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How to Regulate your Mood as a Creative Person

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Mood dice by User “Intgr”, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

I have come across countless stories of very successful people—from actors to athletes—who’ve said they struggle with mental health issues. And I have wondered why it is so easy for some who seemingly “have it all”—fame, professional accomplishments, material wealth, a safe and luxurious house, a support network—to sink into depression. This whole phenomenon of prolonged low mood has been examined from several perspectives—as one will find in the brilliant book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (2001) by prolific American writer and Columbia professor Andrew Solomon.

Various causes have been identified (tragic events in one’s life, poverty, psychological and physical abuse, one’s environment, isolation from others, etc.), but the subject continues to remain elusive. Often there can be nothing massively wrong or unfortunate in your life and you might still find yourself curling up in foetal position, feeling as though all vitality has been sucked out of you, and that you will be in that state for days, maybe months.

Sometimes, of course, to treat your mental health, you do need therapy and medication. But if you are not clinically depressed, what is the most important thing that you can do by yourself to make sure your mood doesn’t fall for extended periods? For me, the helpful answer to this question comes from the “evolutionary” approach to depression.

If we examine the brain of Homo sapiens from the viewpoint of a hundred thousand years, we will discover that for more than ninety thousand years, it existed within a hunter-gatherer framework. Civilisation is recent, and modern life as we know it—with its click-of-a-button comforts—is not even a century old. The biggest change between our lifestyle and that of our ancestors is that we no longer have to worry about survival on a daily basis. We are stable and secure in our homes, we do not have to kill lions and snakes.

But our brains are still used to those older rhythms, to seeking everyday highs of the hunt in the middle of danger. In his book The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic (2014), psychologist Jonathan Rottenberg, a professor at the University of Southern Florida, makes the point: “Moods, high and low, evolved to compel us to more efficiently pursue rewards. While this worked for our ancestors, our modern environment—in which daily survival is no longer a sole focus—makes it all too easy for low mood to slide into severe, long-lasting depression.” So instead of crests and troughs, what we get now is slope and flatline.

Our hunter-gatherer brains no longer get the thrill of everyday highs and easily drown in protracted melancholy. (Credit: Pixabay)

Because the problem behind low mood lies in daily routine, the solution also exists within our everyday to-do lists. We must be constantly accomplishing something no matter how tiny, pushing ourselves forward. A one-time victory, even when it is as colossal as an Oscar award or Olympic medal, cannot guarantee continued feelings of bliss.

In his book Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry (2019), American physician Randolph Nesse writes that “…mood is influenced most not by success or failure but by rate of progress toward a goal…Baseline mood is remarkably stable for most people, and variations reflect mainly the rate of progress toward a goal.” That is why some highly illustrious figures can also turn gloomy in the aftermath of a huge win. The novelty of elation erodes because soon their brain will get accustomed to the state and will enquire, “yes, but now what next?”

So you must always have some project you are working on. The moment you finish one, you must begin a new one. And you must establish a mechanism of measurement, have targets in place. That way, as soon as the mood falls, it can be perked up through action.

Never be without a goal you can make daily progress towards if you care about your mental health. (Credit Pixabay)

I have found this insight very useful in my entrepreneurial life. Of late, I have made a rule that I must fill my spreadsheet with new contacts and send marketing emails every single day, instead of delivering them in batches twice a month. Introducing myself to strangers daily, even if just 5 or 10 in number, has been giving me a thrill and keeping those periods of inexplicable, unreasonable low mood away. The thought that I’m consistently taking steps, making small progress towards the bigger goal of advancing my career makes me less irritable and more positive.

A lot of creative people tend to not live a life of strict routine but might operate fervently in spells. This is because they have no control over their ideas. They never know when inspiration may strike. They can spend huge chunks of time shut off from the world, just thinking, scribbling, waiting for light-bulb moments. And while periods of pure concentration and contemplation are necessary, extended absence of quantifiable action can seriously damage one’s sense of wellbeing.

