Three weeks on abouts.

Three weeks on from the great quake in NZ and it looks like we are complaining about nothing when it comes to news and actualities. Japan has suffered a dreadful tsunami which has killed many and left thousands upon thousands missing from the village. Not to mention the nuclear fall out that is about to become a big issue due to the water cooling systems not currently in use.

So in relation to art and drawing. I can tell you that an earthquake like the Christchurch one has created a lot of fall out. On a metaphorical level, the fall out is obvious when you used to go places and share ideas freely and now all those places are collapsed or demolished promptly by a shake or by people working towards other's safety. Each building had it's own story and this is something we also do when we are drawing things. Each item that has been selected to litter our rooms, to sit on little shelves and collect dusk, has a story that owns the owner and has earned them that place. So when we select a range of items for a still life drawing, we are selecting a bookshelf of stories that tell people about who you are as a person, what you like to do, and how you compose it is another story.

Let's suppose then that all these knick-knacks just happened to be thrown against the wall and are shattered in a violent 6.3 Earthquake at a depth of 5 km right under your city.

It doesn't matter.

Who cares?

It's just stuff.

But when the stuff and the buildings that are much loved crumble in front of you, there is a sense of loss, a sense of displacement, possibly disbelief and years of collecting and gathering and stories get destroyed. My question to you is: Do you need all this stuff to maintain these stories? After all, most of us got away with our lives. Life drawing of friends and family hold the most stories, and at the end of the day, if these drawings get washed away or lost in a pile of rubble, they are only pieces of paper.

Come together after events like this and get back to normal as much as possible. It's about the art, but it is far more important to have the friends and community to share stories and experiences than to have the objects.