More Rooms in Art

I get a few emails about this post so I thought I would do another one.  

To kick off, Matisse, who invented the idea of the completely red room.  Personally I couldn't live with it, but I can see why people do rooms in this way.  For me, my red dining room is enough to be going on with, and even that room I rarely enter. 

The Red Studio (1911) 

This is a wonderful abstract art piece by Theo Van Doesburg called Counter Composition, painted in 1924.  Very radical for its time.

Its perfect match is this fantastic 1975 kitchen in a John Fowler house in the UK. I have seen red and black laminate kitchens but only rarely blue: 

(Warning: water restrictions rant coming up)

It is rainy and awful (still, again) here in Melbourne. We have floods all over the state and yet our water storage is still only at about 42%.   I can't work it out.  Is there a leak in the dams? I am told the main reservoir is very extremely ginormous and will take years to fill.  So now, after putting a dripper system in our garden and installing three huge water tanks four years ago when the drought began, I may just be able to start using my decommissioned sprinklers.   But there is really no point as we pulled up most of our lawn years ago.   And my water tanks are now overflowing. 

Anyway, I am not so sure about this David Hockney, but you cannot go past him for blue skies and shimmering pools which to me are the epitome of LA.   

Nick Wilder (1966) 

This is the Kauffman house at Palm Springs built in 1946 and designed by Richard Neutra.

And this, the Petrucelli house in Kew here in Melbourne by McBride Charles Ryan. 

To perfectly capture the misty waters of Venice, what better than Giorgione's The Tempest, painted in 1508, which is possibly the first landscape painting (where landscape is not just the background) in Western art.  only 6 works survive and he died of the plague at the age of 34.  Very little is known about him but the maturity and calm in his works influenced many Venetian painters including Titian.  Something pretty creepy is going on here. But no one has ever really been able to work out what. 

To accompany this work, a Venetian palazzo:

and an interior which seems to me to be very Italian in style and feel:

This work is by Ken Done, a designer and artist who was very famous in Australia in the 1980s for his almost Fauvist style vistas of Sydney Harbour.  He uses bright primary colours, which are perfect for any children's room. 

Happy weekend to one and all.  We are off to have Greek for dinner with the children tonight and tomorrow I am hoping to buy some lawn from the nurseries to plump up the nude bits in our garden, and also some more herbs and possibly some silverbeet.  

(Images: (2)(3) Elle Decor (10)(11) Lost sorry! (13) Design Sponge)

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Eight happy grass trees and a mirror for the garden

There were five things in the front garden when we bought our house.   An enormous liquid amber, thirsty for the water in our sewerage pipes, a hyacinth tree which made me think of Elvis Presley films, a magnolia tree which was magnificent in bloom but otherwise twiggy and sticky, an expanse of lawn and some brownish deadish azalea plants.

Nine years later, nothing remains.  The tree went, removed following speedy Star Chamber style trial and conviction by a jury of two on the charge of trying to pull down our front fence with its pushy roots.

The lawn died, also murdered by the tree (and truth be known, by the drought we have had for years).

The azaleas had to go.  I don't care what anyone says. I am not having them in my garden until I am over 60.

And the hyacinth and magnolia were at the end of their lives, so they went off to sunny plant heaven.

This is our attempt at a drought resistent desert garden.   We are no longer fighting nature and our environment, but working with it.  A lot of these ideas we actually got from travelling in New Zealand, where they seem to have a lot of grassy gardens.  

We planted blueberry ash around the border of the garden and also lots of grassy  plants and little bumpy plants (called Hebe), craned in two huge rocks, one for pointing to the sky (see shot above) and one for sitting on with a glass of wine in the evening (out of shot) and built a low stone wall for small children to run along over and over again.    We then put down a pale browney yellow gravel to replace the lawn, which needs ocassional zen raking.

And most importantly, we planted 8 rather large grass trees.

They are also known as black boys, but I believe one is no longer allowed to use that term.

These plants grow native in many parts of Australia.   I have noticed them on the drive from Melbourne to Adelaide and also at my mother's farm.

They are sensitive souls.  They suffer replanting badly.  To address this we planted them, still in their little bags, in a raised pile of soil.  That way they don't need to suffer the indignity of immersion in Someone Else's Ground.

They are so happy in this garden, we cannot believe our luck.

I secretly thought they would die within 6 months and yet here they are, growing away (2 millimetres a year - they live forever, like turtles or Californian redwoods), flowering with their pointy bit, and generally enjoying life in Melbourne. 

Now I need to work on the verandah which looks over the garden. It is an austere space, and really needs work.  ('Austere' here being an elegant way of saying hard, plain and not very attractive).  No photos, it would be a bit too depressing.

But one thing I am thinking about is to hang a mirror on the blank end wall, and maybe grow some ficus around it.  

It would create all kinds of exciting optical light and space illusions. 

A bit like these (but less cottagey):

 

(Images: (1) - (3) Jane (4) Holly Christian.com (5) Brownstoner.com (6) Cedric Bryant.com)

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What Jane Did...

An inordinate amount of vacant staring at the maple tree forest:

(Our garden looking relatively lush)

A new sewing machine (my first ever, and what a revelation) produced this for my daughter:

(and a whole new online obsession - fabric. This one is by Saffron Craig)

Made a little diorama to display and keep tiny boy things in:

(from an otherwise useless Ikea CD container. Who listens to CDs anymore? I don't)

And lots and lots of this:

(from Thai Street Food by David Thompson)

Oh, and a bit of this:

(Gallery of New South Wales 19th century Australian Art room)

Happy New Year and let's hope 2010 brings us all health and what we need (not want).

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Monday Inspiration - boxwood lush green gardens

Anyone who grew up in Melbourne will tell you that it used to rain and rain and rain, for days on end.

Now, in Melbourne we are at stage 3A water restrictions and have been for more than 18 months. Stage 3A is a stage the government invented to avoid going to stage 4 (which would be quite bad electorally). It means you cannot water your lawns, use hoses to wash cars or use automated sprinkler systems. You may water your garden between 6 and 8 am two days a week.

Stage 4 means no watering of gardens at all. This would be a cruel fate for a city with lovely botanical gardens and passionate gardeners and the climate to support a wide range of amazing flora ranging from rhododendrons to kangaroo paw. Question for the government - why target gardeners, who use about 20% of the available water supply, and not industry, which uses more than 60%?

Most have got around the restrictions as we have by installing water tanks and dripper systems. We pulled up our front lawn and the huge liquid amber tree and now have a wonderful desert grass tree garden.

Our gardens have suffered much in the last few years. This was compouded by the bushfires and unbelievably hot temperatures last February, which actually scorched the leaves of our camellia trees.

Whilst I love our climate appropriate garden dearly, I miss lush green lawns. So here are some, from the US and France.

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One day, climate change notwithstanding, when and if it starts raining again in Melbourne on a regular basis, we will get all this back.

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