Here we go!

I started the first painting in my 20 paintings summer challenge.

It’s a back-alley street scene, with a woman holding a lamb. It’s 120cm square but has been cropped for the sake of a quick photo I’m planning on having some graffitti in the background. I love combining text with image. Not sure how convincing a ‘tagger’ I can be though….

I’m finding it hard to get painting time at the moment – all the Christmas preparations, and cooking for a surprise party for my husband tomorrow. It’s hard hiding all the food, but luckily it’s afternoon tea, so I’ve made special biscuits, home-made ice-cream, vanilla slice, rocky-road, and will do potato and rosemary pizza during the afternoon tomorrow when guests are here. It’s quick and easy, and goes a long way.

The hardest thing is getting all this done with my littlest around – she’s going through a whingeing stage, and is desperate to help so she pulls a kitchen chair to the bench, to the stove, to the knives, to the cupboard, to the christmas tree. Nothing is safe, and to be frank, my nerves are a bit shattered at the moment. It’s hard to concentrate with a contant muuuuummmmy going on. Yesterday she discovered a giant meat cleaver hiding under the cutlery divider and was waving it around, and that’s not the kind of thing you can let go by as a lesson in life….

What I want for christmas is one whole uninterrupted day in front of a canvas, while my kids are having enormous fun somewhere else and not missing me one little bit. Would be nice to have a pause button sometimes wouldn’t it!