Blog

People are often surprised when I tell them I only started painting at 40 (I am writing this at the ripe old age of 44..), but it's true.

Interestingly, a rather suppressed old memory floated up just the other day from when I was 4 or 5 years old. I used to tell my mother that I had an old Dutch painter in me! Obviously I was exposed to images of Dutch paintings at a young age and resonated strongly with what I saw but it still baffles me to think when and how. Ours was not an artistic household. Filled with orange melamine, shag carpet, brown timberwork, macramé pot plant holders and the sounds of the Jackson 5 and Sesame Street, I recall my parents 'open-house' days in Canada to highlights of beer, ganja smoke and purple corduroy flares.  Our family outings were of the camping type and I sincerely do not think I entered an Art Gallery until sometime in my late primary school years in Sydney.

And yet I have carried with me this judgement that art is only 'good' if it captures its subject with perfect perspective, detail and light. 35 years plus 4 years of studying down the track and I recognise that capturing the essence of a subject can be accomplished in many ways through many mediums very successfully without ever 'copying' faithfully in the style which is Realism. I have also come to see that the mood of the scene can tell more about the moment than the subject.

But that old Dutch painter crouches deep in my psyche and has a tendency to mock my efforts. I struggle to push outside of my comfort zone, to explore my nemesis Abstraction...

So. Back to the question. Have I always been an artist? Officially, no, as I have only begun creating work for public consideration over the last few years. But I have always looked at the world through the eyes of composition and light (at least since the Dutch painter moved in) and expressed my immediate surroundings in pencil into my teens, as a fashion designer in my early 20's; marketing my own and others products and businesses in my 30's and, well, mustn't forget the 'stir-crazy' early mum years when all of the washing on the line was colour-coded! If an Artist is the sum of their work, then no, but if an Artist is the accumulation of their lifetime of experiences, heading from an early age to a point of resolution where vision, training, drive and opportunity come together, then yes - I have always been an Artist!