Let’s say if you are a painter planning an exhibition in the coming year on a particular theme—maybe something political—how can you use the vehicle of your project as a daily mood regulator? You can devise a strategy that might sound like this:

  • Read two articles per day, one on a good thing done by a government, another on a bad thing done by a government
  • Every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, talk to somebody about what they’d want their government to do differently
  • Every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, talk to somebody about what they appreciate about their government
  • On Saturdays and Sundays, research something historical—about a benevolent emperor or ruthless dictator

Record your findings in a spreadsheet, track your efforts. After you have finished all your paintings based on your reflections, rest but do not be idle for too long. Choose a new theme and start over again.

Written by Tulika Bahadur.

Famous Examples of “Preliterate” Art

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Cuevas de la Manos (Cave of the Hands), dating back to 11,000- 7000 BC, near the town of Perito Moreno in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. Photo by User “Mariano”, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia.

The word “prehistoric” is very popular but when it comes to art made before the advent of settled life and writing systems, I try not to use it. Many believe that history officially begins with scripted records of human life and culture in the Ancient Near East around 6000-4000 years before the present. This somehow implies that the time prior to that period isn’t included in the grand narrative of the human race. But we have so much evidence available of human consciousness and creativity from the deep past…30,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago—not written accounts on tablets, certainly, but drawings and figurines, signs and symbols that speak volumes. All that cannot not be a part of history. That’s why I prefer the word “preliterate” over “prehistoric”.

Here I will examine five famous examples of preliterate art from different parts of the world and what they might tell us about our ancestors. Very little is known about the cultural context of these hunter-gatherer societies. The works may have had a ceremonial or merely decorative function. Despite the lack of clarity, we might deduce something precious about the human condition by exploring them.

The first artwork that comes to my mind is the “Cave of the Hands” from southern Argentina, about 13,000 years old. These stencilled paintings of dozens of hands (the pigments, it is believed, were sprayed through bone pipes) highlight our inherently social identity, how we must band together for safety and survival. They also indicate our desire to be remembered—as in “I was here”.

Another cave I think of is Lascaux in southwestern France, which has paintings of wild animals going back 17,000 years. Some observers have linked them to an idea known as “sympathetic magic”—the term was first used by Scottish social anthropologist and folklorist James George Frazer (1854-1941).

Depiction of horses, aurochs and deer in a painting at Lascaux caves in the village of Montignac in southwestern France, believed to be 17,000 years old. Photo by User “Prof saxx”, Public Domain, Wikipedia.

Sympathetic magic means a kind of procedure aimed at bringing good luck to the hunters. It could have been performed by shaman-like personalities in a state of trance believing that “ritual actions imitate the real ones you wish to bring about”, that by visualising and meditating on big game, a community will be able to encounter and capture them for real.

Venus of Willendorf as shown at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. Photo by User “Bjørn Christian Tørrissen”, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia.

Next, I think of 25,000-year-old “Venus of Willendorf” (Willendorf being a village in northeastern Austria)—a 4.4-inch-tall statuette that was discovered during excavations by Austro-Hungarian archaeologist Josef Szombathy (1853-1943) and others in 1908. This female figurine with plaited hair or headdress and large body could be a mother goddess—that is, a personification of creative forces, fertility, the plenitude of nature found in many cultures, primitive and advanced.

Fourth example is that of the paintings found at the Bhimbetka rock shelters, located in the Raisen district of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. About 10,000 years old, these depict animals like horses, bison and deer, weapons like arrows, shields and swords, scenes of hunting and also, interestingly, dancing. They give us a glimpse into a slightly more developed community. Here we understand that even with a harsh existence devoid of the comforts and luxuries of civilisation, our ancestors could make room for entertainment and take time out for fun.

Paintings in Rock Shelter 8, Bhimbetka, Madhya Pradesh, India. Photo by User “Bernard Gagnon”, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia.
Dancers at Bhimbetka. Photo by User “Nandanupadhyay”, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia.
Ain Sakhri Lovers, British Museum. Photo by User “Geni”, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia.

Lastly, I have chosen the Ain Sakhri Lovers, a 102 mm high figurine—now at the British Museum—from a cave near Bethlehem, discovered in 1933 by René Neuville, a French consul in Jerusalem. This is the oldest known representation of a copulating couple. It is also a phallic symbol. Like the Venus of Willendorf, it can be said to denote fertility but within a relational framework.

