Spontaneous Road Trip Adventures 2016 - Part 1

It had been well over a year since our last major road trip adventure.

And little did I know the desire for another was percolating so strongly beneath the surface.

Five weeks ago we set off for a couple of days to Byron Bay to drop off some new paintings to Art Piece Gallery. We’d also been invited to the launch of the Byron Arts Magazine and thought it would be a great excuse for an evening out.

Little did we know, the following day we’d decide to head to Sydney to see the Sydney Biennale (an international exhibition of contemporary artists which comes around every two years) and would be away for at least the next six weeks!

We had the van, Lacey Jane (our Cavoodle puppy) and a couple of changes of clothes, and a desire to explore.

I was feeling quite tired when we set off.

But views like this to wake up to in the mornings certainly soothed my soul!

On the way to Sydney we made a very warm and impromptu visit in to see Denise Duffield-Thomas, her hubby Mark and little Willow in Newcastle before their second baby is on its way. We had a lovely breakfast by the water and I saw a side of Newcastle I’d never seen before – the vast open water on the other side of the heads.

We loved catching up with them all and hearing their news.

Gorgeous little Willow wasn’t sure which iPhone to look at; her dad’s or Andrew’s! She was super cute.

Before our breakfast (with other people!) we found a laundromat and did a few loads of washing (as we’d already been on the road a week) and had a rather brisk shower at one of the saltwater bathing areas. Washing my hair was a real treat, even if it was slightly too fresh for my Queenslander taste.

Prior to Newcastle we spent time in Bellingen, walking, resting, taking photos and doing focused spurts of work on the computers. It’s such a cute little town. I always love visiting ‘Bello,’ as the locals fondly call it.

My New Art Website

Once in Port MacQuarie we were beginning to get into the swing of life on the road again.

We’d caught up on sleep after a massive start to the year and we ended up spending about four days in the library putting the finishing touches on my new art website (Yes! It’s here! Please feel free to check it out!) to more fully showcase my career as a professional artist over the past decade.

It was so lovely to be doing that computer work on the road, as I’d felt a bit blocked having to do such tedious editing, website building and design at home. Being in a new environment was extremely refreshing and helped me to focus. In the mornings we’d take Lacey for a big walk, take photos and stock up on food from the shops for the day, which made my inner child feel free and taken care of before sitting down to do work that was feeling dry and difficult.

I woke up one morning to find the entire coast was covered in mist, which made my heart sing! Many of my paintings are inspired by the mist around our home, so I snapped photos for future reference material for paintings.

Provision & Delights

While in Port MacQuarie we pulled into our first set of op shops for the trip and found incredible bargains!

Andrew needed a few long-sleeve shirts, since we’d only packed for two days and were heading into colder weather. We found a Tommy Hilfiger shirt for $8 (I’ve seen them for $160 new!), a Katmandu long sleep shirt for $6 (again, about $90 new) and a fleece blue jumper for another $6! He’s pretty much lived in the Katmandu top and fleece jumper down here in Victoria ever since. Who says you have to prepare perfectly for a big trip and remember to pack for every occasion?

I think that’s what’s made this trip so much fun.

Usually I have at least a week to prepare for a van adventure and have some idea of what we’ll be doing or where we’ll be going. But this trip it’s been all about making do, being flexible, trusting we’ll be taken care of, and finding the world really is an abundant place if you’re willing to take a look. What with incredible op shop finds, a couple of track-suit pants and two awesome fold-up tables and stools from K-Mart, plus stocking up on art supplies along the way (more on that soon) we’ve found all we need.

20th Sydney Biennale

In Sydney we visited Cockatoo Island for the Sydney Biennale, which is spread out across multiple venues across the city. Cockatoo Island is always my favourite location in the exhibition and it was for Andrew too.

The island is home to an old sandstone quarry (he’s a quarry manager by trade and loves looking at different rocks), a ship building yard, has so much history from the convicts right through the second world war, plus loads of contemporary art while the Biennale is on, so it’s a feast for the senses.

If you’re in Sydney before the Biennale ends on 5 June 2016, it’s well worth a day trip! Just catch the ferry from Circular Quay or Darling Harbour (which is a fun experience on Sydney’s beautiful harbour too).

