A NOTE ON WOMEN.

 (NSFW & NOT SAFE FOR LITTLE EYES THAT CAN READ):

Hey - did you know that women can art too?

No? 

Well here are a few of my favourites who are divine, powerful, feminist and driven, incredibly talented masters of their kind and proud of their sex:


http://lisahanawalt.com/

http://www.hollyexley.com/

http://myblankpaper.com/

http://www.dawn-tan.com/

http://www.phoebewahl.com/

http://rachellevit.com/


Below are some/HUGE LIST of my favourite women who have impacted my life in some way - big or small. I literally wrote down every single female I could think of who has been floating around my conscious and subconscious within the last 27 years of my life.

Either through their personal presence in my little hemisphere as a powerful female force, through their personality and hilarity, their creative or performing art genius, their music or their political significance - they have all directly or indirectly touched my life and inspired me in my life in some small way and every piece has eventually puzzled together to make me the mad bitch I am today:

My mum (Mumbo/Mumbo Jumbo/Mumolarama/The Creator/God)

My sister Emily

My cousin Millie 

My second cousins

My Grandma

My Dida

My aunts

My Great Aunt

Tim's sisters

Tim's mum

Tim's cousins

Tim's aunts

My friends (you know who you are)

My English tutor: Mrs. Mayon-White (love)

My year 12 English Extension teacher: Dr Guy

My year 9 English teacher: Ms. Brown

My year 6 teacher: Mrs. Nesteroff

Caitlin Moran

Jo Brand

Dawn French

Jennifer Saunders

Amy Sedaris

Amy Poehler

Amy Schumer (The three Amy-gos...)

Maya Rudolph

Megan Mullally

Kaitlin Olson

Tina Belcher (voice of a man. Essence of a woman.)

Linda Belcher (voice of a man. Essence of a woman.)

Marge Simpson

Lisa Simpson

Mona Simpson

Patty and Selma Bouvier

Edna Krabapple

May Belle

Diane Nguyen

Louise Belcher

Oprah (because YES)

Judi Dench

Tina Fey

Grace Coddington

Ilana Glazer

Abbi Jacobson

Alison Brie

Jessica Williams

Lena Dunham

Gabourey Sidibe

Nico

Florence Welch

Adele

THE SPICE GIRLS

All Saints

Caroline Goldfarb (@officialseanpenn = endless joy)

Kristen Wiig

Kristen Schaal

Melissa McCarthy

Rebel Wilson

Chan Marshall

Siouxsie Sioux

Janis Joplin

Shania Twain (Yep.)

Chrissie Hynde

Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson

Kirsten Dunst (FARGO.)

Helen Mirren

Joan Rivers

Retta

Vivienne Westwood

Jessica Walter

Ellen DeGeneres 

Portia De Rossi

Beyonce (KWEEN BEY)

Monica Bellucci

Juliette Binoche

Emma Thompson

Cate Blanchett

Lauryn Hill

Annie Leibovitz

Cindy Sherman

Yayoi Kusama

Tamara De Lempicka

Frida Kahlo

Jenny Saville

Judith Kerr

Christina Rosetti

- THE LIST CONTINUES TO GROW -

FEMALE-HACK: My partner Tim has always chastised me for using the word: 'BITCH, SLUT, WHORE, HUSSY, COW' when using it in a venomous attack against a woman who has directly pissed me off. It's rare for me to be that pissed off, it really is- you're not going to do it unless you are a complete piece of shit. 

Tim believes it is derogatory to my sex and only bolsters the notion that it is OK to label a woman with such defamatory and derogate terms. I completely agree. 

FEMALE-HACK: One of my very close friends has always said that her mother has staunchly argued the case for the use of the word: 'CUNT'. The power within such a word comes from it's very stigma - which begs the question, why should it's origins (a very colloquial term to name the female genitalia) be stigmatised? Why does 'DICK' however, hold such little power? We should regain the ownership of the word 'cunt' as to employ this term only abates it's power and it creates a safe haven for women to take total ownership of their cunts.

