An informal monologue
I always knew I was to be an artist. I spent my childhood drawing and in some ways or another have not stopped ever since.
I had my first exhibition at 23, paintings, which sold out. It was thrilling and draining all at once. Ironically I was not able to paint much after that. I lost the first innocence I suppose. Exposing so publicly something created privately is confronting and I was not ready for that. So I went into graphic design, and started a design agency where we did everything from fashion campaigns to directing music videos to rebranding government agencies. Creative yet a lot less personal.
Things turned around again after the birth of my first child, Oli who is now 3.
Becoming a mother is amazing and inspiring. Seeing the world through a baby’s eyes allows one to realize, if it ever was forgotten, how wonderful, exciting and exhilarating a place it is. Everything is new, fresh, funny. As a result, thanks to his innocence and what it unveiled, I found myself picking up a pencil and drawing again, just for the sake of it. What a great and liberating experience.
Moving to Bali came in the wake of all this.
There is a positiveness and happiness here, perhaps harder to find in a frantic affluent shiny world like Sydney.
Our story is not uncommon really.
Richard, my husband, and I had always loved to come here, as does everyone, I know, and one day sitting in a bale came up the thought of how nice it would be to live here and bring up our children in this abundant loving environment and that was it. It involved a lot of changes to be able to move, and Richard still has his company in Sydney, a photographic studio complex called Sun Studios that requires him being there regularly. But we did and not one day passes without us honestly looking at each other in gratitude for our decision.
Our boys, three in total with my beautiful stepson Sammy and little Milo born a year ago, love it here!
It is fulfilling as a parent to know that we are raising them in a place with so much freedom and care; and as an artist, I am discovering possibilities previously unexplored.
Coming from drawing and painting, the more classically accepted expressions in western art, it is fascinating to witness that in many parts of Asia, handicrafts are viewed just as high an art form. Since being here, traditional hand work such as embroidery, hand dyeing and batik techniques have been most inspiring and incorporating them into my work as been my focus this last year. The results are pieces like Scene 16: Ibu Kabuki Pulls Herself From the Water and Steals Through The Night, an 8 panels piece - 2.5m high by 5.5m long - with everything from batik to beading to embroidery on individual pieces of silk all appliqued together to create the overall image. It generated a number of private commissions and it is the kind of work I am planning to further extend for a show in Shanghai; elaborate cinematic scale storyboard like stills, picturing renaissance-style scenes between Geishas and Samurais. The work and results are technically and visually quite complex.
At the moment however I am preparing a show for the Biasa Art Space, in May 2009, with new ideas much simpler in style. I am concerned with the moments in between an event and its outcome, and to explore this there needs more stylistic restraint. My palette is limited in colours, basically black and white, with small hints of colours, and as in everything I have ever done I incorporate the principles of composition laid out by Japanese woodblock printing artists, where areas of intense detail are offset by expanses without any detail to allow the eyes some resting space. I love this idea. This is translated this time into manga-inspired graphic compositions realized using a combination of batik dyeing and hand-embroidery. I have also grown fond of a series of loose expressive drawings, penciled directly onto the silk and then are minutely embroidered, the detailed work unnoticeable at first glance, revealing itself only upon closer inspection.
For both series, for subject matter I have been working with girls I have met here in Bali - I am captivated by the vulnerability of the transition from innocence to worldliness that takes place at a certain time in a girl’s life, and see this emergence of the self very metaphoric for the current transition Bali is undergoing.
I believe, like many others, that there is a very special creative energy on this island, and urge any artist who is passing through to let themselves be curious and drive around to find artisans, be they metal, glass, batik, textile workers or bone carvers... because the people you meet and the things you’ll see may open up a world of new possibilities.
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