I bought something!

I am very excited about buying a piece of Michele Heibel’s art on Friday night.

Remember the exhibition I mentioned last week? Well I drove to Gosford Regional Art Gallery after work on Friday afternoon, picked up DD’s sister who lives nearby and we went to the opening of Michele’s exhibition together.

Here’s how the gallery describes the exhibition: “‘Making Time’ is a collection of works that seek to bring the viewer back to the ‘simpler times’ that are so often reminisced about. With her delicate miniature scenes, Heibel seeks to convey the idea that moments such as these do not have to be bound to any particular point in history, or time of life. That these moments can, in fact, still be found here today in our modern world.

“One just has to take a step back, draw a breath and make time.”

And here’s how the gallery describes Michele: “Born into an artistic Swiss-German family in 1972, Heibel spent most of her childhood years in Switzerland’s Bernese countryside. In 1983, after extensive travels, her family made the decision to settle permanently in Australia. She attained her Diploma of Graphic Design at North Sydney’s Billy Blue School of Graphic Arts in 1991 and worked as a designer for the following eighteen years. Now based in the Hunter region, Heibel has returned to her artistic roots and that familiar rural lifestyle, where she creates delicate artworks on black clayboard using only a pin. Her award-winning works possess a whimsical quality that often belie the serious message within”

Michele worked as a designer for a few of those 18 years at Woman’s Day with me.

She invited me to her first exhibition way back in October 2011, a few months after I’d left the magazine world in a blaze of trauma.

I was entranced by an artwork at the exhibition, an etching of a goat. But, being unemployed at the time, with no sign of a paycheck on the horizon, I resigned myself to admiring it from afar.

Almost three years later, as my soon-to-be-ex husband and I were painting the deck for the sale of the family home, a long, narrow package arrived on my front doorstep.

It was the goat. It came with a little card that said: “Because a goat never gives up!!”

And I cried and cried and cried.

It was such a touching gesture, a sign that someone understood and cared.

Ever since then I’ve wanted to repay Michele’s kindness and I got the chance on Friday when I purchased ‘Young bucks”.

The light is so luminous and beautiful in it. I don’t know how someone manages that with just a pin and black clayboard, it is remarkable.

It was also a lovely surprise to catch up with two of my wonderful former workmates at the exhibition: Beryl the former chief subbing queen of Woman’s Day and Mandy, who was my chief sub boss when I first joined Cosmopolitan magazine and later worked with me at Woman’s Day too … I think … well, she worked at Woman’s Day, but I’m not sure if it was at the same time as me or after.

We reminisced about the good and not so good old times and had a fabulous evening together before it was time for me to drop DD’s sister home and hurtle back through the foggy night to Sydney.

Michele’s artworks have been selling like hotcakes at the exhibition. I am so proud of my talented friend!

Learn more about Michele’s exhibition here.

As for the rest of the weekend, it was lovely and relaxed – a walk with a friend, date night with DD with delicious crab pasta for me and steak for him (I stole lots of his chips), and a gorgeous swim at Avalon Beach on Sunday.

Happy days.

Song of the day: Peter Gabriel “Don’t give up”