TALES OF THE ATELIER: Volume 1 Drawing and painting in Tasmania Pieter Zaadstra Forty South Publishing, $15
Pieter Zaadstra, who lives near Launceston, has released a 90-page book in which the words are partly presented in a simulated script. In tandem with the many illustrations from his own brush, Tales of the Atelier is suggestive of an artist’s diary. Generally speaking, Zaadstra’s oeuvre is the expressive but at the same time readily recognisable depiction of Tasmania’s environment both social and natural as well as the animals that occupy the land and sea.
Zaadstra’s background is Dutch. He calls himself a classical impressionist yet one whose impressions are less grey and subdued than the European school and more akin to the colourful one of Australian impressionism. He details the successive 20th-century movements that have influenced him and consequently filtered into his way of seeing the world and the painterly marks he makes. He also enshrines the memory of his academic father, whose sense of colour was given an outlet in elaborate stories.
Although Zaadstra acknowledges the worth of abstract expressionism, he lauds to a greater degree the expressionism of Van Gogh. Similarly, the vibrant and sometimes riotous explosions of colour that were a feature of the modernist works of Austrian Oskar Kokoschka are also extolled.
Zaadstra himself is positive while explaining his own artistic truths and philosophies that are accompanied by pencil sketches and resonating, richly hued watercolours.
Tales of the Atelier is the first in a proposed series by Zaadstra, with the next one to be devoted to drawing. THE LATTE YEARS Philippa Moore Black Inc, $24.95 Philippa Moore’s favourite book is Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, a memoir that inspired many readers to suck the marrow out of life and live more fully and richly. Tasmanian-born and bred Moore’s new book The Latte Years: A story of losses, gains and life beyond the after photo may garner a similar response from readers.
It is Moore’s story of her adult life so far. It is an account of a woman overcoming unhappiness – manifested as an oppressively unhealthy lifestyle and a miserable marriage – to not only meet her goals, but to exceed them and make changes to her life that she’d never even dreamt she could.
Moore writes that at 21 she married the first man who took an interest in her. She poured herself into married life, carrying her hang-ups with her, along with an overarching desire to please others, especially by conforming as much as possible.
She ate to give herself comfort. She was overweight and unhealthy. The first part of the book recounts how she dropped from more than 100kg to her goal weight within a year. She began an exercise routine, became aware of the psychological triggers that had her reaching for more icecream and donuts, began jogging and eventually completed a triathlon and ran in the legendary London Marathon.
While Moore was intent on getting the weight off, she did not buy in to society’s skinny-equals-happy myth. For her, weight loss was a step towards health and gaining control. Losing weight allowed her to recognise she could control other aspects of her life, to be active in her choices, not just a passive recipient of others’ decisions – and she began to make some hard calls.
These included separating from her husband at 25 and embarking on a series of adventures, including going on dates for the first time. The men she met and the very steep dating and romance curve she found herself on are recounted in an honest and often humorous manner.
Moore had always wanted to write and focused on it in private notebooks until 2005 when she moved to Melbourne and started a weightloss and fitness blog. Over the years in Skinny Latte, later renamed Skinny Latte Strikes Back, she continued to detail the exercise program and diet that helped her to meet her 28kg weight-loss goal, as well as revealing her vulnerabilities and disappointments and her joys and successes to a growing international readership.
The blog opened a new world to her, allowing her to live a writer’s life. It was eventually recognised as one of the UK’s most popular health and fitness blogs.
Moore, who is now in her mid-thirties, had also always wanted to travel. Her fears assuaged by family she finally booked a ticket overseas and stayed with the new friends she met through her blog.
The international networks and friendships she developed surprised, sustained and inspired her, as the next big adventure began and she settled down in London, where she lives with her husband Tom.
At more than 300 pages, the book is too long. Many of the key themes could have been condensed. Moore kept a journal for a long time and it seems many of the incidents recounted have been drawn directly from it, but a journal is generally written without an audience in mind. It is a powerful tool to have notes from events when they happened, but the therapeutic nature of journalling often involves repetition, which does not help the book.
The Latte Years is a personal story that fits inside a classic hero narrative. Moore hasn’t saved the world, but in some senses she has saved herself and her story provides an inspiration to readers, and proof that with hard work, commitment and honesty, one can often turn a life around. The distance Moore has travelled, physically and mentally, is far and she has recounted it in this book in a lucid manner and friendly voice.