Hi Tumblr,

Tonight the urgency to create is ripe, I can feel a restless desire to have my hands busy, but my bod is lethargic from sitting all day. I am preparing for a solo art show in March and I am just now starting to feel the pressure. Maybe someone else would have felt the pressure back in July when I was accepted for the space, or another would feel it later in the process, but just this week I felt my determination ignite, and the creative wind blow down from the summit of a distant mountain and blow a gust at my back. 

I came here to write, because within the process arises emotions and questions that require my attention. My emotion around artmaking is really what inspires this path. The marriage of my paintbrush and paper is one sort of process, but the feelings of doubt and procrastination, fullness and fertility are my true guides. 

Several days ago I committed to spending time with a large piece of 600gsm paper I had recently purchased. It was so handsome and pure, sitting on my desk, awaiting my devotion. I could feel large, organic, floral motifs in my creative peripherals, they were blossoming forth from a curved and elegant stalk, all these curly bits, and dangly forms, an abundant sort of growth. I tried to guide my pen in depicting the form, but my pen kept catching on the paper, and my hand would momentarily lose its flow. I’m not so accustomed to working large paper, and even though my imagined forms are always large, and even larger in my minds eye when I breathe deeply and they expand, in the past I have always depicted them as small shapes on a small page. 

After an hour or so I felt a dissonance with composition. Once I fall out of harmony with my artwork I can never go back! My lines that I had hoped would feel free but intentional just looked messy, and I felt foolish for always having the inclination to draw flowers. In my frustration I flipped the paper and drew lines with my ruler in lead pencil, all angular and geometric. But being contained in my movements made me feel taut and restless, and a disproportionate despair rose in me, and I could see the months ahead, and imagined presenting work that I thought was ugly, that was only made in moments of frustration, and the fear had me throw down my pen and go do something easier. 

Today I ordered fabric and fabric paint for the textile element of my project. The anticipation of painting on a new medium is keeping me engaged. 

...Ok I had so many more thoughts to write but my menstrual brain fog is seriously clouding my ability to find any more words and my writing feels stiff and dull tonight. I’ll try again later. 

x Freya

sometimes in the evenings i like to read back on my blog and observe the changing nature of my personality since beginning here. my ways of expressing seem to have become more heavy and measured but not necessarily more serious, perhaps just slightly less energetic? like an old tired goat that has sat down for a nap and mumbles goat noises under its breath before resting its wizened beard on a bed of grass. from visiting my archives, i am most struck by how far i carried my feelings and memories from childhood and my teenage years with me into my early adulthood. it was such a comfortable and smooth transition that i never felt the need to reject or let go of those times, and i seemed to reference them so often in past writings. highschool, boyfriends, hometown, kid times. at some point in the last couple years i crossed a threshold into a new way of being and it now all feels hazy and swooshy, and the emotions i have carried through from my young years are still loaded and ripe and whole, but dusky, and experienced from a distance, a new kind of vantage point. as per usual, i find these discoveries and changes to be so delicious and fun! i love the way life stories evolve so erratically, and linearity dissolves amongst the multitude of dimensions that are occurring at all times, our lives growing unevenly in different areas like a groovy organic carrot. uh bite that crunch! what a delight. i think because i lived overseas and also moved interstate after returning, i had to break off a leg of my comfort carrot and dip it in the spicy hommus of newness. that way, i stepped away from a lot of the potent memories of my hometown and melbourne, and return to them now with a comfortable and matured nostalgia. i’m so thankful that i had such a strong foundation in my early youth, and carried it so far with me. the tendrils of those years will never really be broken, and in that way i know i will always carry my happy youthfulness with me, and it will ring like a gentle brass bell around my neck, even when i feel like an ancient goat clambering up the exposed cliffs of adulthood and old age. gratitude also to myself for this written self observation upon which i can often visit and reflect in this space, and to my friends that read it ~ thanks

X

Yeah Nah Haha Ok, 2018 // Freya Flavell at doodoodloo

In a supposedly definitive world, he likes to sit where the answers occupy space between definitions. He is the fence sitter of facts, a fugitive of confirmation. Wielding a nebulous no, a non committal yeah, a shadowy sure, an unclear ok, a hazy haha.

What a pain in the butt bloke!

But between worlds, where opportunity awaits, in realms of uncertainty, he discovers a most harmonic freedom that shakes the tassels of his trousers and tickles an unshaven ankle. Blissful bloke times!

