OzCloggie

What a wonderful few hours it was!
Celebrating my 65th birthday, exhibiting 62 of my paintings, at the Tap Gallery, Darlinghurst was a great experience. 62 paintings, produced in such a short time, obviously impressed many of the guests.

There was such a wonderful variety of friends, family and their friends present, including virtual friends, from the redbubble.com Australian section.
Son and daughter did just about all of the organising; curating and generally...the work!
It was good to meet their friends and I am grateful for the ambience created with great guitar-work.

The exhibition was called: Remembering, an anthology and was made up of 62 paintings, produced, during a time-span of 2.5 years, attending Hazelhurst Arts and Community Centre, where, while not engaginging in the actual lessons and activities, I was highly motivated first by a teacher, called Gwen, followed by a teacher, called Melissa.
Both were happy to allow my to bring my own work and, as a teacher myself, I appreciated their talent for advising, encouraging and providing just the right support.

The exhibition and its opening brought together (again) four ex-students of the long-gone Maroubra Bay High School (The empty buildings, in the 1990s were briefly used as the setting for the T.V. series: Heartbreak High).
This being a great way to warm up for the grand 50 year reunion, being organised for March 7, 2009, in the Shannon Room, A.J.C., Randwick.
Yes. It is hard to believe that Terry Turner (left in the photo) and I were in this street (Palmer St.) in the late 50s, early 60s, when Terry lived there and attended Maroubra Bay Bay/ South Sydney Boys Junior High Schools.

Also present was Hans Tiller, retired but still active and now consulting engineer and well-known, in the Newcastle area, for his training of athlets, i.e., runners.
He and I shared the experience of arriving in south-eastern Sydney as very young teenagers, from the Netherlands, in the mid-fifities, and travelled to South Sydney Boys Junior High School together, in various ways (tram, buses, and lots of walking, up Avoca Street), until we were transferred to the new Maroubra Bay High School.


Just under fifty years ago, when Terry and Hans put on leather jackets and we took this photo, acting out what we believed we'd look like, in the future, doing mature things, like playing cards, for money, we could not have predicted, we'd be in the Tap Gallery, (back) in Palmer Street, Darlinghurst, admiring my art work.

Hans and I are in touch , more indirectly than directly, every so often because our parents were friends for many years and we share other mutual friends, some of whom returned to the Netherlands, in the late sixties and now we have the internet and reasonable air-fares.
There was another schoolfriend, from those years at South Sydney Boys Junior/ Maroubra Bay High School, Jeffrey, who, somehow, unfortunately did not receive the invitation to the opening night but came along,during one of the afternoons.

I had become friends with Jeff, while we were still in Avoca Street Randwick, in the school beside the library and Randwick Town Hall.
Jeff lived at Bondi Beach but still transferred with us to the new Maroubra Bay High School, in 1959, where we had the pleasure of the company of girls, in this brand-new co-educational secondary school.
That made (my) birthday parties a lot of fun too.

Since getting back in touch with ex-MBHS students, because of the reunios (2004 and next year's) I am aware that, even back then, I was seen as the typical, potential primary school teacher, who liked to organise people and have them play (harmless) games. (Not even spin-the-bottle, which WAS played, at Elizabeth's birthday party, but that's another story.)
(Yes. That is Jeff, with me, when we caught up, at Maroubra Beach, recently and, yes, that was Jeff, in about 1960/61, when I was stopping and starting the music and leading the kind of games that I'd learnt from my long association with the late Bob Potter, of the ballroom dancing studio, in Maroubra Junction, where I spent so much of my teenage years.
I was pleased that the board of the Dutch Australian Cultural Centre was so well-represented at the opening, while two more visited on other days.
About half the members of the board are, themselves artists or involved in the arts.
I attended Thea Bourne's art exhibition a few years back and her talk, recently, about her work, at the arts and community centre, in Manly.
I am so grateful to my son and daughter, who made all this happen. They were there when the exhibition was suggested and ensured that I'd agree. With the support of their mum, they did all the work. (Setting up the exhibition and later taking it down and providing all that was required to make the opening / birthday a succes, including inviting along their friends and colleagues, bringing together such a lovely lot of people!

It had been suggested that I not read a speech. I am plainly not good at making speeches, without props. However, I agree, say a few words, however, ungainly, WAS more suited to the occasion.
However, here are some excerpts from what I'd prepared earlier:
Thank you all, for being here tonight.
Thank you to Lesley for suggesting that this should happen.
Thank you, to Martin, Johanna and Elisa for organising this event.
I reckon that it’s going to be my 21st, my 60th and 65th birthdays that I am going to remember best.


Those who understand Dutch might like to listen to the interview that I had, on SBS Radio, with Anneke Boudewijn, once it’s put on the internet. (And it WAS!)She asked of course what the exhibition was all about and, without being able to show her, and her listeners, the actual paintings,

I made her laugh, when I explained that it’s obviously not as though I am trying to bring some kind of message to the world. I just draw pictures, mainly from photos and colour them in.
When I was little, I was given a book, read to me several times over, called Alleen Op De Wereld, which means alone in the world.

