Writing is a thing of the mind. It is in essence the arrangement and placement of words, a very virtual reality. Unlike visual art, which is made out of paint and paper and ink and wood and clay and suchlike, writing seems to be pretty much distanced from any physical reality. Or so you might think.
 
But it is not so. Why, in the dead of night, when I should have been off to bed, have I suddenly come to this black-on-white conclusion? Because of a pen.
 
Ours is a household well-populated with writing instruments. There is one on top of the fridge, one on the veranda, one or more at each computer, one on each bedside table, a few for every car, some extras in a drawer, and one in just about every bag, computer bag, handbag or backpack – you get the idea. The slightest rumour of pen drought has me scurrying off to buy some more.
 
One can never have too many pens or notebooks.
 
In general pens in their physicality are either unobtrusive or annoying. A few months ago, through some inane contribution to the pages of Reader’s Digest, I was awarded a fancy fountain pen. Valued at forty dollars, I was told. I did not like it. Its tip felt scratchy on the page. It jarred my senses and sensitivities. I was glad when its ink finally ran out.
 
Most of the time I don’t even notice the character of pens. Seldom do they give me any pleasure. When writing, I much prefer a pencil. It might be some association with drawing or maybe a childhood memory of learning to write – soft on the upward stroke and harder on the down. But then, I was taught to write with a paintbrush on the back of my mother’s paintings, so that can’t be right either.
 
However that may be, the pen that is keeping me up tonight is a cheap three dollar one* I picked up from the local news agent. I love the feeling of the marks it makes on paper.
 
It slips and slides and wriggles
it whips out words
it waltzes
across the white expanse
ready to churn out a poem a story a novel a dance
 
(I cannot put it away yet.
I will let it play yet.
Give it free reign, why not?)
 
Let me tell you a story, any story, my life story. Or give me a list to jot down or a letter to write. Just don’t let the words dry up tonight.
 
Oh, for the physicality of writing!
 
Oh, for the love of a pen!
 
* If you needed to know, this one is called Papermate FlexiGrip Ultra 0.8F.

​The air has taken water, sucked it up through spindled roots cobwebbing into clouds and through them. It breathes.
 
Blue dragonflies alight on hair roots, catching the sun, merging, melting into a midsummer sky. They are here. Here they are. Not forsaken nor forbidden, but finding their flight tentatively through the humid skin of language.
 
It is no barrier. It is translucent and veined like a leaf that has spent the summer in shadow, hidden away with beetles and bugs. A wind settles like dew drops on the air, condenses on its branches, the branching tentacles of tongues.
 
So this is what air tastes like, this is cloud and earth and leaf litter scattered with inflorescence. This is essence. As if you didn’t know.

On 16 October this year my grandfather would have turned 103. He was a phenomenal man and as far as I know, the first veterinarian in an extended family which could see its sixth vet graduating in the next decade. Had I been an historian or a better researcher, I would have liked to write his story.
 
As a writer and reader, or maybe just as a human being, I love the stories that emerge from the lives of people, the wandering trails that make up a biography. Beneath the surface of ordinary people – the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker – lie such wonders of intrigue and coincidence that no writer of fiction need ever be short of stories to tell.
 
Call it coincidence or destiny, life stories are often like the nursery rhyme of the horseshoe nail:
 
For Want of a Nail
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of the horse, the rider was lost;
For want of the rider, the battle was lost;
For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

 
Or in a more modern analogy, a sliding doors metaphor, referring to the 1998 film in which events unfold in parallel universes due to catching or missing a train.
 
As I mentioned in previous blogs, I cannot escape the duality of my art-science life. Veterinary science seems to be a pivotal point in so many of the stories of both myself and my ancestors that I’m beginning to see it as the nails in the otherwise artistic fabric of my life.
 
Soon after graduating, my grandfather started working at the veterinary research institute at Onderstepoort in Pretoria, South Africa. Here he met my grandmother, whose father was a janitor there. Years later, married with two daughters, he served as the housefather for the student residence at the veterinary faculty. Not surprisingly, both daughters went on to marry vets.
 
With veterinary genes from both sides of my family coursing through my veins, I too yielded to science, with my mother’s artistic influence colouring the issue like a packet of Smarties swirled through vanilla ice cream. Another decade or two later, it was on a veterinary farm call to look at sick cattle that I met my husband.
 
And though it wasn’t a vet job that drove our move to Australia, it did determine where we would go, as it has done again with our recent move. This despite my firm determination that I am now first and foremost a writer and an artist. (And of course my first Afrikaans novel is a semi-autobiographical account of a young veterinarian.)
 
I cannot say where my life is headed. I am a spinning coin of possibilities, forever landing on a different side. Often I long for the counsel of my wise old grandfather, he whose genes I share. Whether I’m writing, painting or doing surgery, I am aware of him - we have the same hands.
 
Happy Birthday. Veels geluk, Vadie!

​Art and writing prizes, from the children’s art competition organised by your local paint shop to the Nobel Prize for Literature, are guaranteed to generate conversation and controversy. Unlike sports that can be judged on the time it takes to run a marathon or the points scored in a game of football, art cannot be objectively measured. Performance arts like music and dancing are to some extent judged on skill and technique, but paintings and poems often defy rational analysis.
 
With the annual Rio Tinto Martin Hanson Memorial Art Awards coming up in Gladstone in October, hopes and expectations are again setting artist hearts aflutter and creating its own internal controversies. The poor judge might have hundreds of entries to sift through and consider, but each artist also has to choose which two works from the past year’s harvest to enter.
 
No one can deny the subjective or even biased assessments generated by such an art award. Besides pure artistic merit (however you want to define that) here are some factors that might influence the choice of a winner:
​

• The politics of business and industrial sponsors needing to be lauded for their “support of and contribution to the arts”.
• The expectation that artists should comment on or take a stand against any number of social and political issues (the environment, human rights, consumerism, etcetera).
• The value of shocking viewers or in some ways hitting a raw nerve.
• The visual basics of a work backed up by elaborate artist statements.
• The judge’s personal background, perspectives and convictions.

 
The forty thousand dollar question (this is the total prize pool for this year’s RTMH Art Awards) is whether artists themselves should at all be influenced by such considerations when making or submitting a work. If the judge is known to be an outspoken environmental activist in his own work, should you submit an art work commenting on the looming extinction of polar bears? If she tends towards universal truths portrayed with immaculate technical skill, should you try for a Goya-like etching about war and displacement? Can you kick business in the balls with a jab at money grabbing capitalism or should you sweet-talk them by showing how industry can be art?
 
In my opinion this is where it is so important to stay true to your own voice (see also Finding your artistic voice). If you are a Matisse, don’t try to be a Bacon. If you are a Gauguin, don’t try to be the next Damien Hirst. In writing, if science fiction is your forte, don’t aim to write like James Joyce or Hemingway.
 
This does not mean that you should totally ignore the relevance of the competition when choosing from the art you have already made. You do want to say something. Art is both form and content. But art has to be honest and true. Selling your soul to the devil for a chance at the prize just isn’t on, so don’t even start dreaming about how much paint and supplies those dollars could buy.
 
Awards and prizes are lovely. They can be motivating, endorsing, soothing to the ego and just plain good for the back pocket. Just don’t let it go to your head. Because art is nothing if it isn’t free.