A Moustached Artist & the Pohutukawa Syndicate
Recently I was invited to talk to a group of students at Normandale school who were doing an art project. When I arrived and started to set up, the teacher mentioned that she had asked her students what they thought an artist was and apparently it’s someone who wears a hat and has a moustache. So as the kids were lining up, ready to come in after playtime, I quickly picked up my tube of lamp black paint, switched my phone screen camera to reverse to use it as a mirror, and crudely finger smeared some black paint across my upper lip to try and create a big handlebar moustache.
I thought the best way to tell them about watercolours was to do a big painting together with them. We started with the sky and I showed them how in watercolour we don’t use white paint but instead use the white paper, great for clouds, especially stormy skies. The painting turned out to be a fun collaboration mostly from their suggestions and voting by show of hands. After painting in the sky they wanted it even stormier and with seagulls, lots of seagulls, and this is the most that have ever flown into any painting - they kept shouting more more more!!!. I asked if they wanted a few sailing boats in the harbour, thinking easy as I could get away with a few white sail triangles in the distance. Nope – they wanted boats on the beach as well and then they chose their colours. THEN they wanted a whale, dolphin, an aeroplane, a fighter jet, and even a cat and a dog in the boats. But I pulled the plug when they asked for a lifeguard. I signed the painting ‘Alfred Memelink & the Pohutukawa Syndicate ’’ and promised that I would give it to them. I got 40 whacky high fives and big smiles as the kids marched out of the session.
When the class was all quiet again and after I packed up, I went to the sink to wash out my moustache With no mirror around, I just washed and rubbed my face until the water stopped running black and thought I was all good. But when I stopped off at the supermarket on my way home, I was wondering why I was getting so many strange looks. When I arrived home and looked in the mirror, I realized a lot of the crude black handlebar moustache was still on my face and I remembered that lamp black is a very strong-staining colour. grrr! It took so much scrubbing to look normal again.
