Gilly Huber | Artist

The summer break has been wonderful with a great family Xmas, a quiet start to the New Year and enjoying the Australia Day Skyshow from the balcony of my parents’ apartment in the City - although Nature’s skyshow at the same time was almost more spectacular! But it wasn’t all rest and relaxation, although I did do a lot of that, particularly this last couple of weeks with the temperature soaring into those 40 degrees centigrade days. However, it was good to finish the final two commissions out of the eleven I started at the beginning of 2011.

One was an oil on canvas of rainbow lorikeets which I really enjoyed, particularly the bark of the old, gnarled tree on which I had them perched. There were so many colours in the bark, and so much broken, twisted wood to make it really interesting and exciting to paint. I sent the image to my client and he wrote back that his ‘jaw dropped’ when he saw it - so I guess that means he liked it! It won’t be ready for him until July when I’ll varnish it, but then he wants me to do a canvas of a rose in really, really close-up form, rather like Georgia O’Keefe’s wonderful, evocative paintings of flowers. I hope I can do justice to her memory and that of the rose.

The other painting was the pastel portrait for the military guy of whom I wrote in my last ‘blog’ - the one who was so rude. This portrait was of his father, an elderly gentleman of quite ample proportions, quite different from any portrait I’ve ever done before. I wasn’t so mad about doing it after the remarks that had been made to me, but as I’d accepted the commission it had to be done and, of course, being somewhat disinterested I managed to nail the likeness in the very first painting session!!!! So that was pleasing. The clothing was another matter - he was wearing a very finely checked jacket which took me absolutely hours to render very painstakingly with pastel pencils, it was so fine and detailed. So it was a great relief when it was all finished.

Also, during the break, I had a good sort through in my Studio and set aside 17 paintings that were either old, never sold, or made me wonder why I’d ever had them framed in the first place!!!! I suppose they were good at the time! Now I view them and realise that I’ve moved on a long way. So I plan to pull them all out of the frames (store them in a folder for future amusement!) and paint new works to re-use the frames. I’ll choose similar subjects and colours to fit the mounts and frames. The first one I’m attempting is a watercolour and as I haven’t touched watercolours for at least a year (all the commissions were required either in oils or pastels) I’m feeling very rusty and nervous about it. I was really scared about applying the first washes but they’ve gone OK, so far. We shall see what happens. Watch this space!