The illustrations were by Belgian-born Georges van Raemdonck, who worked in the Netherlands, mainly drawing cartoons for the newspapers.
I still have the book, in which I used my coloured pencils to improve his drawings.

About 58 years later I have copied and coloured in his illustrations again.
As in all the paintings, the process has involved, bringing back memories, like having this book read to me, when I was little, and in far more recent years, walking along the Seine, searching in the bookstalls, for the original versions of books one and two, in French, with Johanna, and watching her converse with all those interesting booksellers. _{They were such characters!}


It even brought back memories of being in the French class, at Maroubra Bay High School, sitting beside Hans Tiller, (who is here tonight, with Maree,) getting excited because John Fredericks, the teacher, knew all about the book, Sans Famille,
I am currently involved with promoting the 50 years reunion of Maroubra Bay High School students.
If there IS another theme, here, in the exhibition, as part of remembering. It can be called: It started with a wave!



In 2006, Johanna and I had lunch, in the Hazelhurst Art and Community Centre. Elisa and Johanna had been there previously and, quite rightly, decided that this might be a good way to get me out of the house, where I was caring for my father.
I enrolled and took a list that I was given, to a shop, called Make, in Gymea, where I bought all the materials that I would need. Another customer and the woman, who managed the shop, assured me that Gwen, who ran the class, was a great teacher of art. And she was.
Still, I only did ONE of her exercises.
She brought along a watercolour that she had done, of a wave, and got us to copy it, in oils.
I enjoyed that, and as I had been assessing beaches for the Keep Australia Beautiful, Clean Beach Challenge, since 2002 and, in the process, had visited a large number of NSW beaches, taking lots of photos, I continued on that theme, of painting beach scenes. ......
For those here, who are not of Dutch background, I’d like to explain that my parents brought me to Australia, when I was 12, in 1956, at the height of what has been called the wave of migration, from the Netherlands.

Like the majority of migrants, from the Netherlands, my parents, made the decision to migrate, because of the experiences they’d had during the occupation of the Netherlands, by Germany and because of fearing a third world war between the then USSR and the USA. Australia seemed a safe, far-away place.

They wanted a better future for me and my father who was then working as an insurance agent, wanted to be in a country where he didn’t always feel cold and wet, while collecting the monthly contributions, door-to-door.
Headline, in local Gouda newspaper: _{Mul (That's me.) does not long to be back in the Netherlands.}

My uncle, who had been in Melbourne for a few years, told my father that the sun always shines, in Australia.
There was also another uncle, who had jumped ship, in Sydney and had come back to Holland, scaring me half to death, when as a small boy I opened the front door to him and saw this deeply sun-tanned man standing there.




And our friends, the van Hoorns, were related, by marriage, to a family, in Applecross, near Perth, but when the ship that brought us to Australia, taking 5 weeks, moored, in Fremantle Harbour, it turned out there was unlikely to be work for the adults and we got back on the ship and eventually ended up, in Sydney, where tonight I welcome you to my first art exhibition, curated and hung by Johanna and Martin, given a special touch by the flowers from Elisa and the music from one of Martin’s friends,.. .
(Martin was sure that the painting of Karen H., ~ Maude, 1967 ~ would be wanted by someone. It was much admired but I still have it.....and the memories.)

P.S.
An article in the Courier (Dutch Language newspaper, published, in Melbourne), a news item sent out by Mijntje Hage, of the D.A.C.C., an article in the St George Leader, local paper, all ensured that during the (other) afternoons, there were visitors (mainly of Dutch background).

And then there was the young lady, whom I'd painted from a picture, sent by her mother. (Wish I'd had this photograph to work from. I was never quite happy, only ever having seen her briefly, on evening, at dusk, outside the class, at Hazelhurst)






_{And yet again, from the prepared speech (not given):}
And, for 37 years, I was totally involved in making sure that an average of about 33 pupils, in the classes that I taught, were kept occupied and happy and so, -
From the special times, like Open Days, during Education Week, and school excursions, school dances and sport carnivals, many soccer games, and other fun times, and even from the two terms spent, in Maude-via-Hay, 9 hours drive, in my little green vw, from home, in Sydney, at a small one-teacher school, - I have plenty of material to be inspired by, to paint.

The terms, at Hazelhurst are the same as for schools and I kept re-enrolling, not doing any of the exercises that Melissa set and looking after the battered old radio in the corner, that provided the background music.

Now Melissa is moving even further north, than Gwen did and I’ll be looking for another way to stay inspired.

Peter came.

And Mr and Mrs Zindler

And Akky and, actually quite a few other people........there was so much to tell. There's more HERE! and HERE!

With Akky van Ogtrop.