OK, I'll be honest
here. On a scale of 1 → Many many thousands, my techno savy brain cells
number in the region of..let me see..um..2 and I've used both of them up
getting my first post posted. I recognise that there are settings like 'About me'
and 'how you might follow me' as I trail you around my studio. The trouble is
that I don't seem to be able to find them. I know that there are oceans of
helpful studious folk that have written all the answers I'll ever need, but
going down that road with 3 weeks before my exhibition, is akin to going wingsuit
gliding without a helmet. That would be - heading somewhere really, really fast
in a manner in which really, really uncomfortable things are likely to happen. I have also not activated
Comments at this stage, but hope to as I become more familiar with the
territory. So here is a little bit about me and it comes with a promise of rigorous
efforts in Googleland sometime in the not too distant future.
The short and official
version.
Cathryn Marinos was
born and raised amongst a fruit orchard and gum trees in the Adelaide Hills.
Years spent living in the beautiful landscape of Idaho's Rocky Mountains
surrounded by an abundance of wilderness and its creatures, influences her work
to this day and something of the quiet of the woods can be felt in her art.
Today, she paints from her studio at home, in an historic village in the wine
and cattle growing region of the Mt Lofty Ranges.
Now for the unofficial
one.
I am one of 5
children, raised on a bush block where we ran around all day getting filthy,
getting clean in the dam, getting filthy again and having a 5 kid bath at the
end of the day in bore water dirtier than the dam. It was an amazing way to
grow up. My father Nic was a biologist who
studied alpine plants and we would set off as a family in various VW vans, summer and
winter, to spend long wonderful weeks camping, exploring, swimming in rivers and growing strong in the high country of Victoria.
5 small children having lunch in the forests of the Buckland Valley, Victoria. |
Art was always in my
life. We had access to the two most important things a child with natural
tendencies towards creativity needs. One was understanding that artistic
endeavor was accepted as a meaningful pastime. The other, was ready access to
reams of scrap paper, pencils, paint and room to spread ourselves out on the
kitchen floor.
When I was a little
older, I ran away to America to climb mountains, study Art and Outdoor Survival
Education. There, I met a strappingly handsome Alaskan Lumberjack, Geology
student, fell immediately in love, married and fell almost as immediately in
child with the first of our two beautiful daughters. (Technically, I didn't
fall in, I dove.)
I am mesmerised by the unexpected moments of
contentment and wonder that this life holds, even in the darkest of times. I
love colour and seeing beauty in ordinary things and am enormously grateful
that art is a daily part of my life. Maybe the heart is healed by joy and so in
my own small way, which is the only way I’ve got, I hope to mend a tiny portion
of the world.
Thank you for listening,
Cathryn
I think this is amazing (and I kind of now want 5 dirty, rag-tag children making an arty mess on my kitchen floor!) and I look forward to seeing what you do here on this blog space!
ReplyDeleteThank you. That is a very apt description of us. We were 5 peas in a pod and were inseparable. That photo of us was taken miles - and I mean MILES - from anywhere and we had spent hours walking through the bush, coming across wallabies and free range cattle, to climb to where we could sit and have bread and cheese for lunch. I will be posting a new story this weekend with photos of Wombat Christmas, the new Christmas card inspired by the area. Now, to the desk or I wont have anything to show you.
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