My thoughts and emotions were feeling scrambled so I decided to drive up the Tamar (a direction I hadn't been before) in the hope that the sea air would straighten me out. I drove for about an hour and ended up stopping at Narawntapu National Park not far from Green's Beach. I felt so nervous and full of apprehension that day and I'm not sure why. I don't know if I'll ever understand why and how a person's moods can shift so quickly. One day you are out and about feeling free and full of inspiration and the next day you feel so quiet and empty and it's so hard to grasp onto one little thing. I feel like my artwork is so tied up with my life and emotions that I don't know if I can separate work and life. I wonder if that will change as I grow older; maybe my process will become more disciplined. It's important for me to work on things when the time is right as I feel like that is the time when you create honest and engaging work. I suppose feelings are continually shifting and it is important to give them time and space to do so. I feel like a little bit of silence always helps. Silence is something that I look for when I travel out to the countryside. It was nice to sit on the cliffs for a while and watch the waves crash in and breathe in the salty air. On the drive back to Launceston I went on a large and unnecessary detour around back dirt roads and picked an armful of apples from a tree on the side of the road. It was a nice end to the afternoon. Sometimes you just have to keep plodding along.

I've been building up a pile of silly little drawings on the mantelpiece over the past few days. This evening I spread them out on the floor to see what has happened so far. I've been doing quick pencil outlines and colouring them in with texta to record thoughts, words or memories passing through my head. Today I became curious about trying to organise the memories chronologically. I grouped them together by year; it felt like quite literally straightening out my thoughts. I'm enjoying this quick way of working and I think I just need to keep going with this drawing process at the moment and see what happens. Being away I feel more free to play around with materials that I wouldn't usually work with.  I also feel that now I'm out of uni I can let things grow and be more naturally grow and not worry too much about the end outcome. 

I've realised that two weeks is hardly any time to get to know a place and work. I tried to see if I could extend my stay at the cottage but alas, someone else is set to arrive next week. I now remember that these two weeks were the only empty spot around this time of the year when I originally contacted the council. Even though it is only a short time, I have been very happy to be here at this time of the year as it has been lovely Summer weather and long days, perfect for swimming and walking around the gorge (and roaming around the city). It would be great to see the gorge in the Winter time. I have heard that the water gets a lot more violent and that fog can sometimes fall down around the landscape. It would be really interesting to see that contrast in seasons. Perhaps I will consider making a return trip here in the future. 

I went wandering on the other side of the gorge today to take some photos and walk down to the Basin. I veered off the track to go exploring and ended up sighting a person sitting in front of a little tent. I was startled to see someone and thought I would leave them nestled away in the little sheltered spot they had found. As I made my way back to the path and continued walking I began to imagine that there were people sprinkled all throughout the gorge tucked away where no one (except bumbling old me) would find them. Maybe there are a lot more artists in residence here than I thought. Perhaps I should start doing torch signals down the gorge after lights out.

I've done a bundle of little drawings from my imagination and a few from photographs. I've tried to sit down at different times and just make a number of fairly quick drawings. Using texta has been good for giving me instant colour and keeping my ideas flowing. The subject matter has mainly been little thoughts, memories or phrases that run through my head as I am sitting and drawing. I'm enjoying incorporating little bits of text with the drawings. Some of them are like little illustrations in a story. I think I need to keep working like this and produce more to get a better sense of what is going on. 

At the moment I'm also completing a big (very colourful) drawing in layers of pencil and texta. I found myself up at midnight last night scribbling away with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles playing in the background. I felt like I had travelled back to primary school age Jennifer where I would watch a lot of TV on long dark nights while colouring in school projects and drawing. I suppose using texta can't help but put you in a bit of a childish state of mind. The simplicity of the medium reminds me how much of a pleasure and release you can get from colour and the movement of physically drawing something onto paper.

Little boats full of tourists are quite often going past and looking up to the cottage. If you step out onto the verandah as they are going past then you can feel very important as they all wave to you. I feel too shy to do it often. At times it is like being in a zoo enclosure; the artist musing away up in their dreamy little cottage. This morning I was woken up by the cleaner knocking at the door. I didn't realise I had a cleaner! I hope it won't be too hard to come down from my ivory tower to enter back into reality.

I stayed up late again last night working and reading. I was playing around with inks and colours which can be a bit unusual for me. I think that turning a bit nocturnal will be good for my work. There is a sense of silence late at night as your surroundings begin to go to sleep (except for the possums that romp around my roof). I find myself less distracted by outside elements at this time and can just focus and push myself to keep working. I'm also sort of enjoying having a limited window of day time to go out and see people and do things.

