it is so hard to write a bio.

Only because I like to write automatically. No sentence structure or paragraph continuance. Well, I say that, but is it true?

Nothing is easy for the quantum mind.

Don’t watch me trying to make a decision. Or you could, it’s a funny dance, I toss all of the options up in the air and see which ones fall the softest.

But that is not really any way to begin a bio is it?

I grew up in the land rights days of the 90’s. In the technicolour tshirt swatch watch dinki-di diaries era. My parents were pretty interesting people. I grew up calling them “culture teachers”. We would travel around to remote schools and unpack loads of ochre, spears, didgeridoos, boomerangs, stones and feathers. I grew up surrounded by bark paintings and painted faces. Strong people driven by the loss of their land and culture. Land rights became this catch cry of my six year old mind. I had no idea what it even meant, but I did know they were important.

Bull dust, blue quandongs, black coral, beads.

White clay, wisdom of the elders, witchety grubs.

Black boys, spinefex, beeswax

emu eggs, satin boxes, feather plumes.

The imagery of my childhood lives forever in my mind, I am still waiting for it to escape their echoing confines and find their way onto my canvas.

Fast forward twenty years, and I discovered my own group of culture creators. The underground music scene of North Queensland soothed my weird little soul when I discovered it. It still makes my body tingle to know there are those that love to do these things. Dancing in darkened forests to music created right here. Footsteps by the fire under the moon by the lazy lapping waves of the tropics, the beat travelling through the casuarinas and paper barks, moving our hearts and minds and bodies to create the new dance.

OK. So this is not so much a bio, it’s a story about now, and how, I came to be where and who I am.

Maybe who we are is very much dominated by where we are.

OK ok. Back to the bio.

I don’t know why I am, who I am, how I am, what I am.

But I do know that I love colour. I love seeing things that aren’t there yet, in that vibrant paint landscape.

I wouldn’t say that I am a great painter. But I have said once before, it’s the process, not the outcome. I’m a messy person. being surrounded by the chaos that lives in my art boxes soothes my mind somehow. It must drive my lover mad.

I am fascinated at what the mind can create when we let go of the reigns. The amount of times my canvas has shocked me with the simplicity of lines creating something I did not at all intend. I think this is why I paint, I’ll call it the “zone wow” factor. If you’ve never been to the “zone”, please, go find your zone, where it all gets relative, and in that moment, you’ll see the meaning of life.

Wherever you are, thank you, I love you, lets create a better planet full of passion and clean water for our children.

love from,

Jilli

 

 

 

post script.

That was a funny thing to read back on.