Got Milk?

This project was completed for the 100 days project. A nationwide activity bringing people from all walks of life together (via the internet) to create, one thing each day... for 100 days.

Completing the 100 days is hard. It is an exercise in consistency - no weekends off, no sick days. One thing produced each and every day for over three months. By the end I was exhausted, but I'd also gained a strong habit of daily commitment to working in my studio. It's also fascinating to scroll through the various and different projects undertaken. In 2016 over one thousand people took part but many, many fall to the wayside along the journey. The project began on the 24th August and was completed on the 1st of December 2016. Each daily creative act from all of the participants can be seen at the 100 days project website.

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In America, the portraits of missing children were printed onto the side of milk cartons in an effort to get their face noticed by the general public. It was  used as an aid to create awareness and hopefully find where the kids might have gone. My project encapsulated this concept by painting an image of one of New Zealand's threatened animals or plants onto the side of a commercial milk carton each day, for 100 days.

It is a sad fact that I had more than enough endangered animals in which to paint. New Zealand has over 4000 endangered plants and species! The boundaries were simple, to paint one a day as a 'warm-up' to my studio time. Not to go back over it and do any repainting once completed.

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Along with the daily painting, I began to pick out a sentence from the many words printed on the carton, a saying or sentence that appealed to me, in the gallery below you can find the 'found text' next to an image of the milk carton produced that day.