Gratitude

Signed Print by Lester Hall

A3 Print.

The ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE was always expressed keenly to me in early sobriety and I have enjoyed making that play on words with the breaking of the title with the Kea's wing.. Tartan has come to mean more recently as I experienced some of the influences it may have given my heritage and my father's and my grandfather's lives as they played out in Ettrick and Millar's Flat/Roxburgh in Central Otago. This artwork now expresses that Scottish heritage in the background of my father's favourite scallywag, the Southern highland parrot. What I’ve learnt is that without gratitude, happiness is hard work. It is essential that I look to understand in what way I might be grateful rather than how offended I might be by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. My dad, as a poverty stricken child in the depression in Central Otago found great humour in these birds finding the best of their day by landing into the snow after sliding down the tin roofs of mountain huts. Dad gained a full time job carrying four gallon tins of kerosene up to the huts at twelve years of age and described it as the best thing that had happened in his life…. that and warming feet in cow pats on cold Otago mornings… Both the birds and my father finding the best of the day to have a little fun.