In which the fish is surprised by a tragedy

He has always been present at any significant art event in Sydney for as long as I can remember.

As a young art student, I remember Nick Waterlow's  name spoken with both affection and reverence: he was responsible for putting Sydney on the cultural map with his curating of the Biennale of Sydney. Recently I watched him in dialogue with Caroline Christov-Bakargiev, marvelling at the ease in which he articulated his ideas, the way he spoke, and how much he was respected. His knowledge and understanding was international.

He didn't suffer fools gladly, and was not known to schmooze or curry favour with artists, yet he was able to create exhibitions which demonstrated ideas: they always showed things in a new light. He was passionate about art, and he was passionate about ideas.

I saw him buzzing around the MCA at last years' Primavera, with his little greek cap on his head, always part of what was going on. He looked wonderfully offbeat, his face maintaining a regal air in counterpoint to his general appearance. Occasionally I plucked up the courage to have a chat with him, because to be honest, he always made me slightly nervous. I didnt always talk to him about art, but sometimes about his daughter, Chloe, who I had been one of my very first students when I began teaching. He was close to Chloe.


I remember her when she first started high school: she was just like a Victorian Porcelain doll: beautiful white skin, dark eyes and ringlets. She had a particular look about her, and always remained a contained child, growing up to be a beautiful woman. I see now she abandoned the curls, no doubt letting some straightening device loose on them. I very much wish I did not see a photo of Chloe's straightened hair in the newspaper, I truly don't. I would prefer to think of her wearing her crown of flowers in the Jubilarian ceremony when she graduated. With ribbons hanging down.


Nick Waterlow has been so much a part of the College of Fine Arts for so very long I cannot imagine the place without him.


 It is all so senseless. As Ian Howard says, it is the worst kind of tragedy.


(Photograph from the COFA website. My apologies.)

The scent of Blue

When I was small, I seemed to see and feel things a little differently to everybody else, or so my mother seemed to think, though I was quite unaware, most of the time, of what other people did and felt.

Certain colours gave off a particular feeling and smell, the sounds of peoples' names prompted colours and shapes. I would be compelled to pick things up, if they were a certain colour, to feel them with my fingertips, or even my lips. Music always had  colour and form, as did the sounds of words.

Sometimes I would see a coloured haze around peoples' head or bodies, and colours or noises would give off a sensation of smell.  I didnt really think much of this, or the fact that Mum remarked on how odd it was when I remarked upon the colours of things which she only saw as black or white.

You are a strange child, she would say

I was much older when I read about the term synaesthesia, and it seemed to sound very much like the way I responded to things, as if the hard-wiring of my senses was a little bit off, or turned up to excess. At certain times I would have very strange reactions to things, to various physical sensations.  Nabokov wrote so synaethetically, that when I read "Speak, memory" I understood the language implicitly.

After I had children, my synaesthesia seemed to diminish somewhat. I figured that I probably had sensory overload, and my brain had closed down certain areas which were not immediately important.

Last week I managed to get to my studio.

The moment I closed the door behind me I felt a beautiful feeling come over me. I welcomed the smells, the traces of the indigo dying from last summer still hanging as a base note, the aroma of gum turpentine very faint. Cineraria leaves which had been simmering, the fragrant little cigarettes Shoufay smokes.

But today I have a small parcel: inside it is a CD and some pictures of paintings, originally Venetian, but currently in Paris. I begin to feel that strange soft buzzing in my face and hands.

I put on the music.

It is Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.

It is so known yet unknown, so beautiful that images immediately seem to swell out of nowhere into my head. I hold my large fat brush, with Titian's girl beside me, and spread the colours: Ultramarine blue, a golden Olive green, Viridian, Indigo, turquoise. Light flickering on underwater skin.

As I paint I seem to fragment into some multidimensional world, where I am in the pastoral scene described by the music: edges of land and sea, indigo shadows, bright cliffs and undulating landforms. Birds.

There is light coming in the windows as I spread the layers of paint onto the surface. As I change colour, I become aware that I can smell them, sharply. Not the actual scent of paint, but the sharp smell of the colour itself: the Olive Green smells like rotting food, the Ultramarine sharp and salty, high and sweet, Indigo smells like the darkest tone of a rose.

I look at the detail of the sash in the Titian painting: he has used Ultramarine for the highlights of the fabric, and a golden shade of Olive green for the shadows, like shot silk. The same exact two colours i am using.

The Fantasia continues in my head. It has been quite some time since I found myself in this state. I wonder then, if Titian and the Venetians ever had the same sensation.

Closing the door behind me when I leave, the real world floods in.

I sit with the children later that afternoon and eat watermelon, wondering if I should share the sensation of falling into colours and sounds today,

 but find I haven't the words.

working from home in the house of fish

Things are busy in the House of Fish. I am supposed to be writing today.

It is a non-teaching day.

But the house looks like a cyclone has been through it and I am hunting for a Very Important Piece of Paper, which of course I cannot find.

I have gotten the scanner to work though.

Naturally, I am allowing this to completely take over what I am doing and not one word has been written.

I did find some notes I took in a boring meeting.

and then I found a picture of my models wearing some of my Titian inspired brooches.

I wonder who is wearing these now?

Oh, look. Some flowers in Monets garden when I was there last. What splashy dahlias!

Ah, so pretty!

Looking at the time, I see I have lost another day as it is almost time to pick up the children on this rainly day. So much for working from home: the sum total of my efforts today is to make some scans, create even more piles of mess in the search for things I need, and a total avoidance of the Big Issue: the unwritten thesis.

Of which I have entirely lost the thread, the plot, and half my notes.

But have agreed, having been thoroughly shamed, to take the daughter Formal Dress Shopping.

Apparently, she and her friend are the only two children not to have a dress. All the Other Mothers have long taken their girls and spent their every dollar to clad them in some wonderful dress...the other said mother rang me in horror "do you know what i had to do today? take georgia shopping...oh, it was horrible"

so that leaves only me, the Failed Mother, yet to tackle the job.

Which sounds only marginally less horrid than writing a thesis in one weekend.

Oh, one day. Saturday, I'll be shopping...