Mick.

Another friend of mine originally from Launceston, has just started up her own contemporary fine art gallery in Paddington, Sydney. It's called Mick.

She has a stable of interesting artists including Nicholas Blowers, Michael McWilliams and Geoff Dyer who all work out of Tasmania.

If you don't remember, Geoff Dyer won the highly contested Archibald Prize in 2003 with a portrait of the Hobart writer Richard Flanagan. He was a finalist for the Archibald again this year. I really like both of their work - I took Richard Flanagan's book The Unknow Terrorist to hospital to read after Tobes was born. I took Margaret Drabble with Mimi, Patrick White with Felix and Iris Murdoch with Camelia, just in case you were wondering.

Earlier this year there was a Michael McWilliams exhibition in a Hobart Gallery. For years I have coveted one of his smaller sheep paintings. I registered my interest the day before the show opened and was duly emailed the catalogue an hour before they started taking calls. By the time I got through an hour and a half later the show was almost entirely sold. I missed out.

Now because this post is a bit light on the photo's here's a before and after. Today was Tobes' last day of preschool before he goes to kindergarten next year. This was him on his first day at the start of the year:

And this was him this afternoon when it was all over:

Hasn't this year gone quickly?
R