Yesterday afternoon I got back to the cottage and stepped out on the verandah to find a boat full of people passing by and looking up to me. They began to wave. I waved back. I felt like the Queen for a fleeting moment. It was quite ridiculous. Another cruise ship passed by this morning but I had gone too shy to be seen so hid inside with my cup of tea and my book. I'm enjoying living up in my fantasy cottage, slightly removed from the world below.

I spent the day wandering around town, climbing a steep hill in West Launceston to then venture back into the gorge. I fell asleep at a ridiculously early time and woke up a few hours later to find that night had fallen and I wanted to stay up and work with it. I think I should embrace 'night-owling' a bit more. It's usually a lot quieter during the night and you have space to be alone and think and work. I made a bunch of silly little drawings about things that were going around in my head. I then did a larger painting with ink remembering something one of my old teachers wrote to me before I went away: "Don't disappear too conclusively into Tasmania. It's a fundamentally dark place and you're a sensitive young woman." This phrase has been ringing through my head at different times on my travels so far and always makes me smirk. He could be right, you know.

I moved into Kings Bridge Cottage yesterday. I felt a bit nervous all morning for some reason. I think that perhaps I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into and I suddenly felt like I needed to start churning out a lot of work. I've relaxed a bit now and I may start doing a drawing or two when I have settled in.

The cottage is pretty spacious (more spacious than a tent) with a bedroom, bathroom, large living area divided by an old fireplace and then a little kitchen. There's also a little back courtyard area and a laundry (what a luxury).

There were all these naff photos and remnants of previous creative types who had stayed here sprinkled around the cottage so I immediately hid the offending material and tried to clear the space to make it more comfortable for me.

I like sitting out on the verandah drinking cups of tea and listening to the people passing by on the path below. I feel like I'm a little on show up here but also fairly hidden away.

Here we are with a few blurry and inconsistently located before and after shots of the inside of the cottage...

Before:

After:

View from my kitchen sink:

Georgia flew back to Melbourne and I camped by myself out the back of Bob Brown's cottage near Liffey. I couldn't believe how beautiful and peaceful this place was. I was so happy to play around on my own on a light and warm evening. It was like I had opened up a story book and dipped myself into one of the illustrations. I set up my tent , bathed in the water under the bridge and then sat on the swing under the walnut tree eating two tuna sandwiches and reading a short novel. As the night began to fall I perched on the verandah of the cottage for a while and watched the stars and the wallabies come out. The next morning I woke up early and went swimming again. I tried to draw a few pictures but I don't know if anything special came out. A bug enjoyed sitting on my little painting though.

I've never really been on my own like this before in the landscape. It felt like such a relief to be out of phone reception and remember that no one would know exactly where I was at this point in time. I sometimes dream about disappearing off the map just a little bit. I find it difficult to find solitude when I'm connected to everyone else by a phone and the internet. It's something that I'm continually considering how to manage. I wish that I had a little cottage in a place like this that I could escape to when my head gets too cloudy in the city.

Photo by Georgia Quinn.

Photo by Georgia Quinn.

We took the ferry over to Bruny Island and camped down in the south for a few nights. I was originally meant to do my residency at a place on Bruny Island but it didn't work out. I was glad that I got the chance to travel there and explore a little bit though. It's a quiet and very atmospheric place. It felt funny travelling to an island off an island off an island...Being on the ferry was quite exciting as I pretended to myself that I was a character in Agatha Christie's story 'And then there were none', travelling to Soldier Island off the coast of Devon (to be murdered or be the murderer - who knows...) We drove down to Cloudy Bay when we first got there and almost got blown away by very strong winds. The summer weather suddenly became freezing and we quickly rugged up (before going to photograph a dead seal that we found washed up on the beach). The sky and surroundings were grey for a little while but I found that as the sun came out the water was revealed to be incredibly clear and the surroundings were built up of a detailed palette of different shades of blue.

When I came to Hobart a few years ago I wanted so much to go up Mt. Wellington, but it was snowing. I was then in Hobart again last year but access to the mountain was closed due to bushfires. This time I was determined to get up there and I'm really glad I did. It was so magical seeing all the different blues of the sky mix and change as the sun set and the lights began to come on in the little city nestled down below. 

Photo by Georgia Quinn.

Photo by Georgia Quinn.

Photo by Georgia Quinn.

Photo by Georgia Quinn.