A different kind of inspiration

I think most writers have a deep appreciation of various other art forms apart from those, achieved by the written word. For me, music is an essential part of my life and I'll talk at some other time about my favourite pieces and what they mean to me.
But I love art, too. In fact, when I was at school, English and Art and History were my best subjects and I very nearly became an art teacher. As a child, I drew pictures to illustrate every story I wrote. In fact, I wrote comics mostly, so I could draw lots and lots of pictures. I used to subscribe to Princess magazine, which came once a week from England, and my stories were offshoots of Sue Day stories and Sally the Circus Ballerina. Perhaps it's not at all surprising that I now write for Mills & Boon.
But the point I'm getting to is that I love to have visually pleasing, artistic things about me. They feed my soul and I thought I'd show you some of my bits and pieces -- in no special order.
I love the pottery bowl at the top, which one of my sons bought me, because it's so simple and yet the cut out holes remind me of birds' beaks. We seem to collect lots of birds. I'm not sure why and I haven't shown all of them here.
The blue tree full of birds is from Italy and I swear the sky in southern Italy where we bought that whimsical piece is exactly as blue as that.



These galahs were carved from a single piece of wood by an artist from Byron Bay and the mobile below was made my daughter.


The wonderful bird above is Howard, made by a Townsville artist, while below is a close up of my Christmas angel from Paris and a Madonna from Matera, Italy.