Go Big or Go Red

Mavis Ngallametta. Bush Fire at Top Yalgamungken 2015

Someone once told me, “if you want to get noticed go big, if you can’t go big, go red”. It’s an interesting proposition and one that I think women artists, especially, can take notice of. Going red is a bold statement, so is wearing red. And for many women, myself included, it is quite a challenge to make that large leap of confidence to do one or the other.

This weekend I have gone red and wore my red dress for an online event with my Icelandic coach, Sigrun who hosted her virtual summit. This time last year I was attending my first summit live in Zurich and met hundreds of entrepreneurial women from all over the world who were attending.

Yesterday I attended an exhibition of really huge canvases by Mavis Ngallametta, an Indigenous woman from Arukun. Mavis did not start painting until she was 64! She started with traditional size paintings in the style of the men who were painting at the Wik and Kugu Arts Centre in Arukun. Bit by bit, her style broke free to include stylised waterlilies, birds and flowers which she then started to include in her enormous paintings.

I think of these two bold elements of big and red and know that for many women this is an impossibility. To go big, you need the dedicated space and time to devote to your art. It’s a luxury for many of the women artists I know who make a space in the garage or on the kitchen table for creating. Embracing bold colours like red can also be difficult, especially when you have years of ingrained beliefs that women should stay in the background and not be noticed, not be taken seriously not give themselves permission to create.

So while I love the idea of big and red, I advocate creating small and achievable. Works that can be picked up and put down. Creations that can be portable and packed away if necessary. Artworks that can be made in the small pockets of time carved out in a busy day, for as Van Gogh said:

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

One day I too, will go big, but for now I will wear my red dress and dream of a day when big canvases do not scare me, when I can start to experiment with really large blocks of bold colours. The main thing is to take action every day, to create in small, achievable and portable ways until my time to go big comes, as it will.

With my coach Sigrun (left) and buddy Sif at the live event in Zurich last year

Wearing red for this online event.