Patchwork painting

It's not been the greatest start to the year as far as my goals are going - posting three times a week - but a goal is something you work towards, not so? Neither have i been painting... got a bit caught up in my son's back-to-school paraphenalia - in fact we missed the first day back at school, thinking it was only next week, but all is once again on track (whew).
I look around my studio and see, again, wads of failed watercolours lining drawers and walls - the painting above is a collage I did of such attempts - the sleeping (pregnant) figure was one of two the same I painted years ago, and left in a very unfinished state, and then later built up with torn strips and pieces of old paintings, plus tissue paper, touches of gold pen, etc. This one was sold and the other one a friend has got - I never photographed it for my records, which I must rectify. I must say I do enjoy doing this rearranging and recomposing of colours and elements, turning things that gave me great frustration originally into something new - a bit of a cop-out, I know, from improving my watercolour technique and skills, but so liberating too. They are big pictures - especially for watercolour - about 80cmx50cm, or almost A1 if I remember, perhaps if I didn't do such big ones, I wouldn't have so many failures... but then I couldn't do fun collages either.

2008

Happy New Year! This is a little watercolour of jacaranda pods from our garden, and a carved elephant 'calendar' from Malawi - my wish for Africa that 2008 will be a year of peace, democracy and enough for everybody. Already that seems like a pipe-dream with today's news from Kenya, but this is not a political blog so...

My artistic goals (doesn't sound as clench-teethed as resolutions, nor as easy to discard after a week or two) for this year - I am pretty bad at organising my thoughts and tabulating them, but here goes...

1. To grow my blog - it has already had a profound effect on my productivity and commitment to learning more and making more art - so I want to post at least three times a week. Not quite ready to commit to every day yet.
2. To draw or paint something every day
3. To find more of a focus - I have tried so many mediums and styles - coming from a background in advertising rendering, where I had to be very versatile and compliant to others needs, I now would really like to discover my own artistic voice - it's been a long time coming!
4. To join up with other artists - a group or society - where there is sharing of ideas, interaction and feedback. I haven't managed to find one yet, though I belonged to the watercolour society, WSSA, once - it may have changed now, but was quite a hierarchical and intimidating organisation. I may have to start my own group..?

That's enough for now - I'm scaring myself! I also hope to travel a bit - probably just around beautiful South Africa, and perhaps Namibia which Bruce is very keen to go to.