Drawing Senses to Remember Things Past
A simple prompt to capture the five senses in a drawing took me back to rural Australia where I grew up.
Just as the taste of Madeleines pulled Proust’s main character back to his aunt's kitchen, capturing the senses in this week's project drew me back to the dry farmland of my childhood in rural Australia.
As I thought of the senses related to our farm, memories of my mum started to shape each part of the picture...
TASTE: Coffee and Lamingtons
I remember the instant coffee with milk in the willow pattern mug (that I wish I'd rescued when we emptied Mum and Dad's house) and her lamingtons with cream winding out the sides like toothpaste with that first bite.
SMELL: Line-Dried Sheets
I think of Mum struggling to get the sheets on the line without them touching the dirt, wrestling them over the wire on windy days. I imagine the line-dried sheets absorbed the terroir...smelling of fresh-cut hay, pet lambs and calves (who shared the paddock with the clothesline—the sheep, with their heads down, their lips searching for food, emerging from under the sheets; the calves, chewing on the damp fabric), a dusting of rust-colored earth from a frenetic willi-willi, and native bushes cloaked in pungent yellow flowers.
SOUND: Magpie Warbles
The Australian magpie. Its warble welcomes me home. Then there's the sound of its wings flicking and snapping as it swoops, pecking at your head. As a kid, riding my bike up from the sheds to the house, screaming for Mum as the territorial bird darted and dive-bombed; its beak breaking skin.
SIGHT: White Mushrooms and Green Grass
There were rare moments when enough rain fell, blanketing the paddocks in green. The velvety mushrooms pushed up through the earth and grass. We'd put on our gum boots and go mushrooming with Mum in the cow paddock. Later, she turned the white saucer-sized caps into a grey strew: mushrooms, water, thickener, salt, and pepper.
TOUCH: Lamb’s wool
Sheep were income and ever-present. Tiny lambs, with their nubby fleeces tailored into dishwater-grey bouclé coats, frolicked in the line paddock, their too-big knees launching them like springs across the field. Mum fed the lambs formula from glass Coke bottles with brown rubber teets, poking them through the wire gate for the motherless lamb mouths.
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Thank you,
and visiting artist for this lovely project.