Do you listen/talk while you paint?

[Lisa Strachan]

Well, this has been interesting reading everyone's choices. I listen to any music, CD's, radio etc.. If it is radio, then I use the sleep button, so every hour it turns itself off, then I press the button again. It helps me know how long I have spent in the studio, so I don't forget to be somewhere.

Tim, cool that you are learning French; I am also, and often listen to my tapes whilst painting. I couldn't watch TV at the same time though. And when my family tries to talk to me (usually just as I paint my first stroke) I turn into grunting blob!

[Margaret Port]

Vangelis's "Mythodea" and Sarah Brightman's "La Luna" are my latest obsessions. I have to have music or I start writing my autobiography in my head. I usully listen to piano or violin concertos. What I hear very much influences how I paint. I cannot talk and paint, which makes life difficult when I teach and I am trying to explain something while I demonstrate. All sorts of strange utterances! I haven't tried juggling fruit but I have juggled babies and pottery. Does that count?

I have tried TV, big no-no, because I eventually realize that I'm watching rather than working. I can't comment on 911 except to say that I prefer not to know what is happening in the world on a second-by-second basis these days. My most creative time was three years living in Papua, New Guinea when we had one radio station, no TV and Australian newspapers a week old. Heaven!