We spent the day looking at lots of art.

I thought this interactive work by choreographer William Forsythe was very successful in how it activated the space and allowed us as viewers to participate in the work.

You were invited to walk amongst plumb bobs dangling on string lines as they moved in unexpected ways. It was delightful to see how it got people out of their heads and into their bodies, focused on thinking about their movements. A very fitting artwork for a choreographer to come up with!

Some of my favourite works in the exhibition were these series of drawings by Emma McNally. I loved all her mark making with graphite and charcoal, and also the size of her paper. They were like maps, landscapes and technological marks all in one.

Sydney involved tonnes of walking, catching buses, conference calls with our coaching clients, walking around Paddington, Woollahra, Darlinghurst & Rushcutters Bay visiting commercial galleries and of course checking out the Biennale at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Oh, and snapping photos around the place of that incredible bridge…

After four days in the city in the van, we were chomping at the bit to get out of there. I love cities, but find I have a small tolerance for their bustle and pace and crave getting back out into open spaces as soon as possible these days. It might be different if we were staying in a hotel, but we love having Lacey Jane with us and the freedom that comes with travelling in the van.

So we pointed our nose towards Canberra, with just a night’s stop over in beautiful leafy Bowral to sleep.

National Gallery of Australia

My favourite pear sculptures out the front of the National Gallery are a lovely way to greet visitors, by artist George Baldesin.

Andrew with an iconic Sidney Nolan painting at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA).

Me with one of William Robinson’s paintings (he’s a landscape artist based in Queensland) at the NGA.

Some of my favourite series by Arthur Streeton at the NGA.

I always love seeing Judy Watson’s works. They’re so beautiful.

A couple of David Hockney’s for our lovely client and friend Fiona Jefferies (Hockney is one of her favourite artists.)

This work by German artist Anselm Kiefer left me speechless the first time I saw it ten years ago. It still moves me today with its train tracks leading to concentration camps in either direction.

I was fortunate enough to meet and mingle with these three artists in the Brisbane art scene. They are three of my favourite artists in Australia and introduced me to a side of our country I had no direct personal experience with before; Aboriginal history, art and culture.

On the left (and below) is a powerful work by Vernon Ah Kee which captures so many of the (often times unknowingly) racist thought and statement that pervade in our culture. In the middle is one of Richard Bell‘s painting inspired by Roy Lichenstein, which he did a series of earlier in his career. On the left is Tony Albert’s installation “Ash on Me,” which I had the privilege of interviewing him about for a documentary series I co-produced a number of years ago called Exposure.

These artists are important voices in our cultural landscape and I’m so honoured to have met them and learnt a little more about racial issues in Australia through their stories and their work.

I love visiting the NGA and have been doing so for the past twelve years. If you’ve never been, I’d highly recommend it for a wonderful day out. You can even take children and make it a family affair (just explain to them they can’t touch the artworks like I saw kids doing in the National Gallery of Victoria! Yicks. Yes, I did actually put on my adult persona and asked them to please stop touching the 300 year old paintings, since they didn’t seem to have any parents in the vicinity. They were very good after that).

Family Time

In country Victoria, before we got to Melbourne, we spent a lovely week with Andrew’s mum and her husband.

We enjoyed her delicious home-cooking, showered every day (!!! Oh the luxury !!!) and enjoyed long evenings drinking wine and talking into the night. I’m so blessed to have in-laws I love so much and who understand my peculiarities 😉 They’re very keen van adventurers too, so we swap yarns and stories and are on the same page with so many things.

It’s a real blessing to have them as family.

Inspiration Overflowing

It was here in country Victoria that the inspiration from all the art we’d seen and landscapes we’d visited got the better of me and I had to stock up on art materials.

I find being tired and being creative don’t usually go together, so once we’d rested during the first leg of the journey, my energy levels returned to be able to include painting, drawing and taking photos with our Cannon 5D, rather than just snapping quick shots on my iPhone.

These past few years when I’ve travelled I’ve mostly relied on writing and photography to be my main ways of capturing what I see and experience, and have usually left my fine art materials at home. Yet, when I was an art student and in the first years of my career, I used to regularly go camping and paint in the bush. And even though my heart craved it, for some reason I hadn’t done it much in recent years. It takes a certain kind of mindset to paint outdoors and a bit more preparation.

