The field above the gorge

I think I might have fixed the sound. Can you hear me? Or are we still broken? You're joking. Did I actually manage to fix it? I was convinced I was speaking to myself. We do. You're unbelievable. Un truly unbelievable. Wow. I'm I'm beyond proud of myself because technology is not my strongest suit and I've tried to pull out some quite old gear to see if I can get it all teed up and working and it seems like we've had a round of success. So, let's not get too excited too early. There's lots of things that have certain amounts of battery power and we may just.

Find one just up and dies on us. So, right now though, it looks like we've got visual, we've got sound, we've got paint, we've got brushes, we've got a canvas to be painted, we've got sun, which is trying to move around the sky, but we can adjust things as we go. And we've got the last half, it was full at the start, but the last half now of a coffee simply being that took longer to get set up than I thought. When I say longer to get set up, we've been at this for the better part of two hours. but we're all we're.

All teed up now, which is great. Now, the sun has moved on me. So, let me let me spin this around. And I'm going to try and read the comments as I go, but bear with me because with the sun blaring out like it is, it will be a little bit more challenging to see them. But I'm going to do my best. So, long time no see everyone. Thank you very much for leaping back in and joining me and tolerating my absence. let's not dwell on that. Let's dwell on this picture here. Now, I'm hoping to to spend some time with you guys with.

A bit of framing that we're going to be doing. But for now, no distractions, fresh canvas. And this one here is actually a painting of where we are right now. This is going to be Tui Gorge. And the beautiful part about this piece is it's going to be subtly a reflection of another painting. Very subtly, but I won't give up more than that. We'll go that far. We'll go that far. But at the moment, hills through here, sky, and then the reflection of those hills will be down in the water with a kind of, dare I say it, tumultuous, I didn't pronounce that right, .

Landscape through here. Lots of different changes and elevations, lots of color. I want to bathe the whole thing in just different, wildly different pigments all over the surface is the plan. and we'll see where that takes us. It's as simple as that. Let me get this one out here. And I do hope everyone in all the four corners of the globe that you're from while I've been away, I hope you've been all right. got a bush track here on this property and I've been trying to get into some walking, little bit of running. little bit of running. I got little legs and my.

Knees aren't quite cut out for running, but I give it my best. So, there's that. Good thing about these heavybodied acrylics is where you put the color because it's so thick, it stays. It doesn't mess around and fade out. When you do those thin sheen, if the surface isn't prepped, if the surface isn't prepped perfectly, it'll sink into the substrate. In this case, it's quite a dry gesso board, so it does stand to possibly lose a bunch of that color into it. But it won't cuz heavy-bodied, it's like putting thick liquid plastic on something just doesn't lose its color in the same way. But.

The more you add, the more Kelly you get. It's that simple. Bango knew that. Hello Jay, welcome on in. And Birdie, all the old friends, thank you very much for joining on in again. I'm good. I'm very good. And I hope you've been good, too. Birdie, I hope you're still painting. Hope you're still making art. You'll hear the in the background if you can. You'll hear the tuis. So, this is called Tui Gorge. This is my home. And we've actually got a few, they're about 40 years old, I think. That might be entirely wrong. 40-year-old olive trees that were absolutely covered in olives. And.

Shelby and I were thinking, how are we going to pick all these olives? How are we going to do this? Do we get a commercial outfit in? Do we do it ourselves? Shelby was doing a lot of research in how to pick olives. We were going the whole nine yards. And anyway, turns out our problem solved itself because the birds, ties, black birds, everything came in and ate every single olive. There was a commercial crop of olives and now it's all been eaten. So, on one hand, now I know when to pick my olives. two weeks before that. On the other hand, now I've.

I don't have the job of picking olives. So that's wonderful. The one wild card being the one beautiful part been that because those birds came in for the olives, there was this wonderful period where we had just incredible, incredible bird song all through the gorge. Really, really beautiful. Never hurts. You couldn't hear yourself think. The birds you do hear now, they're not eating the olives anymore. They're all gone. What they're hanging out and talking about is how good the olives were. They They did look like good olives, too. Not that I'm an olive expert. They just looked succulent. Ready for the picking. And it turns.

Out I was right. How about that? Hey, Mac attack. Oh, fantastic, Birdie. Love to hear it. Love to hear it. I hope the commissions that you're taking and doing, I do hope you're getting that little bit of freedom to sort of add your own bit of flavor into it. Commissions are great. They're amazing. But you need to have that freedom to put your flavor, your kind of stamping on it. You be like, "Well, it's my art. They want my art." They do, but like the kind of loose a leash to explore and go somewhere you didn't expect you were going to go. That's what.

This painting's been. Now, actually, what'll be really interesting is I'll show you at the end of this one, this one beside its sister or brother. this is the second go I've had at this one because I want to get it right. Big on that. I've been restarting a lot of pieces, but that's just that's just how I'm behaving at this point in my life. be interesting to see where it goes. The restaurant one was absolutely gorgeous though. That one is now in Washington and they loved it, which is fantastic because that was the kind of work that we had so much.

Detail in it, but it did have a slightly larger level of abstraction. And so, ha, there is a familiar face that I'm overjoyed to see. Hey, JC. Welcome in. I hope you don't hold my absence against me. We've got the wonderful, wonderful season going on at the moment. And here in New Zealand, this is my home. You're looking at grass. that. Well, is it my grass or does it belong to the bank? it's I mean, isn't a mortgage just a rental agreement you have with the bank? It certainly feels that way sometimes. So in this landscape too, we're going to try and get a.

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