This questionable dude is available here.

Cosmic Couture II, 2018 // Freya Flavell at doodoodloo

Now there’s a canvas of cosmic colour carnage if ever you asked for one! Called down from the crescent of a waxing moon, it is a multitude of shamanic shapes signifying the spectral experience, with all expectations lost to an amalgam of enigmatic pattern pieces. 

It’s all the universe in one dress, it’s cosmic couture!

This special lady is available on my recently re opened online shop!

Waiting, 2018 // Freya Flavell at doodoodloo

A lass of subtle sass curls her lip with knowing, she knows the secrets of growing and sees the currents flowing.

A cocoon around old habits unfurl, and she and all her girls twirl their pearls.

And wait.

My girl is for sale on my online shop here!

Urgent Tang 2018 // Freya Flavell at doodoodloo

At a ground level, at the base of the spine, at the beginning, before the wind, a wriggling nibbling slithering feeling arose bubbles in her being. And from the tended beds of an internal garden a new kind of urgency broke the soil, a sapling of her new self with the potential for boughs of steel and roots of gold. A metallic strength, an indelible tang on the tongue.

Urgent Tang is available on my Etsy store as an original artwork.

hi tumblr,

in the rainbow capital of australia, tickled by a tepid breeze blowing off of the outline of a guarding mountain, i’ve filled my cup, brim high with visions i brought back from recent dreams, and thoughts brought forth from recent walks. but what to do with a full cup? 

much of life is spent trying to find fulness, but no one taught me the tools to manage the pregnancy of a heart full of ideas and wonder. what can one do with joy once you hold the orb of light in the palm? once tapped, how can the orchid of the truest self continue to flower without wilting from the realness? or does its petals spread open weeping the dew of ecstatic self recognition, painfully and pleasurably so, for the eternal? 

the only effective short term way to birth such exaggerated fullness that i have discovered is free physical expression in the form of dance. i might define it as unrestrained, intuitive bodily movements with the intention of lessening creative bloating by self inducing a release of gestational creative love. i enjoy momentarily embodying the wildest weirdness of my animal self through dance. it is most enjoyable with my siblings, or with select friends. though as it turns out lately, i am usually alone.

in an ideal world, time would permit us to harness such fullness and direct it in an identified direction, towards our true path of ultimate personal expression. in an ideal world a shaman or healer might help me to guide my fulness away from evolving into ripe frustration and instead into measured creative expression in the form of projects. the present day asks of us to find the shaman in ourselves daily, but i grow tired of the echo of my higher voice, and want to hear a more unfamiliar guiding tone, one that can lure me down a path i may not have considered.

our work life routines seem to leech the tendrils of fullness that flow eagerly over the cup, nibble at our dreams upon waking to the sound of an alarm, as the relics of our heavenly montages drift back into the ethers, and our soft sense of loss at losing our nightly self is replaced with the anxiety of being on time. The fullness is so beyond what is acceptable in an on time world that mostly i pack it firmly in a ball and hide it in my stomach where by day it creates gnarly tension from the desire to be released. but oh my, what if i skipped all the way to work? how embarrassing!

From whence did the sun in my chest arrive? Where to direct the light? Do I dare let the realness unfold? Am I too weird for this reality? If I let the fullness crown, will I birth an alien? Please might someone drink from this cup to lessen the euphoric burden?

Xo freya

Cosmic Couture // Freya Flavell at doodoodloo

Now there's a canvas of cosmic colour carnage if ever you asked for one! Called down from the crescent of a waxing moon, it is a multitude of shamanic shapes signifying the spectral experience, with all expectations lost to an amalgam of enigmatic pattern pieces. It's all the universe in one dress! 

It’s Cosmic Couture!

Cosmic Couture is available for purchase on my online shop!

hi to my long term cyber community and to my short term visitors! long time no blog. 

in a relieving turn of events i have been reclaiming what felt like time-robbery from my previously unsettled life, and found within my routine moments to myself, all mine, to dream and revisit, imagine and consider, and write. of all things baffling to me from the past year, through which i am working to make sense of, the most densely crocheted thoughts and emotions are related to my six month residential relationship with hobart, city of my birth, to which i have returned after 25 years. 

