BLUE AND WHITE FOREVER

Art for art's sake and blue for heaven's sake! 

That's our battle cry this week.

When Little Branch open their pop up shop next Wednesday at the GAFFA ARCADE PROJECT (www.gaffa.com.au, 281 Clarence St. Sydney) , we launch the ORIGAMI BLUES card line and are theming our little white cube shop in an Orientalist mood. One of the people who understands blue like her blood is made of Indigo ink is the author/aesthete/stylist Sibella Court (www.thesocietyinc.com.au). Sibella is so deeply complicit to the fact that blue looks best beautifully aged.  Blue breathes against wood and chipped plaster walls and through the smoky veil of china tea at the bottom of a chipped willow tea cup. Sibella is in Syria, no doubt scooping up armfuls of traditional woven fabrics and mad trinkets but I'll be popping into The Society to see if she's got any blue and white beauty for our shop. 

So I cast my mind east to understand what sort of textures create the best shades of blue. Between fabric and paper there is a subtle sensual relationship and I hope we blur that line in our artworks. The beauty of old kimonos is captured in the slightly nubbly texture of blue and white origami paper and that is why I enjoy collaging it into our drawings for Little Branch. The paper functions almost as a textile. It's got the same oxygen, patina and soul. On the weekend I was in Hill End visiting the landscape painter Luke Sciberras. Luke had just laid hands on the beautiful book "Mattise his Art and his Textiles" (Royal Academy of Arts), talk about art imitating an artist's life. The Sciberras studio is strewn with so many crumbly gorgeous textiles in every shade from sky to midnight blue and he wears blue cloths strung round his neck as well, energized by the hand made, touched by a bit of storm blue sky made cloth. Creativity is about convergence. Maree saw this extremely special, extremely blue and white Matisse show in London and the catalogue is a touch stone for both of us. It is sitting open on our studio floor right now and here are a few of our favourite pages for your eyes to devour.

So, this week when we launch ORIGAMI BLUES we'll be looking to paint the empty canvas blue and mottled cream. I'll be donating my gigantic willow pattern tea cup as a vase for floating white flowers. My mother's blue bead necklaces from the Cote de Ivoire, maybe. Various lace table cloths and whatever textiles we can sling up to create a mood of Oscar Wilde, Tom Waits, Matisse and Billie Holiday. Anyone and everyone who understands just how beautiful the blues can be.