To the same extent - my High School English teacher always mused on her love of the word 'WHORE' and wished only that she could have named her daughter 'Whore' - had her partner not wholeheartedly objected at the time. 

THOUGHTS

ANYTHING BY THESE GUYS

http://beckyandjoes.com/

The creators of 'Don't Hug Me I'm Scared' are British artist duo Becky and Joe and their. shit. is. bananas.

They've also created amazingness for Tame Impala and Unknown Mortal Orchestra so anything felt/clay/digitally animated and put together by these guys is glorious.

WE ARE NOT WORTHY.

Ad-spiration...

Because not all TVC's have to be about pushing products directly into your face flesh, some of them are beautiful and quality and cuddly and soft and rib bustingly funny.

Over the last couple of months of 2015 I decided to start collecting my personal favourite Advertisements both static and for television (though my preference has always been in TV) - and here's the very beginning of my collection...

The following are both hilarious and beautiful:

https://vimeo.com/147297365

https://vimeo.com/143121458

https://vimeo.com/122521696

https://vimeo.com/122522015

https://vimeo.com/133330087

https://vimeo.com/143122019

(Christmas tingles)...

FULL BUSH

Last night Tim and I went to see Nick Offerman at the State Theatre for his first show in Australia: 'FULL BUSH'

He was glorious. It was basically a combination of a lecture about keeping your pubic hair in it's natural state - with particular reference to how much he loves his wife Megan Mullally's bush - and songs he performed on an acoustic and a Ukulele about his great love of all things America, pubes, Whiskey and sex. I got the very strong sense that if the world becomes a post-apocalyptic waist land? Offerman is your go to guy. 

Pube perfection.

This is the only quote and quote display I don't completely roll my eyes at...Tim gave me this little piece of wisdom back in London when I was having a moment of 'I'm shit, everyone else in the world is better than me, look at this Illustrator here, I'm going to give up now, K-bai.' 

This quote really means a lot to me because I spend a large amount of my time comparing myself to other Illustrators and never quite matching up to my ridiculously high standards of myself which is not only unhealthy but boring for everyone around you who thinks you're great. I need to keep this in mind when looking at others because no matter who you might be stupidly jealous or envious of, there's a high chance they too have their very own insecurities and are in the grips of a comparison test themselves.

'Draw-hacks' (?) A message from personal experience...

I was thinking during the wee hours of this morning, finalising the last details on a current very sweet commission...what are some of the most important life hacks I could dispense from my own personal experience about Illustration? What in my experience can I give to you about that niggling little 'drawing habit'?

Well for one, it isn't every day I am up so late but when the fever to keep drawing or painting takes hold, you really don't stop. You can't and it's often detrimental to the entire process if you do. The drive to keep working comes from a need to see things through and to work to the very best standard you can muster, to push yourself until you're confident that the piece of work you just created isn't going to keep you up all night wondering if you'd chosen the right palette or if you needn't have added that extra hair.

The urge to draw grips me sometimes at the most inconvenient times - when I'm out at the shops, when I'm just drifting off to sleep or when I'm working on something entirely different that needs to be done like battling away at my Diploma during assessment time...I can really only describe this feeling as when you suddenly need to poop. It's a surge of 'oh my god' followed by momentary panic that if you don't get this shit down now...(yes, pun intended) you may lose it. You may literally lose it...and when you have access to your drawing pad? your allegorical toilet? You. Wreck. That. Shit.

Here's the catch...in my experience, after said poop: as soon as - the very moment you start to think 'I'm exhausted', 'I'm getting tired, bit hungry, could eat' or 'hey look my neighbour's in his underpants again.' you stop. Stop drawing, peel yourself away from the paints and come back another time. The piece that ends with you looking at it questioning your life choices, mauling a pack of Mint Slices because you're definitely a piece of shit who's made a huge mistake (what are you even doing with your life?) - that piece, is going in the bin, that's the piece you kept flogging away at even though your eyeballs were falling out of your head from boredom or exhaustion or both, but you felt the pressure to keep with it.

