OzCloggie

It’s that time of the year again. Time to nominate that favourite beach, in the Keep Australia Beautiful Clean Beach Challenge.

What reminded me was
David Haworth’s capture of Pambula Beach, on redbubble.com.

When I saw it, I had one of my many senior moments and wondered what I’d written about it but when I realised the location, I knew that I had not assessed it for the Keep Australia Beautiful Clean Beach Challenge, as I had not been allocated either the far north or the far south coast of N.S.W..

From 2002 until 2007, I was very relieved and pleased to be invited every September to visit a certain number of beaches, which had been nominated in the annual Keep Australia Beautiful, Clean Beach Challenge.

As though it was meant to be, I was not asked last September, which happened to be the month when I was preparing for my first ever, solo exhibition, to celebrate my 65th birthday.

It would have been impossible to do both. Assessing the beaches nominated, involves a preparatory in-service day, followed by making arrangements to meet up with the people who nominated the beaches, during the official weeks.

And after the beaches have been visited the writing of reports takes up quite some time too. It would have been impossible.

As an assessor, I was simply a volunteer, interested in beaches ( and in keeping them beautiful! ). Fellow assessors (at first called ‘judges’) came with a range of expertise and interests.

I was always determined to point out that, like Sergeant Schultz, I knew nothing, about how beaches are managed, hoping to represent the ” average ” beach-goer, who likes to be safe and comfortable on a beach, in order to enjoy it and relax.

I did feel that, of course, I had a perspective.
I was particularly keen to see if visitors who cannot read (English) and who are not so young any more (like me) or who might be bringing very little children, were being correctly catered for.

Obviously, being given so much information, every year, did tend to build up a knowledge of what does go on (or not).

Walking on and around the beaches, made it very hard for me to record things, on paper. It became my particular habit to record everything that I saw and/or was told, using a small, light camera (capturing the good and the bad).
Quite a few of those photos are still around.

I had not realised that the young lady who was also in the Tap Gallery, most of the time that I was there, during the week of 6 to 12 October, 2008, was seriously creating videos for Youtube.
TAKE A LOOK!!

Day after tomorrow (Thursday, 24 May) I take five of my paintings to Oyster Bay. To Oyster Bay Public school, in fact, where the Annual Art and Craft Festival takes place.

"The inaugural Oyster Bay Art & Craft Festival was held in 1970 on the 3-6 site and has become a tradition of the school. Each year since its inception, thousands of dollars worth of educational resources go directly into classrooms and school programs as a result of this highly successful fund-raising event. The wonderful support of parents and the Oyster Bay community has meant that this event has grown and thrived.
..........
The festival opens each year with the Opening Night activities on the Friday night including an auction, entertainment and presentation of Art and Craft awards. The rest of the weekend is filled with numerous art and craft stalls, rides and games for the children, a variety of entertainment as well as performances by the Oyster Bay PS bands, choirs and dance groups."

I get the impression that, having been established for such a long time, this art and craft festival attracts, probably chiefly from the Sutherland Shire, quite a good standard of works.

A very, very long time ago (also in the 70s) I put up some of my paintings in an exhibition which was organised by the Dutch community, here in Sydney. At that stage, since i was one of the presenters of the then new Dutch language radio program, via SBS Radio 2EA, I wanted to show visitors to the exhibition, in the Manly area, that I had other interests apart from radio and Dutch lessons.

THIS time, it all feels more seerious, now that I am in my second year of developing my style.

Actually, since nominating the paintings, a month or more back, I'd like to think that my more recent paintings, particularly the one I am working on now, are better.

But, that's to be hoped or even expected! Zeker weten!!

Inspired by Rembrandt is the title given to a competition, or search, organised by Radio Netherlands and it truly DID inspired me to paint, in recent months. Sadly,my work did not make it into the list of 18 finalists.

There was my self - portrait.













My painting of me, in front of the entrance to the town hall of the city (Gouda), where I was born.














There was the 'group portrait'. Three children. Two from Rembrandt's time and one from this century.
The painting celebrates two lots of '400'. 400 years since the birth of Rembrandt. 400 years since the Dutch found and mapped large parts of the Australian coast. The girl is Australian. The boys Dutch.













There was the painting of Ike, who lives in the Netherlands, praying.