When observed from different perspectives, it looks like different sexual organs—breasts (top), penis (side), vagina (bottom), also testicles. The artwork is about 11,000 years old and belongs to the Natufian culture of the Levant that was known for its semi-sedentary lifestyle even before the dawn of agriculture. Archaeologist Ian Hodder of Stanford University has interesting thoughts on the entwined figures:

The Natufian culture is really before fully domesticated plants and animals, but you already have a sedentary society. This particular object, because of its focus on humans and human sexuality in such a clear way, is part of that general shift towards a greater concern with domesticating the mind, domesticating humans, domesticating human society, being more concerned with human relationships, rather than with the relationships between humans and wild animals, and the relationships between wild animals themselves.

British art historian Neil MacGregor writes that to him the tenderness of the embracing figures suggests not so much reproductive vigour but love. People were beginning to settle and form more stable families and “perhaps this is the first moment in history when a mate could become a husband or a wife”. From this point onwards you must make an effort to continue the species, not in a purely animal way as did those before you, but within the structure of a more definite, committed interpersonal dynamic.

These are only five. Every example of preliterate art can lead to a contemplative or enlightening experience if we engage with it deeply enough.

Written by Tulika Bahadur.

Using our Shadow Side as Fuel for Creativity

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The Self and its Shadow by Swedish artist Gabriel Isak (Fair Use)

One of my favourite contemporary thinkers is the American author Robert Greene (born 1959)—who has produced the bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power (1998), The Art of Seduction (2001), The 33 Strategies of War (2006), The 50th Law (2009)—this one written with the rapper 50 Cent–Mastery (2012) and The Laws of Human Nature (2018).

Given his subject matter, Greene is a controversial figure. Some people are quick to dismiss his ideas as manipulative and amoral. But that is not the impression I have formed of him after reading a good deal of his work and listening to dozens of his interviews. It’s a joy to engage with his vast knowledge of psychology, history, philosophy and literature­­.

Greene’s is an unusually wise voice in the realm of self-help and personal development. He is not one of those just-believe-it-and-you-will-achieve-it gurus. He also isn’t about just-work-hard-and-you-will-certainly-get-it. Sure, our optimistic mindsets and efforts are crucial factors behind our success. But hope and industriousness, no matter how potent, may not be enough to melt other people’s “resistances”. People have egos, they are the centres of their own universe. They have deeply held beliefs, prejudices and proclivities. If we want to win them over to our side—as romantic partners, as audiences, as customers, as collaborators, as supporters—we must be careful in what we say or do before them and how. We must learn up the art and science of persuasion.

Robert Greene’s books. The next will examine the concept of “the sublime”

Greene is passionate about equipping his readers with practical tools that can help them navigate a world the dominant forces of which might not always be in their favour. He doesn’t want us to go beyond good and evil or alter the essence of our identity. We don’t have to be wicked or fake, only skilful and strategic.

Of late, Greene has been talking a lot about the “dark side” and why it needs to be mastered if we wish to achieve great things in life. This dark side isn’t some dualistic evil half to your good half—it is much more complex than that. It is related to the concept of “the shadow self” proposed by the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961). Our shadow is that part of us that lurks beneath our polite and affable exterior. It could be composed of impulses that we may consider both immoral (say, a desire for extramarital affairs) and moral (indignation at the economic inequality of the world). It may be wayward, insecure, selfish, passionately righteous—whatever it is the best way to understand the shadow is that it is carefully concealed from public view.

If the shadow lies repressed or denied, isn’t confronted or disciplined, it leaks out in ways that we might regret later—during touchy moods, in offhand comments, as irrational and irresponsible behaviour…suddenly in your late 20s you get addicted to alcohol and you don’t know why or at the age of 45 you leave your steady job and family and elope with a 19-year-old, destroying everything you’ve worked so hard to build all along.

If the shadow is denied, it leaks out in destructive ways. (Credit: Pixabay)

Interestingly, because of its energetic nature, the shadow can act as fuel for extraordinary feats. Greene himself attributes his accomplishments to careful channelling of his dark side. Before becoming a writer, he’d tried 80 or so jobs across America and Europe—among them, a construction worker, translator, magazine editor and Hollywood writer. The Hollywood stint proved to be an important point in his life. Despite his excellent performance, he ended up getting fired on account of office politics. The experience left him bitter and frustrated.

