Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying - nobody in the art world

Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying

It’s been a rainy couple of months in Brisbane, with these past few days over Christmas being particularly aqueous in nature. Yesterday it was so wet that all the windows in my house fogged up and would not be unfogged. They were unfoggable.

Aided by Glaswegian pop music, it’s weather like this that tends to tune my mind to that particular frequency best suited to the art of creation. At a base level, it makes me want to bake brownies. Less achievably, it makes me yearn for a dry, clean, linoleum-clad art room, some cream vellum stonehenge paper, some soft pencils, ink, glue, and, for good measure, the remnant odour of turpentine.

If I had the luxury to do anything with my life I would most certainly be an artist. Or an author. Both, perhaps, or possibly an artist who in her spare time writes heart-felt and slightly left-winged opinion pieces or submits things to a peer-reviewed journal.

Perhaps I’ll marry rich and move to Glasgow or Edinburgh (he’ll be Scottish), where my house would have not only a linoleum-clad studio, but a book-lined study nook with persian carpets and a steamy attic window looking out on the cathedral.

For the time being, however, I am not cut out for the bohemian life of an artist, and do not have any immediate prospects of marrying rich; the two aspirations don’t naturally go hand in hand.

Instead I shall, rather voyeuristically, transpose myself and my readers into the studios of some of my more favourite artists.

Almost as good. Right? Think of it as your Christmas present.

…

Henri Matisse