When you’ve got the blues - the best remedy is to make something. Deep blue cyanotypes are somewhat melancholic, but playing around with some unresolved cyanotype artworks suggested new creative possibilities. Something new from something old, one way to beat the blues.
When you finally face what’s holding you back, it’s liberating. My paint brushes and paints are back on my studio bench, there’s a canvas on my easel and I’m painting. Fifty years of not feeling that I could paint has meant I didn’t even try. But I’ve had years of practising as an artist to get to this point. Now I’m excitement to see what’s next.
What are the most important ideas to include in an artist statement about your artwork? After my artist residency in Oatlands, I wrote how the architectural features in the town and its houses became time portals I used to enter colonial thinking. Peeling back the fragments of layered wallpapers hinted at what my paintings were about and how they responded to this historical town.
Composition can be a tricky skill to master. Sometimes no matter what you do the elements of a piece won’t sit together on the paper. Do you tear it up and start again or persevere until things fall into place? Both actions require courage and both can be a way to resolve the trickiest of challenges.
You need to be bold when you commit to your line drawing. Especially when it is drawn up in ink. I’ve needed to feel bold when committing to adding motifs of lights and lamps to shine a light on the history of Tasmania with its wars and period of martial law. Cracks in the edifices allows the light to shine in and is the first step in truth telling.
What views did the colonists want to create in their newly invaded and possessed land? Most held ideas about what ‘civilisation’ and ‘society’ meant and so forever changed the landscape to conform to this point of view. My preoccupation has been how to find a gentle way into post colonial viewpoints using windows as portals. To mourn what was lost and hold a vision for the future.
There are so many reasons to feel despondent, especially if you are staying in a place which has a violent history. Yet after two days of drawing murky black ink shapes, I knew I had to find a way through to the other side of despair. Enter Dr Bob Brown and his rallying call to action and keeping hope alive.
Stones, nails, lines of history. The past lives on in the buildings in colonial settler towns like Oatlands where I am an artist in residence. I think of the way we had to write out lines for misdemeanours at school. Now I am thinking of the lines responding to this place that I will make and write while I am in residence here.
Collages are for me a kind of Memento Mori, a reminder of mortality and that what we do with our lives defines us. Much of our activities can be traced to the objects with which we surround ourselves. Unearthing these early collages from my own archives reveals a biographical portrait of my family ancestry.
Whether you are making art or appreciating it in its myriad of forms; immersion in art can be exactly the therapy you need on a grey and dismal day or when life itself feels a little overwhelming. Artists supporting each other gives truth to the saying, when one rises, we all rise together.
What exactly is it that a buyer is looking for when they make the decision to purchase an artwork? Are they looking for an artwork which is the right colour, size or subject to fit into their home decor? Or are they looking for something else entirely? A fissure of pleasure experienced over and over again each time they look at the artwork in their own home?
How important is it to archive your creative offerings? As I have been cleaning out the garage I’ve found storage tubs filled with advertisements for past projects as well as old daily journals from the past twenty years. Making decisions about what to archive and what to throw out can become quite a dilemma.
Some themes become our ‘signature’. We may not know it at the time, yet they are the ideas, themes, motifs, colours and forms which repeatedly appear in our artworks, evolving through the years. Mine have been circles, networks of connection that encircle my thinking.
Collage has always been my default artistic practice. Yet last year I abandoned it as if I had ‘grown out of it’. I had quite forgotten the joy of tearing up paper and collaging pieces together. Now I have discovered a new inspiration: collaging collages.
There are so many things you could make, it can be hard to know where to start. I’ve been making blank notebooks using up old prints that I folded to become the little book covers. Creating these notebooks has put me back into ‘maker mode’. What will go inside them? The possibilities are endless.
No inspiration, lots of procrastination. Endless scrolling on social media. It can feel like the black cloud of creative depression will never lift. Waiting for that day to come is an act of faith.
Writing for divine guidance is what author Julia Cameron describes as the fourth essential artists’ tool. Yet I needed to travel to Japan to fully appreciate why going on an Artist Date (the third essential artists’ tool) is so important and why I’ll also be scheduling in dates with angels as part of my artistic practice.
How do you pull yourself out of artistic depression? I knew I had to take myself away. To burn off all resistance and confront my fear. Two weeks in Japan. Yet every morning I’d wake up and wonder why I was putting myself through this test. Was it worth it?
How do you make visible the invisible? On the ‘art island’ of Naoshima in Japan, artists have found inspiring ways to reframe the way you perceive time and its passing. It inspires me to slow down as well.
What happens when you bury paper in the snow? It’s probably going to fall apart. But an ancient practice of burying the raw material fibres of washi paper in the snow renders the paper it makes beautifully white. It’s called snow bleaching.
