vale Jack Keating

My second cousin Jack Keating died last Saturday. He was at the Werribee Mercy palliative care unit surrounded by family when he passed. The funeral is next Friday. It is a sad time.

Dad moved back home after only spending one night at Evan’s. I gather the progress on cleaning the house is slow. The only help dad wants from me is to set up the computer he bought years ago and has been sitting in the original box ever since.

My house is slowly getting back to normal. We put up pictures last weekend and I have been spending the odd moment looking at my paintings on the new white walls. I am pretty pleased with the results I must say. I have put one of the paintings that will be in the October show in the lounge room off the kitchen to see what it looks like in situ. It is called Leela after the Tom Baker Doctor Who companion. It is pretty dark and quiet but I increasingly think it is effective. It looks better at night. I think that often happens, the painting looks best in the lighting conditions it was painted in.

I painted a couple of nights this week. The current canvas is one of the same violet toned pieces I was working on last time I talked about painting. It is a slow process. I added some light chrome green as I thought it was getting a bit boring. The jury is still out on whether that was a good idea, but as there is no particular hurry to finish, I can always obliterate the green with more lines. I might add some red but I have not had any luck with red for months.