Alternatively, unfortunately if it literally cannot go in the bin because a client is pressing on you for it - it's going to haunt you like an adorable little Casper in your nightmares. It could have been much closer to perfect had you gone outside for a walk or watched another Bobs Burgers for a much needed intermission. The moments I've 'just pushed through!' to finish a painting or to finalise a sketch - I've always restarted - often in fits of rage - the very next day or, better yet, an hour later when my mood will only let it spiral down further into the pits of hot-press hell.

If I had to narrow it down, to really break it down for you from my experience it would be to take it easy, give yourself a breather when you start to feel the need to wander off, to not be too hard on yourself if you do, and when the urge to draw grips you like a giant poo, let it rip. Release it into the wild and watch it soar. Draw where you can - on a beer coaster, on a napkin or at your desk. Don't stop the music but know when to turn it down.

FOR YOUR HEALTH

The 'ART' in 'FART'...

what if  a 'FART' was actually 'ART' all along?

Imagine those last three-four laborious years of studying your life-long-dream tertiary degree, subsequent honours and Masters...only to find out that 'art' is just a fleeting, bursting emission of noxious gas in the form of a loud, muffled or worst yet - completely silent fart?

Is 'art' simply a fleeting smell? is all art transitory and does it in fact, after that brief exuberant moment of sucking in the rich, quality 'smell of your own bran', exhaling, pausing in the warm aftermath and the ensuing thrill of getting caught in your self made pool of fetid smell...dissipate into thin air? Into obscurity?

Is art just a bad smell that passes with time and fashion, making way for more glorious, more explosive successors?

DISCUSS.

('He-Gassen' (屁合戦) 'The Fart War' - artist unknown)

#studiogoals

#STUDIOENVY

#STUDIOBLISS

#ARTALLDAY

#PARTYNEVER

Raymond Briggs

Welcome...welcome.

 

(Postcard: courtesy of Guerrilla Girls for Avant Card: http://www.guerrillagirls.com/)

Why 'A Life of Baked Beans'?

As a child all I ever ever wanted to do was to become an artist and all my family would ever respond was that it would make me no money at all. My mother and I would jest: 'I'll spend the rest of my life eating Baked Beans from the can and living out of a box.' This appealed to me because I like Baked Beans and I did enjoy a good Box Fort. It was only upon reaching adulthood that the full ramifications of that sentiment set in and by that stage I was already four fingers deep into the world of all things 'fartist'. 

Mum was and is a very talented painter and illustrator - when she wants to be - and my father was a Graphic Designer and gifted artist. I believe the family 'erring on the side of caution' came from first-hand experience that becoming an artist was a lovely idea in theory but may not be entirely based in reality. They resigned themselves to the idea that I was never going to change my mind by the time I started my Visual Arts Degree and had gone full Art Student (complete with Doc Martins and a tendency to wear severed dolls heads as accessories and start arguments based on my untried knowledge of Australian and British politics).

Am I a Woman Artist?

Yes, I am

Why Blog about your personal experience as a poor artist? it seems a bit wanky.

This blog is meant to be a blog by me, for me, 'personally'. I'm a crap diary writer who writes for approximately two days into a beautiful brand new journal I can't afford before giving up and resuming my obsessive internal monologue that drives me ever further into a tunnel of doom. A Life of Baked Beans is basically a place to write down my thoughts on what I've been working on, something I've seen or a show I've been to, an advertisement I've liked on TV, a campaign I'm into, study and commissions and the occasional stupid sketch - a personal experience you can poke you head into if you so choose.

I would also love your thoughts - please feel free to comment or drop me a line and check out my website if you'd like to see what I like to do most: www.strongpencil.com

Dig in.