I’ve never claimed to be able to paint or draw. When I studied at the Adelaide Central School of Art, the focus was very traditional, with a strong emphasis on painting, drawing, and the fundamentals. I managed to get by with the basics, but I was never particularly good at it. I also had a private art tutor for a while who acted as a bit of a mentor, and although she tried to teach me to paint, I never really took to it.
Still, if I genuinely want to be an artist, I need to have at least some working knowledge of how painting actually works. So, with that in mind, I enrolled in a course at the WEA called Realistic Acrylic Painting, which runs for four weeks with three hour classes each week. I absolutely love the WEA. I’ve done so many courses there over the years — some spanning over several weeks and others just one night lectures. I haven’t been much in the last couple of years, but for a stretch I spent a lot of time in their classrooms, and it always felt like a place where I could explore and learn.
Last night was the first session of my acrylic painting class, and it started at 6:00pm. I made my way over to the WEA Centre on Angas Street a little bit early so I could get a good seat up the back, just as I like it.
A couple of younger women walked in at the same time as me with their paints, and we quickly worked out we were there for the same class.
I want to make one thing clear: I am a generic, polite, and relatively nice person, and I never set out to be rude to anyone. But sometimes I like to go to a class and not interact with anyone. No introductions, no explanations about where I’m at in life — just pure focus on the topic at hand. And that was the mentality I took last night.
So when we found the classroom, I got my seat at a desk in the back row. Then the women started introducing themselves, and I stated my name and said hello, but I quickly whipped out my phone and was basically a rude snob. It’s just how I like it these days. They chatted amongst themselves and I stayed in my little bubble, quite happily.
The classroom filled up and another younger woman came and sat down in the spot next to me at the two-seater desk I was sitting at. She also appeared a little chatty, but I shut her down pretty quickly — nicely, of course.
Then the teacher came in and introduced herself. I remembered her from a class I did at the WEA a few years ago. I remember her specifically because she is a Ukrainian woman, and she is fabulous. The class I’d done with her previously was on how to make air-dry clay beads. It looks like she might be one of their resident art teachers.
Prior to the class, we were given a list of all the supplies we needed to bring along. There was a whole lot of paints, medium, paper, brushes, and things like that. I set myself up nicely as the teacher started talking about the nature of acrylics.
I know they are a very fast-drying paint, but I actually like that as opposed to oils. Although I’ve never finished a full oil painting, if I was any good at it I know I’d be paranoid that it wasn’t dry before I exhibited it. My art teacher and mentor once finished a series of paintings for an exhibition in Perth and she actually sent them to the gallery still wet. They weren’t happy.
So the teacher talked a lot about acrylics, blending, and using a medium, which I found interesting. It then came down to us using the grey scale to try blending. Below you can see the teacher lecturing using the amazing projector that showed her painting in real time.
Below you can see the blending I came up with, and you’ll see the amateur and totally juvenile paint work I’m capable of producing.
We spent a lot of time blending. Afterwards we moved onto colour, and the task was to paint an apple from life. The teacher handed out real apples — they were tiny — and she then demonstrated through the projector how we could use the blending techniques we had just learned to create a lifelike apple.
Below you can see her demonstration.
You see, this is really where I hang my head in shame. The apple I produced looks like one of those paintings five-year-olds make in class, especially to give to their parents. Below you can see exactly what I mean.
Just before the class came to an end for the night, the teacher asked for our work and pinned it up at the back of the classroom. Below you can see two views — one from the side and one from the front.
I love that she pinned them up, I just hate that my work was so far below standard. When I got home I showed Mum the photo of the apple I’d painted and she was not impressed, and rightly so. I claim to be an artist, yet I can’t even produce a simple little realistic apple.
But you know what? Like I said at the beginning of this post, I never said I could paint. I want to be a conceptual artist, not a traditional painter. Last night we were asked to paint an apple. Whilst I was unsuccessful in painting a plausible apple, I can tell you about a piece of artwork I worked on a few years ago involving apples.
I drew an association between apples in the Garden of Eden, apples being given to teachers as a gift from students, the phrase “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” and how an apple allegedly hit Isaac Newton on the head and sparked his thoughts about gravity.
I wrote to church leaders from the Catholic, Anglican, and other Christian churches, as well as Jewish rabbis, and asked why the fruit in the Garden of Eden is always depicted as an apple. I wrote to schools and asked why students give apples to teachers as a symbolic gift. I wrote to doctors’ surgeries and asked why we say "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." I then wrote to orchards around Australia and asked how likely it is that an apple would naturally fall off a tree and hit someone — specifically a worker — on the head.
