I've Moved

Yes, I've moved to Wordpress. Well, at least my photography section has.
My new photoblog is Photo Magpie @ www.photomagpie.wordpress.com.
See you there.

Wall Murals

Recenty, I was busy working on murals.

The picture above is one of them.
Usually I paint murals directly onto the wall, but this one was painted on an approx. 180cm x 120cm wooden panel.

I have to say, I LOVE painting big pictures.

I Won The Awards!

I feel sooooo great today!!
One of my photo won the category award on the photo contest site called Daily Awards.

I've always been a happy snapper but never had much confidence in my own work.
This might be a small step compare to the things some of you guys have achieved, but nonetheless it is pretty huge for me.

I'm gonna give a toast to my happy achievement tonight!

Dream of A Tree

"Dream of A Tree"

The village I live in is very rural and surrounded by almond, peach, apricot &olive groves. Some of those trees are so old and each of them has got a distinctive character.

Sail Away

"Sail Away"

Saint Valery sur Somme, France.

Dreamscape

"Summertime"
Prints are available from my ImageKind Gallery

dream•scape
Pronunciation: (drēm'skāp"),
—n.
1. a dreamlike, often surrealistic scene.
2. a painting depicting such a scene.

I've always had the desire to transfer my inner images onto sheets of paper. That's why I've kept on painting day after day since my childhood. But it is easier said than done. I have to admit that most of the time, the pictures I painted were nowhere near the images I had in my mind. Colours were too bright, too vivid, too dark or too murky, the edges were too sharp or too blurry, etc... In short, I could never satisfied with the techniques I used with my paintings.
I often thought that I would never be able to recreate my "dreamscapes".

Then, one day, the idea of using photographs to represent my version of the world came to me. First I took the photograph with the finished image in my mind, and then, painted over it. This worked amazingly well. I was so excited! Two of my favourite things, photography and painting, combined together and managed to achieve the result I've always wanted!

The gallery I have on ImageKind is more or less dedicated to these dreamscape images. These series of landscapes are dreamy and surreal. These are to reflect my own inner world, so they make sense to me but not necessarily to you ;-)

I just hope that somebody, somewhere, loves these dreamy scenes as much as I do :-)

Fairies

"Fairy Land"

If you'd like to see a bigger image, please visit my ImageKind gallery.

Prints are also available in different sizes.



"Fairy Land" Details

A Fairy Song

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

-- William Shakespeare --

I've always had a great interest in fairies since I was a little girl.
I was so fascinated by the idea of these tiny, winged people living in the woods and meadows, giving locals some joys and troubles. I read many, many books about fairies and little people and dreamt about seeing them one day.

I think I was 10 years old or so then. One afternoon, I came home from school and rushed out again to the nearby woods. There, among the tall trees, was a little patch of clearing and a stream, and this had been my favourite secret place for months. I'd never seen anybody there. It always had been so quiet and somewhat magical, but especially this particular afternoon, the air was filled with something so special. The clearing was covered with white star-shaped flowers, which I could recognized as a well sought after medicinal plant, I started gathering some for my grandmother.

While I was wading through a mass of flowers to pick the very best ones, something flew right into my sight. As I fell back and looked up, I saw a tiny light hovering in the air. First, I thought it was a bug. But then looked closely, I realized it had no wings or body or anything. Just a tiny white-blue light there. The radiating light was only 1cm or so in diameter, swaying one side to another, then suddenly moved right toward me. It stopped at about 20cm away from me, hovered there for a few seconds, and then as suddenly as it appeared, it flew away into the sky and disappeared.

I looked everywhere in the clearing and in the woods all afternoon to find the blue light again, but all to no avail. After the encounter, I went back to the place almost daily, but I never saw it again.

It was nothing like the fairies I saw in the books, but I believed it to be one of them. Years and decades passed, and I still don't know what it was.
Sometimes, very strange things happen in the woods...