So when I realised I wanted to work on paper with acrylics, pastels, graphite and drawing ink, I couldn’t WAIT to get to the shop to stock up.

I bought a portfolio to store my papers in, watercolour pads, brushes, mediums, and the materials listed above, and set myself up beside a lake. Before that, I spent an afternoon sussing out the local op shops and bought a new wardrobe of ‘painting clothes’ including a pair of shoes I didn’t mind getting splashes of paint on.

(The grand total of my new wardrobe? $35. And, I have to share with you our biggest bargain of the trip, a wet weather gear jacket by Spyder, which retails for $725USD, picked up from St Vinnies for $5!!! Yes please. Thank you!)

Well, anyway, sitting there, sprawled out with paintings, art materials and my painting clothes on, I had this thought; “I feel more myself than I can remember feeling in a long time.”

I was expressing another part of me that needed to be expressed. And while all the many parts of myself are valuable, this one had felt forgotten and soooo good, natural and fulfilling to be inhabiting again. Getting messy, outdoors, in nature. Love, love, love.

Since then, we’ve made painting and drawing an integral part of the trip and stopped at lots more places to break open the boxes of art supplies stowed under the bed. It’s made each place we’ve done that in feel richer, more interactive and like I’ve experienced that place in a deeper, more memorable way. I’ll share more photos from those creative explorations in my next blog post 🙂

Melbourne Adventures & Seeing My Painting

From there it was only two hours south to Melbourne. We’d recently sold one of my paintings “Dave & Bek had a girl!” to Batesmart for the new Eastbourne Display Suite in East Melbourne overlooking Fitzroy Gardens and I wanted to see it installed. So we caught up with my long time galleriest, Anita Traverso, for lunch (she also let us have a shower in her apartment! Bliss!) and went to see the display suite.

The painting looked great in the space and my heart swelled with pleasure. I don’t usually get to see my work installed in private client’s residences. I snapped a few photos and felt very happy to see my painting had found such a good home.

National Gallery of Victoria

We visited the Andy Warhol and Ai Wei Wei exhibition on it’s last day, which was probably not the best idea in hindsight. While I’m happy contemporary art is so popular at times (like on the last day of a blockbuster show), it was kinda crazy busy and we could hardly see the works. It was like going to a rock concert it was so popular!

Melbourne Botanical Gardens

Each morning in Melbourne we took a long walk through the beautiful botanic gardens with Lacey Jane and enjoyed learning the names of a few more trees. (We both love trees!)

It was a great way to start the day as it’s such a picturesque place.

Hanging out in Federation Square…

My beloved uncle Tim also lives in Melbourne so it was a great excuse to have dinner and wine at his local. We caught up on each other’s news, travels, building schemes and adventures. It’s always a pleasure and didn’t even result in a hang-over!

In fact, we woke up at 2am and decided it was a good time to leave the city.

We’ve done that a few times, leaving in the middle of the night when there’s no traffic and it’s easier for a couple of non-locals to navigate with their iPhone through the jungle of unknown highways and byways, tolls, tunnels and overpasses.

We arrived at Torquay to begin the next leg of our adventures along the Great Ocean Road at 6am and had a nap for a few hours before pushing on.

This leg of the journey has been even better than I’d hoped – it’s been a completely new location for the both of us – and a total delight. I’ll share photos and stories in our next post. So stay tuned for that one!

Doing what your heart desires isn’t always easy, it’s not always the quickest route, and it’s not always roses, but I do find the more I tune into my heart and act from there, the more fulfilling my life is.

I encourage you to pause to listen to what your heart is craving right now, and give it to yourself to the best of your ability and resources right now. Don’t put off starting until the distant future. Make use of what you have, be kind to yourself, and see how it feels to be generous with your desires. You never know where it will lead!

Thank you so much for your comments and sharing the journey with us on Instagram and Facebook. I love hearing from you and getting to share the journey makes it so much richer. Truly it does. I appreciate you!

Have a beautiful day.

With love,
Nicola

Xxx

PS. Want to read Part 2? Check out Spontaneous Road Trip Adventures : Part 2 here.