hold this competition every year, so that's very exciting for illustrators!

A lot of my paintings seem to contain buildings or food (shades of Talking Heads?). I created the image below while thinking of Lamington National Park, in Queensland. It was a finalist in the Country Energy Landscape Painting Prize in 2014.

Lamington National Park by Alisa Perks, gouache on paper.

Road trip

South East Queensland is the place we will explore in our next road trip: Toowoomba, Dalby, Chinchilla, Pittsworth, St George and more. There will be so much to see and we have no idea where we will head each day, as we don't know what we'll find. It's impossible for us to map out a trip completely when we don't know the area, so we will play it by ear.

Here is a car travelling through the night on the New England Highway in New South Wales:

Highway by Alisa Perks. Gouache painting.

Project

Dear Readers

I'm working on a project that is kind of secret at the moment. The unveiling time has not yet arrived, but below is a detail/hint of it. It involves fun and big hats.

I hope you are all well.

Train Ride detail, gouache painting on paper by Alisa Perks 2016.

 

Trees

Eucalyptus trees grow in unpredictable forms. The snow gum grows in twisted, tortured shapes. In the New England region of New South Wales, where I live, the high country eucalypts (gum trees) such as snow gums have a haunting beauty. They often have sheeny, silver trunks and branches and silvery grey-blue leaves. 

When I lived on the coast, I didn't recognise the beauty of eucalypts. There, they often grow very close together so they don't get to show off their shape like a specimen tree. I now see their beauty and their subtle grandeur.

I painted the image below inspired by rows of eucalypts bordering high-altitude paddocks; their colour becoming softer with greater distance.

Trees by Alisa Perks, gouache painting on paper.

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Illustrations

Hello Readers

Some of my art is for the purpose of illustrating books or CD covers, and some of it gets projected behind plays on stage, which is very exciting.

The illustration below shows the cover design I did for a CD of the musical, "Everest, the Musical". This piece of musical theatre, by Robert Thompson, is a fabulous comedy containing "romance, danger, ice and snow". A deadly combination indeed. In this cover design, Marmaduke, the hero, finally locates Mount Everest after much journeying and trudging alongside his faithful companion, Godfrey.

Image: Marmaduke Finds Everest by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.

PS Right now, I am working on a book with pictures and not much writing, and I'll show you more about it when the time comes. Mysterious.......

Harrington Waters

I put in an order to Vistaprint recently for a t-shirt with one of my paintings on it. They do such a great job of printing. The colour quality is amazing and I can't wait to receive my new shirt. (This is not an paid endorsement. This is unsolicited praise!)

The painting I've put on the t-shirt is called "Harrington Waters". Harrington Waters is a housing estate on the Mid-North Coast of New South Wales. The land was claimed out of the living mangroves and now has large houses perched on it, each guarded by a standard large dog. The estate is near the original village of Harrington, which is charming and which provides some of the best fish and chips I've ever had. Just north of Harrington is Crowdy Head, whose Santorini-style lighthouse features in some of my artwork.

Here is my painting of Harrington Waters, soon to be star of t-shirt:

Image: Harrington Waters by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper,

Yarrie Lake

Dear Readers

Yarrie Lake is a magical place near Narrabri and Wee Waa, in New South Wales. It was a chance discovery for us a few years ago. We had just visited the CSIRO Australia Telescope near there (see Blog Post #1) and saw an interesting blue dot on the map which needed investigating.

Yarrie Lake is like the beach but inland; a large, round lake fringed with casuarina trees, beaches and picnic shelters. The belief is that the lake is an old meteor crater.  All we could hear there was the sighing of the breeze through the casuarinas. 

The lake is not always there though. During drought it can disappear, but it comes back when the rain does. It's a beautiful swimming place. I painted the image below from my memories of Yarrie Lake:

Image: Yarrie Lake by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.

