Monday Mural - The Captain

Painted this year in Cascais (Portugal) on the side of a residential building, by Portuguese artist Daniel Eime, who uses stencils to paint this type of work.
For other murals from around the world please follow this link.

Waltzes and Flowers

Last Thursday evening we went to Perth Arena to watch the concert of the great Dutch Violinist Andre Rieu.

You might remember back in October when I attended a classical concert at Perth's concert hall and I mentioned that I wasn't a fan of classical music.

I have seen Andre Rieu's concerts on TV and always thought they were great fun, so when I read he was coming for a single concert in Perth I bought tickets.
And I loved it!! He's a great entertainer and connects with his audience from the first minute until the end. We are free to sing and dance to his wonderful music too, which makes his concerts so much fun.
Perth Arena holds 15,500 people and the venue was almost full, so he's certainly very popular in Australia.
I must say most of the concert goers were a bit older than my husband and I, and that could be seen from the dozens of walking frames and wheelchairs lining up at the back of the hall.

Perth Arena, the almost full hall inside, the 3 tenors, Andre Rieu and the 3 sopranos -

The tenors were English, Hungarian and French and the sopranos were Dutch, Australian and Brazilian.

Playing with a background of Perth as seen from the river

The Dutch-Australian soprano Mirusia Louwerse who sang a couple of popular Australian songs

An Australian background to an Australian song

The concerts I've watched on TV seem to be on flat surfaces, where everybody dances while at Perth Arena the fact that most of us were sitting up there in the sky meant we couldn't dance, but I think a lot of the crowd was singing and swaying to his songs.

Towards the end Andre played "Blue Danube" and mentioned that the audience usually dances to this song. A few couples near the stage certainly danced away on the aisles.
How I wished I too could dance, but I was sitting up, up, up near the top...

I filmed parts of his songs including the Blue Danube but was unable to upload the video, so here is a video of his from Youtube. Enjoy it!

Have you ever watched one of Andre Rieu's live concerts?

I'll leave you with some flowers blooming in my garden right now - the 3 different roses at the bottom smell great, and at the top there are red and pink poppies. 
I didn't even know pink poppies existed, but a friend gave me this one and he says he has a yellow one too and will give me one soon. Isn't it pretty?

Monday Mural - Big fish

On the wall adjoining the mural I showed last week, was this mural of a gigantic and colourful fish.
Painted by Nuno Reis, AKA Nomen, for Muraliza Cascais, it can be found at Rua Nova da Alfarrobeira in Cascais.
For other murals from around the world check this link.

Painting and Gallery walls

You might remember two weeks ago when I started painting some walls in my house.
So all the painting is now done, 1 feature wall in the tv room, 2 feature walls in the lounge and then I tackled the corridor too.

I have loads of framed art, first because I used to paint, and secondly because in Portugal I had a framing business which meant I framed a lot of my art. 
Also our double storey apartment in Portugal was bigger and had a lot more walls than our current Perth house...so more art on the walls.

Luckily gallery walls seem to be in fashion from what I see on Pinterest.

I decided to do a African art wall on the newly painted tv room wall.
Hanging the art work took some time though...
I first lay the pictures on the floor in front of the wall and shuffled them until I was happy with the display. 

Then I cut newspaper to the same size of the frames, stuck the newspaper pieces on the wall with sticky tape, marked where the nails should be hammered and hung the pictures.

And the result is:

I had to go to a framing shop near me to get some new mats for some of the frames. You might notice the tiger picture on the left had a green mat which didn't go with my colour scheme, so I had it changed to blue. The picture above it also had a green mat which was changed to orange. Now the fit into the scheme!

Still some art to hang in the corridor and then all done!

Tiger picture -,mat changed from green to blue

And here is a photo of part of the corridor near the entrance hall, where the wall was yellow and now it's gray.

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy your Autumn or Spring wherever you are!

The cows are back!

Perth is holding the 2016 Cow Parade, which started on the 31st October and runs until 11th December. This is one of the most successful public art events in the world, since being established in 1999, with more than 250 million people having seen more than 5 thousand cows over the years.

About 40 life sized fibreglass cows are on display throughout the city, painted by Australian artists.

Of the ones I managed to see today was  "Empire Rose Jersey Girl", certainly my favourite!
 "Styled" by Kathryn Cizeika, the Empire Rose designer (women's clothing from Fremantle), it took her 1 month to cover the cow in her signature sequin fabric painted with car paint and embellished with Swarovski crystals.
Just have a look at the detailed photos below.

Empire Rose Jersey Girl - by Kathryn Cizeika

Details of work on "Empire Rose Jersey girl"

Some of the other cows around town:

Beauty X Ethics - by Benjamin Kontoolas

Trans dimensional Cow - by Liam Dee

Blue - by Olga Cironis

Amilita - by Audrey Fernandes Satar and Mohamed Arif Satar

Missy Moo - by Jean and June Pastore

Ikicow - by Elle Campbell

Luxury Lady - by Alister Yiap

I had last seen a cow parade in Margaret River (3h south of Perth) in 2010, so it's fun to have it in Perth now.
This was certainly an overload of photos, I hope you enjoyed the fun cows.
Which one was your favourite?