 Image - UNICEF 2025 Everyone deserves food, shelter and safety. No one should have to fight for every breath. No one should have to be living on emergency 🆘 mode every day of their lives - not knowing if they will wake up dead or alive. Life is not something anyone person, government or society has the audacity to take away. Life is given to us by God, the Universe, Mother Nature… It is ours to hold - free of charge; ours to enjoy - with out pain; ours to share with another - through love, procreation and growth…for this is life. Anything less than this - is not living, but merely existing; and in most cases, for these people, not even existing is on their minute-to-minute survival. Because they are caught between the planes of life and death - someone else living in surplus and greed, holds their hands on their lungs 🫁 like a pin 📌 to a balloon 🎈extinguishable at their whim, for their pleasure and purpose. Please 🙏 take time to think about this. They have no control over their presence on this planet, and are being held hostage to the cruelty of greedy individuals. Tell me, if this was your life…would you do what they have to - every single day? Would you survive? @sketaozgroup @unicef Scrolling over to: UNICEF and show you care. Do not let someone else control their presence on this planet…one day it could be you. https://www.unicef.org.au/ https://www.unicef.org/  Image - UNICEF 2025  Having time to get back to the drawing board is not always, an easy task. So, this revisit, is a watercolour I worked on, in late April. It always starts off as a bit of a scratch arrangement, and somedays - like this particular day - I was not a hundred percent committed to the task. My mind was elsewhere, yet my watercolour and painting are always good therapy.  This Mother Hubbard is sort like my world - working day-in-day-out, with the hope of getting ahead and then, things change and one's world often falls apart. I think, all mother's feel a bit like this. One puts in so much effort in life; only to see it boil over. So, you refill the pot for the umpteenth time, and hope you do not burn things, again. You hope you have the recipe right and you pray; you can fill all the bowls.
Some days, you get caught out and you find yourself, staring in the mirror - asking why?
 Xavier Xue - Prix de Lausanne 2025 Candidate / Photo Courtesy - Prix de Lausanne 2025  Rhyan Foerster - Prix de Lausanne 2025 Candidate / Photo Courtesy - Prix de Lausanne 2025 A dancer’s life is always one of struggle, resilience, patience, pain, agony and shear brut guts and determination. There is not one athlete~artist on the planet that goes through more heart-breaking, enduring loss and then reshaping of mind, body and soul. They are loved for their beauty of line, ridiculed for their style of perservance, envied for their form and athleticism. They are often given the cold shoulder by educators; schools-family-society persuade children not to follow this path of artistic learning in their senior years - because it is not a ‘real job’ - much like the condemnation of most artists in the world. But do you know what? ‘Artists’ are not fickle creatures and are the ones who truly shape this world 🌎 They are the dreamers, the believers, the givers, the doers and are the ones who set the standards for reaching goals; for seeking the pinacle of excellence; for giving up their entire life - shelter, sustenance, spending time with others for the solitary existence they pour their heart into. They live penniless most of their lives, but they are the beings who will be remembered for their selflessness to their art form. They are the names that fill the history books; who inspire the young to dream of magic, princesses and unicorns 🦄. Their art form is what you seek in design, music 🎶 theatre, books; everything you see to live, love and enjoy your life - you can thank that creative - dreamer called - the ‘Artist’.  Hanxi Wang - Prix de Lausanne 2025 Candidate / Photo Courtesy - Prix de Lausanne 2025 The ‘artist’ has shaped this planet beyond our wildest dreams.
Give thanks and gratitude to these givers - you owe them your mental well-being, your love of life, inspiration - past, present and future. You owe them belief in miracles, snails 🐌 fairies 🧚♀️ and the ‘’I’m Possible”.  …Working with a lot of smokey pinks, with black inking - not my usual nib, more pen like Unipen and Micron. My drawing board has experienced a major delay of many months - school, life, and all other ungodly known excitements... have dropped on my doorstep - once again. However, I am alive and kicking, and definitely not letting it get the better of me.
So, this is where I am at this week - trying to catch up on the list (I always have a list - Yes, it does get bigger!) that I usually get around to working on, over the school holidays. Even my writing suffers during school terms. I just manage to find the strength to keep up with the socials - can't let that die away - or I am in big trouble. Well, that's the plan anyway.  And for me, my sketches always lead me down the path of intricacy. I have been working through a few surface design ideas, that usually start off as either pen and ink pieces, or watercolour designs. Given, I pass heaps of gardens - walking to and from school every day, my designs have gone a bit rouge; the weeds and flowers are dominating my work.  This one started out as a small watercolour and transformed into a piece, I am quite happy with... And the results have become quite intricate again, but they look quite okay as surface designs - that is my thought anyway.
 Photo Creative Commons - Courtesy of: Marco Di Lauro on Getty Images - a beautiful Iraqi girl Nine years of age – children barely out of nappies, not yet in puberty; child of innocence and purity; bones not yet fully-hardened; body incomplete; sexually undeveloped; neuronal intelligence – decades left for the making; untouched by society; used to promote a life of debauchery – children trusting in human nature and people they call a loving family; enslaved to a life of rape, abuse, injustice and cruelty; unloved and unprotected – just used for sexual gratification. What childhood should ever look like this – what marriage ever became this, under the auspice of love? But this is exactly, what a new legislation will look like in Iraq – technically known as Law 188, which in 1959, tried to prevent all that is now on the chopping block – to throw out the legal protection offered to women that prevents the cultural marriage of a minor, below the age of 16 years. This change in law will see young girls preyed on, stalked, abused and groomed at the early age of nine (9) years for perverse individuals who know not how to: love, honour and respect women; the sanctity of marriage; nor how to protect a minor, while in their most vulnerable state of undeveloped, unmatured physical being. The ultra conservative Muslim parties seek to strip women and girls of their most basic human right – to grow up and mature into womanhood – after which the natural process of finding a partner and mating can occur. All species on the planet are privy to this natural law. Politics, religion, nor cultural beliefs should ever be imposed on a young child – by coercion or physical power, purely for sexual relations before the body has matured physically, psychologically or emotionally. It is an unnatural and harmful demand on nature that no species ever enters into…  So, how is it that the human race - in all its supposed, superior intellectual prowess and development, cannot comprehend nor abide by this fundamental law of nature?
One can only assume that such immoral behaviour comes into being, not through intelligence, but from closed-minded individuals, who appear cognitively impaired. So, if such countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran who operate under similar practices, consider themselves to be progressive - by all extremes of this word, they will without doubt, shut-down and eradicate such archaic thinking. They will uphold the rights of women and young girls who just want to grow up as nature intended. They will take time to think about the direction of their culture, and how they wish to be perceived on a global scale; in what direction they want to see their culture develop and what this law could mean and say to their population of people. They will not be swayed by a minority of dictators to stay in the past, but will be inspired to go forth - into a powerful and impressive future grown out of love, empathy and consideration for women and young girls who are the lifeblood and incubators of their people - without whom they would not exist. |
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