Dick Lyne at Brett Mcdowell

Dick Lyne was born in December 1927 in Frankton Junction, Waikato.

Dick worked many jobs such as a storeman, a fitter's mate, a dye hand and an apprentice printer before settling in to a life as a Bushman in the King Country district. Upon his retirement at the age of 65 Dick took to painting. Entirely self-taught, his first painting was of his boat the 'Dora Alice',  he now concentrates on paintings of the native bush, in particular the Kauri and Rimu.

This exhibition is fantastic. If you are in Dunedin please go and see. The love of the craft..both bush work and painting pours out of this work.
I bought this one.:-D

Brett Mcdowell http://www.brettmcdowellgallery.com/current.html

AND a quote from Grandma Moses whose book Brett has out with this exhibition.
"If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens.

Grandma Moses" 

Grandma Moses http://gardenofpraise.com/art43.htm 

YUM YUM dressing from Nigella

I thought this is good as summer approaches and I sit here considering how much butter I am eating.
So;
Juice of half an orange
1/2 teaspoon of Miso ( I used white)
1/2 teaspoon of mustard
1/4 teaspoon light honey (Otematata honey of course)
whisk up and dress some fresh garden greens
I just made it and it is Yum!

Pearls

I had a lovely phone call with My friend Ruth today.She lives in Oxford- England. Too far.
We talk regularly but I miss her. We were talking today about how it is in this post-traumatic time, our lives in the last couple of years have been very dynamic. Acute trauma has it own peculiarities and ways of response..but the recovery stage is so much broader and higildy pigildy (I had so much trouble trying to spell this; - 0).
We both share the experience of grief and sadness and change..but our circumstances are entirely different.
I was thinking afterwards that hers was so much harder and I don't know how I would have reacted with what she has gone through.(A divorce). I know I would not have been as dignified.
My set of circumstances were held and dictated by a medical  model and had prescriptive elements.
But it is in this recovery period that we are yoyoing...there are no defined edges.
I read a psalm two days ago..I think it was 119..and it was praising Gods law..It was very uplifting and I thought of times where as a person I can be rudderless and a bit dangerous really. Reading this Psalm was a good reminder of Gods care and attention to detail and how helpful it can be when 'things' start to fall away and deteriorate.
I also decided that God was making a pearl inside Ruth and I ..or maybe a pearl out of each of us. The trauma feels like it is getting wrapping in functioning layers and is healing..still very accessible though and the layers are yet thin...talking through this reminded me of the effort that goes into making a Pearl and the time and what causes it in the first place..an irritant of some sort - a foreign body. How exciting to open an encrusted gnarly shell and to find one in the wild. The rarity of it.
http://www.bluepearls.com/index.php

Lemon Curd and a cat painting

The lemon curd I made on Sunday and it is now tuesday, you can see how much I like it!

This Painting is by John Oxborough. http://www.johnoxborough.co.nz/current.html
Its called 'cat on a table' and has been a good dinner party discussion painting for may many years
(actually 25 next year). It is the very first painting that Gary and I bought together and it absolutely our most favourite. We have never gotten sick of it. The only conflict associated with it was early in married life and who would get it if we ever split.We now know that, that is never going to happen.