Australian Artists on Poverty Line

Today's Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting article called "The poverty trap ensnaring creative Australians", which discusses that nothing much has changed since the Australia Council released its Don't Give Up Your Day Job report ten years ago on the financial status of artists and identified that a third lived below the poverty line with half earning less than $7300 from their art.

Dancers, musicians, composers, painters and photographers remain vulnerable to economic cyles, enduring long periods of unemployment and often juggling one, two or even three jobs ... The latest census data suggests that things might have become worse for the nation's artists.

The recent Australian Society of Author (ASA) Comics/Graphic Novels Porfolio survey backs this up – comics creatives are not terribly well paid either. We actually salute the Danish solution presented in the SMH article which mentions that select artists are granted a stipend for their entire lives.

Yes, this situation reflects the current economic reality but let's not make this news a self-fulfilling prophecy – maybe we need to embrace our chosen professions from the point of view of attracting abundance. According to Law of Attraction principles, as much as we are creators of our various comics properties we are also co-creators with the universe of our own lives. To tune in properly we must be focused, passionate, and activate our imagination and our internal resources so that the we live the future we want to create for ourselves as if it is happening already. So Australian comics creatives can lead the charge and dream the dream ... perpetual comics work in the genre we love, BIG paychecks and opportunities to do what we want when we want. Sigh. Bliss.

Mermaid Artists 1 – Henry (O'Hara) Clive

We thought we might bring you a new series of posts on celebrated artists who have introduced mermaids into their body of work. We thank our friend Nick for alerting us to this absolute sumptuous piece in pastel by Australian Hollywood artist Henry (O'Hara) Clive. We couldn't find much information on him or indeed the piece – we think it's a cover called "The Mermaid" from the American Weekly magazine (26 March 1939).

There are variations on the spelling of his name so we've got little to go on. However, we did find this one piece so if you want to read more about Henry go to the grapefruitmoongallery website.

Apologies

We've both been working 16-17 hour days, seven days a week and have been too tired to blog – hence the silence. We'll probably be back on track in mid March some time so we'll been blogging sporadically till that time and be fully on board from then. In the meantime ... watch the space above for some recent discoveries.