Desperate Damsel v's Femme fetale

Saturday and the melancholy of last nights frivolity has worn off, I have showered, I am clean and good to go. So I made made my way to Glebe markets with $100 and hoped for something divine!

There she was, fat, aboriginal in origin, rude, mid-50's maybe and pumping out works dedicated to Robert A. Maguire classic crime noir illustrator. Where have you been all my life fat, rude, talented lady?

The interesting thing is that she only illustrates, desperate damsels. There are classically two types of crime noir heroine. The desperate damsel and the femme fetale.

My whole blog is femme fetale inspired. I just don't identify with the other. Crying bitches... please, just shoot the daddy in the back of the head and be done with it, right? Plenty more where they came from.

So, I bought one.

This one.

I thanked her profusily, tried to wax lyrical about the genre, told her to send me a catalogue of her other work.

She didn't even look up, I was not even on this angsty middle aged womans radar. She was to0 involved getting her creative sad on. I love her! I wonder, if I had been the man that broke her heart would she have put her ink down, who knows?

Love it. So the teary love smacked damsel will sit pride of place above my couch and there she will stay. A constant reminder of why I will never be the desperate damsel!

This is one of mine... spot the difference.

Cya Daddy...

Uniting the twin disciplines of red shoes and mens hands...

"In Hand" water color and ink on paper. Mark Schwartz.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a weakness for two things, red shoes and men with nice hands.

Oh hello....
GOD CREATES MAN... MAN CREATES SHOES. S is having both, thanks.

Was what I thought when I made an impassioned decision to buy one of Mark's works this week. It's so powerful, raw and I just love it!

I've been checking out his work, prolific work actually, Mark can you sell me your work ethic too? Very few of them seem to have a human element, so this one had a particularly visceral appeal complemented by the bleed of the water colors.

The title has a resonance with me as well. There is nothing about my life presently that I feel like I have in hand. So it makes me feel kind of steady and reassured.

It's also just a little bit sexy.

It just fills me with such immense joy! It's marvelous!

Thanks Mark.

The girl who's house threw up Mexico!

I adore understated genius.

I had lunch on Sunday with a girlfriend I have known since primary school who smiled and allowed me to rant incoherently about my new years resolution to return to dress making. The vintage patterns I found online, the fabric I had bought and the mission it was to get my sewing machine home from the coast to Sydney on the train when I have the upper body strength of a tadpole.

"yeah, I do furniture," she said.

She pulled an elegant antique tin from her bag and pushed it across the table. It was her portfolio.

Oh holy Jesus! Maaike, you are a clever bitch! Her extensive travel through Mexico combined with her eclectic and tangential thought processes have influenced some of the coolest and most unique furniture projects I have ever seen.

Maaike, I hope you don't mind that I put your image here ; ) Of course you don't , your marvelous!

The Beppe (Frisian for Grandmother) Chair is covered in green velvet stripes previously destined for the dump, and labelled as "too ugly" by anyone who saw it on the bolt. Combined with Mexican roses and princess-and-the-pea cushions, the chair resembles my Beppe's adhoc sewing basket. http://www.maaidesign.blogspot.com/

I think you either love it or you hate it. Her house is full of these pieces, someone, who didn't love it once described her home as the house that threw up Mexico! I love it, played hard man, nice work!

In the words of Maaike, my new favorite creative she-hero.

If anyone, man or woman, tries to get between you and your creativity tell them:

"Stop making me a lesser person." : )