i wish you could know how i feel both embraced by this city and like i am being regurgitated simultaneously. how to put words? like i am home, but i am not meant to be here. this duality permeates every aspect of my life here, like my entire state of being is in literal contradiction at any given moment. i have access to all emotional states at all times, dictated by the shadows, the light on the river, the dusk on the mountain, the call of the wind, the ghosts of this and that street. kunanyi watches my every move, from my desk in this moment to my daily commute and my corridor and courtyard of my workplace; my moody guardian hiding behind every rooftop, appearing in new and dynamic apparitions. it lets the weather happen to it, unmoving. it annoys me, because it reminds me of myself. as any monolith, i sit like a rock, and let the wind and rain of life sculpt me, and i do not care, because i am rock. but do something kunanyi! you are so frustratingly stubborn!

the weight of the immensity of watchful rock is contradicted by the peace of the derwent, a constant friend, i find. when kunanyi is moody with me i look to the derwent to sooth my qualms. i feel an entirety of peace from the water, like i have found everything i have ever been looking for within that expanse of liquid. i recognise my depth in the derwent, and though i fear water, i find relief in imagining i am such, free from the shores of this brutal and contradicting island off of an island at the bottom of the world. 

just when i find solace in water, the sun clears a cloud and bears down on all my vulnerabilities like a spotlight, nibbling at my doubts, ego challenging ego to a dual. there is nowhere to hide. a cold wind and a hot sun dance a passionate paso doble, igniting feverish sensations on skin. i call it ‘spicy’ because i don’t know another word suitable, and have never experienced such a sensation anywhere but here. 

the four elements are a posse intruding upon any attempt at equilibrium. they are a panel of well spoken judges, ready and willing to make comment on your victories and failures. they see it all, on the stage of hobart city, on which every resident must perform their most personal choreography. 

and the elemental posse awakens daily the ghosts it has haunted for several centuries, and they continue to dance their attempted choreographies before death stole their moves. in a state of dismay, i imagine, they wander the streets, or haunt the trails to the summit of the mountain trying to reach some sort of heaven. i feel pained by their presence, restricted and reserved by their layers of grief reaching across time. their grief of stolen culture, stolen community and the convict grief of extradition to a foreign and scary dreamland. if i weren’t so sensitive to land vibrations i wouldn’t much feel the ghosts, but i do, and you might too if you’re here for long enough to tune in. the weight of history hangs in the air it seems, and manifests for me as a daily burden that must be alleviated through some meditated thought of repentance. 

many locals, upon first meeting and many meetings after that, appear to have just woken from a strange dream, and are in a weird state of uncertainty and aloofness. and so i wonder what has become of me so far? i am a quagmire of mixed emotion in a new experimental southern recipe. in this city i have awoken to the dual nature of existence, i suppose. i now know that astounding beauty can been witnessed in concurrence with hallucinations of a grotesque history, that i can feel both hot and cold at the same time, that i can feel homely and alienated in a manner of minutes, that all states of being are accessible and free to be moved through at a whim. i suppose hobart has in fact reminded me of the unity of all things, and for that i hate its authoritative teachings, and love it too.

love and blessings,

freya

VII. Fungi Flan 2017

Pen, pencil, watercolour paint, texta

Perennial Princesses by Freya Flavell at The Corner Store Merchants

On days when the mist is thick, she goes forest foraging for medicinal plants. So as to maintain a fully integrated experience, she dons a gown in the theme of the day. Today she is foraging medicinal fungi of the highest calibre! She will likely hike home and add them to a forest fungi flan, topped with creamed mist and silkworm floss. How yum!

haiku for hobart

City of the far South

Of intense duality

Tearing me in half

hi tumblr!

last month i piped up and told you about my move and my inclination to make clothes and start a small business! incidentally i have started working full time for a small business that makes clothes, so that’s cool! i was once again reminded of how patience and intuition are a game that can be tactfully played, with a bit of effort from the personality. my life in work regards has just slid into this comfy nook that i’ve been waiting on for quiteee a while. it’s such a relief to have the security after six long months of floating in my dingy! i hadn’t been this financially low in 9 years! also, not too sure how to balance a full time job alongside my own creative path so will have to draw a roadmap at some point in the near future. i haven’t really been drawing lately, as usual i miss it. i am still taking orders for custom pieces, and have some of my favourites on my online store right now. just drifting through winter right now, trying to see the jonquils at the end of the seasonal tunnel! i still post on my moodboard blog regularly and also my insta @freyafla, but overall i’ve been pretty sleepy on the net lately. what’s been happening in your world?

x freya