The spare room.

Oh, the spare room.

It was an utter and complete mess and so I hauled most of the things in it out today (other than the big furniture). That included all of the art stuff. The photo above is of about a third of it out in the lounge/dining room. Other things were easy enough to throw out or put into bags for the Salvos/St Vinnies. But when I tried to cull some of the art things, it was impossible.

So the spare room is slightly less messy now.

In other thoughts, I need to go through my multitude of spare handbags, some of which are in the spare room. I looked in some of them and found an assortment of coin and various painkiller things. It was like a bank meets a pharmacy in a very confined space with lipgloss.

Watching Sunday Arts at the moment with the Flinders Ranges story and Hans Heysen's work is currently being featured. I remember going to his studio years ago with my family and enjoying it a lot. The way he captured light was so good. My 16th birthday present was a Heysen print, framed beautifully. The Flinders Ranges are also things I remember from our Flinders National Park/Simpson Desert/Birdsville Track travels when I was about 12.

I remember the vivid, hot colours of the desert, the way in which the sand changed colour over the miles, silence, gibber rocks, gidgee trees and the way they smelled when they got wet, empty waterways lined with sand, the somewhat sulphurous-tasting water at Blanche Cup, late-evening baths at Coward Springs in the bore water, looking up at the stars.

Just appreciating the landscape in Australia is something I wish I'd taken more time to do when younger when I explored things more. I wish I could go back through the Simpson Desert again and approach it from an art perspective.