I got lots of responses from church leaders and rabbis, not so many from schools and doctors, but some orchards did write back. They said it was very uncommon for an apple to hit a worker on the head, but the point is, there’s something about apples.
And whilst I can’t paint them, I can investigate them and get to the bottom of why they are ever-present in so many facets of human existence.
I never did anything with my apple letters; it was just an idea I was playing with. But I honestly think that exploring what an apple means and represents is just as credible — and just as artistic — as producing a beautifully painted one.
I am a conceptual artist. I deal with concepts, not aesthetics. I wish I could paint — I really do. One of the reasons I struggle a bit is because I have a natural shake in my right hand. I don’t have Parkinson’s or anything like that, but the shake is sometimes an issue when I’m handwriting letters, drawing, or painting. I have so many ideas I would love to bring to life through painting.
I’m a big believer in painting from life. My dad had a portrait painted of him, but the people who commissioned it insisted on using photos from when he was younger and “in his prime,” rather than having him painted from life. I remember thinking, you’re crazy to do that. He was in his late eighties or early nineties when they organised it, but he still looked good, and the artist would have captured the essence of who he was then — everything he had lived, everything he had become.
I also think it’s really important to use the water from a person’s taps when creating their portrait. To me it’s an act of intimacy between the painter and the sitter. That water becomes part of the painting, and it makes the whole thing a little bit conceptual too.
I feel like I’ve been doing conceptual artwork my whole life; I just didn’t realise that’s what it was. The first act of conceptual artwork I ever made was when I was in Year 10 at Loreto College. I know I’ve spoken about this on the blog before, but I was a huge fan of the band Hanson.
There was a competition through SAFM to win a trip somewhere in Europe to see a Hanson concert and then meet the band. I was determined to win, so I had a constant flow of envelopes from my mother’s office, and I brought them to school every day. I filled out my name and address on the back of the envelopes, and then the entire year level started writing out envelopes for me.
Every night after school, my friend with a car drove us to SAFM to deliver the envelopes so I didn’t have to stamp them. I entered thousands of times. In some ways, it’s where I think my love of letter writing comes from.
The second piece of conceptual artwork I can remember participating in was when I read about this man from somewhere in Europe. He had been living in a vegetative state for over a decade, but then a staff member realised he could actually understand what they were saying. It turns out this man — I remember his name was Rom — had his full cognitive function; he was just locked in.
I felt so bad for him that I went and bought a kangaroo soft toy and started taking photos of my friends and workmates holding the kangaroo. I then got people to write messages to Rom in a card. My plan was to send the photos, the card, and the kangaroo over to him so he would know we were thinking of him here in Australia.
But I ended up not sending it. I think someone advised me against it — that Rom himself might have been offended or unsettled by it — but the act itself was conceptual in nature.
As well as my Hanson letters and the kangaroo for Rom, I also used my Barack Obama cardboard cutout to act conceptually. After Obama won the election in 2008, I took the cutout around town and photographed it in different places. I’ve shared some of these photos on the blog previously. I then took the cutout and left it on a very conservative friend’s car, which felt like its own little conceptual intervention.
My final act of unintentional conceptual artwork was in 2010, when my brother and I drove from Adelaide to Darwin. I had — and still have — a Cookie Monster soft toy, which I took with us on the journey. Wherever we stopped, and whatever we did, I took a photo with the Cookie Monster in the frame. You can see a photo of me holding the toy at a roadhouse along the road, as well as a photo of Cookie Monster at Barrow Creek, which is near where Peter Falconio was murdered in 2001.
Below is a photo taken at Wycliffe Well, which is another roadhouse 130 km south of Tennant Creek and about 375 km north of Alice Springs. It’s known as the UFO Capital of Australia.
When we reached nearly the top of Australia at Katherine Gorge, I got a photo of the Cookie Monster near a waterfall, and another photo of my brother and the Cookie Monster on a gorge cruise.
What I did with the Cookie Monster is a lot like gnome-knapping. Gnome-knapping is when someone temporarily steals a garden gnome and then takes the gnome on holiday, photographing it at different landmarks, before returning it with a copy of all the photos. People actually do that.
My nanny had some creepy gnomes — which I now own — and before she passed, when I was heading to Cambodia, I went to her backyard and picked up one of the gnomes to see how heavy it was. I had this idea that I would take it to Cambodia and photograph it at Angkor Wat and the temples. But it was so heavy! There is no way anyone could gnome-knap a gnome like that.
While I’m on the topic of painting, colour, and conceptual artwork, the pink peonies I sent Mum the other day have completely lost all of their colour. They are now a bunch of white peonies sitting in a vase. I find it extraordinary that flowers can change colour like that. It just goes to show that even in flowers, identity isn’t fixed.