Motels and hotels

We were staying at a small hotel in Sydney recently. Some of the guests seemed to have strange nocturnal habits. Lying in bed in the early hours of the morning, I was trying to figure out what on earth people could possibly be doing, by piecing together all the noises they were making. I worked out that a young couple staying there were in the habit of taking their pet goose for a drive every two hours throughout the night.

It was incredibly humid in Sydney, as is fairly typical of February. It's always interesting though. We checked out Kinokuniya Bookshop in the city. They have a huge range of art books and great air-conditioning. I bought a book full of Art Nouveau patterns.

Motels are on my mind again as an idea for creating images. I've just finished a repeat pattern painting of motels, inspired by kimono fabrics. The image below shows another of my motel paintings:

Image: The Citysider by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.

PS. Check out this link to the Australian Bookplate Design Awards for 2015. My two entries are shown among many other fine bookplates. There were hundreds of entries for this popular competition. One of my entries shown on the site appears in an earlier blog post, and the other features a gentleman wearing a panama hat and trying to read amid cement mixers and barking dogs.

Motels

I love to do paintings of motels. I’ve stayed in lots of motels. The look of them is fascinating, with the carpark and the long, low rows of rooms.

You know it’s a special motel when they give you those little packets of biscuits in your room. And if you’re really lucky, you get a couple of sachets of hot chocolate mix among the tea and coffee makings.

As long as it's a quiet room with a comfortable bed.

The motel below was interesting, because it had a kind of tunnel you drive through to get to the carpark and the rooms.

Image: Motel 3 by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.

Best wishes for 2016

Dear Readers

Wishing you all the very best of good fortune, health, happiness and peace
for 2016.

I guess it's obvious what I decided to bake for the festive season: gingerbread! These are deliciously spiced, with that special flavouring from golden syrup, too. They need to soften for a week or so, then they will be ready to eat. Pfeffernüsse are like that, too. They're like rocks when you first bake them, then they soften up beautifully after a week or two sitting in the tin. These are iced using royal icing.

Mr Biscuit and friends are putting their heads together to try and dream up a
peaceful New Year for everyone.

See you again in 2016, with more ideas and fun!

Image: Mr Biscuit and friends are dreaming up a peaceful 2016.

 

Biscuits - some thoughts

At the moment, I'm trying to decide what to bake for the upcoming festive season. We may get a visitor or two (or maybe not?), so I need to have something yummy to offer people with their cup of tea if they visit.

Gingerbread is a possibility. I need to get some different shaped cookie cutters. The second reason for baking gingerbread is to do with inventing a character for a series of adventure pictures that I've started painting.

But more about that in a later post.

The biscuits shown below were delicious jam-filled, bought biscuits. When this painting was displayed in one of my exhibitions, I put the same plate of biscuits on a plinth underneath where the picture was hanging in the gallery, and people could eat one if they wanted.

I'm glad to say that this picture, like most shown in my blog, is now in someone's private collection. I do hope they are enjoying those biscuits as much as I enjoyed painting them!


Image: Biscuits by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.

 

Itchy feet!

Sometimes a feeling of restlessness is natural, and the desire to explore other places gives me itchy feet. I feel very lucky to be able to roam around the country, visiting towns, cities, national parks, lots of places, without having to  show documentary evidence of my existence to authorities.
 
It's great fun to decide where to go and explore, and so interesting to arrive in a place where I've never been before but have probably heard about many times.

"Get in the car!" has become the catchcry in the household lately, as those itchy feet make themselves felt. The places we choose to visit are often west of the Great Dividing Range.

When travelling in the car, the dashboard becomes a useful keep-warm facility for meat pies and other hot snacks to be eaten further down the road at a good stopping place. This facility is called the "Dashboard Bain Marie".


Image: To Mungindi by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.

I got the inspiration for this painting when we were heading north from Moree to Mungindi. Mungindi is up on the Queensland border with New South Wales. We had been enjoying the hot artesian spa baths in Moree, as we have done many times, and decided to take this side-trip as a bonus. We had a pie in Mungindi.