Helen Martineau's Blog

Sometimes during Melbourne’s Summer, it doesn’t rain for weeks. That’s why after a thunderstorm you notice things like the lovely way raindrops on a spider web scintillate in the emerging sunlight. The picture weaves into your dreams, like the night I dreamt I was in my garden peering into one watery orb to see what was reflected there. Suddenly I noticed that it was night. The raindrop became like those photos of earth taken from space, with the darkness of the globe’s surface scattered with the lights of a host of cities, dense in patches, less so in areas with few inhabitants. I leaned even closer and could see now spaces between even the densest clusters. Then something beautiful happened. The lights became miniature dewdrops with fine threads spun out like spider-silk clothing the planet in an exquisite fractal-like garment. And along all these delicate threads I saw human souls moving in each direction as if along highways. Somehow, I knew they were living souls ( n

How can you be original? That’s a question visual artist Abbie Heathcote was asked at the 2017 Castlemaine State Arts festival (March 17-26). Her heartfelt response included the unexpected. Here’s a paraphrase of what she said : Find what enlivens you and put all that life and feeling into your work. It lives there, and when viewers come to the artwork they absorb the feeling and they are enlivened. This is a potential outcome from any activity we undertake. When artworks are created with love and commitment to truth they certainly touch a viewer with their life and originality. Imagine the beauty and richness to be discovered from such a relationship. Meaning grows from that. Stephen and I spent the weekend at the festival. If you don’t know Castlemaine, it is a country town in the central Victorian goldfields region. It’s rocky, dry and still speckled with gold. There was so much to see and hear, including a powerful opening night dance-drama by kids from Castlemaine