ChookMan

Henceforth the above header shall be known as 'ChookMan'. I'm not sure what it is. Fishy drew it and painted it in 2007. He is 10 now. I always made them sign and date stuff- a throwback to art teaching days. It was a throwaway drawing on a piece of Huggie's box and reminded me a bit of some of Reg Mombasa's Mambo stuff. If there was a keeper I'd often put it away and bring it out later for them to colour or paint for a couple of days. It's been up in our room since then and I am rather fond of it. It does fly North in its frame now that you mention it.

The painting formerly known as Header (above) was painted by the Year 4 class in 2008. We remember that as the Year of Horrors. There were a series of hospital visits, diagnoses, surgery, working full time again and a car ding topped off by that awful Gap storm. I also found out I was expecting another last child, lovely news eventually, but quite the shock at first. In the midst of that lot I had offered to help with a little school art show and auction.

We tried to tie the artworks in a bit with each year's classwork and it just happened that the Year Fours were doing synonyms. They decided to do 'home' as the base word and each student chose their own word from the dictionary.

It was my favourite of the paintings. I bid on it and won. It lives in our kitchen and is a sunny bit of joy from that difficult year that reminds me how sometimes wonderful things can come out of difficult times.