Musings

When I went ot Egypt at the beginning of the year i succumbed to a Moleskin journal- you know how it is - you pick it up, touch it and feel how smooth the paper is - have visions of Bruce Chatwin filling pages and pages- and voila you are at the till paying for one. I have kept journals since I was sixteen when I started a poetry journal which I kept up until university days and a boyfriend decided to write a rather fienddish limerick in it. That caused a hiatus for about five years when i started again, mainly writing about what I was reading, paragraphs for stories. I wanted to be a writer in those days. I did write quite a number of short stories - have almost finished two novels and have another novel I really do want to finish- I need to edit it. I did very occasionally draw in those journals and cut out interesting photos from newspapers. Then somehow I morphed ( after daughter number 1 was born) into getting A4 drawing journals and started doing much more drawing- always line drawings and patterning- and also words. I hardly ever use colour in my journal- which is strange as colour is so important in my textile work. Anyway last week i started trying to use colour- it is hard.

Today i splurged and bought "Matisse, The Master" by Hilary Spurling after Omega's comments on her blog. I love a good biography and when it is about one of your favourite artists well then you just have to be annnoyed that there is no Amazon Australia and you have to wait two weeks. I will be interested to see if she touches on the influence of tifaifai on Matisse's cut out work of the last years- I have only ever seen mention of it once in all the things i have read of Matisse and then it was a passing comment- but as i am deeply interested in tifaifai and indeed feel my work is much influenced by it ,the connections in Matisse's work is obvious. Also in a catalogue I have ( and am sorry can't name because it is packed away in anticipation of the shed) there is mention of the fact that a friend in Tahiti gave Matisse a tifaifai when he was in Tahiti and that he afterwards wrote to her and asked for another. I think I can see obvious links in the linen printed cloths he did for Ascher & co and in the later work although undoubtedly with his own independent spirit.

And i pray for Palestine every night, the silence really is deafening- I have a friend in Ramallah who has boys almost the same age as my girls- and i fret whether her boys will ever get to do what my girls get to do.