It is easy for us to accept defeat and sink into self-pity after such incidents but that’s a waste. Dissatisfaction, disappointment, irritation, anger—such emotions have a hidden generative force. In fact, many times the impetus provided by these feelings is even stronger than the motivation that might arise from straightforward love or gratitude or bliss or contentment. Dark energy could be metamorphosed into something productive if it is dedicated to the service of a higher purpose, a bigger vision, a worthy cause or movement.

Instead of directing it inward and becoming a prisoner of it, Greene projected the massive hatred he felt towards the hypocrisy and sycophancy he witnessed in the film business outward into the craft of instructive non-fiction. He wrote The 48 Laws of Power to tell people that you do not have to be naïve, you do not have to suffer. You can protect yourself from harm and the machinations of others.

The shadow can be a real gift to those in the arts, whatever their medium. If a person feels aggression—because of a difficult childhood or professional rejection or failed relationships or something else—and if they have it in them to create and construct something new and beautiful, that ability will be magnified and sharpened manyfold if every time there’s a rush of dark energy through their mind and body, they choose to not give in to painful pondering but just courageously pick up a pen or brush or chisel or camera, diverting the power out of their system into the world.

Shots from “Blue” by Kevin Diallo (Fair Use)

An artist I would like to use as example here is Kevin Diallo (born 1987), a Senegal-born Ivorian-Australian media professional whom I interviewed recently. In his recent installation “Blue” exhibited at Artspace, Sydney, I believe he converts his deep-seated anger into a powerful expression for a greater cause—he lifts up an entire race.

Here’s the description of the project: “The ocean belongs to the semantics of black suffering, from the history of the Atlantic Slave trade to the recent tragedies of African migrants dying in the Mediterranean Sea while seeking refuge on the shores of Europe; black bodies are intrinsically linked with the maritime.

“From May – September 2019 artist Kevin Diallo crossed the Pacific Ocean on a 40ft sailboat from San Diego USA, to Sydney, Australia accompanied by three friends. ‘Blue’ illustrates how the artist attempted to reclaim the ocean as a space to practice resistance and healing.

“The work utilises photography, moving image, installation and sound to situate black normative existence within a space that typically denies blackness—and how the trauma of blackness’ relationship to the ocean can be radically altered to express freedom, joy and opportunity.”

Written by Tulika Bahadur.

Albrecht Durer and selfies

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Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait

Who are you, and what are you doing here? You, there in the mirror, there in the lens of your phone: What do you see? asks Lawrence Farago in the opening paragraph of an essay in the New York Times about self-portraits and Albrecht Dürer.

Selfies are everywhere. The Google arts and Culture page estimates that about 93 million selfies are taken and uploaded onto social media every day. Social platforms like Instagram were specifically designed for the iPhone in 2010. Selfies are the major means of self-expression in our times. Few realise that selfies have art royalty in its bloodlines in the form of Albrecht Dürer, who lived from 1471 to 1528.

Dürer was a genius, one of the most remarkable artists of all times. He is regarded as the father of self-portraits. Prior to Dürer, self-portraits were rare. Dürer changed that. He was obsessed with his image and painted numerous self-portraits. For artists like Dürer, self-portraits were a means of self- expression. Think of self-portraits by artists as diverse as Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo, to mention but a few. Today, with the advent of the selfie, self-portraits are everywhere. They are the major means of self-expression.

Farago’s questions about portraits are similar to those asked by the foremost cultural critic of our times, the late John Berger. In his book Portraits, Berger writes pithy essays about 74 artists. Berger, looking at the same self-portraits of Dürer as Farago had, asks why people seek images that depict them? His first response is that any person who has a portrait painted about them, seeks to produce evidence that they lived. It is a voluntary existential act with a particular look that is unique to the subject of the portrait.

As always, Berger digs deeper and suggests that the appearance and look of the subject has a duality. First, it is an image of a particular person. Secondly the image interrogates the looker of the portrait, and asks what the looker thinks about the image. Any journalist will tell you that any story is about the “w’s”, “what, when, who and why”. The person who created the image (selfie included) asks the same question and seeks to answer the question by means of how the subject is presented in an image.

Selfies say a lot of things. They tell stories or can poke fun at us. I once saw a selfie where the maker of the image stands in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. The caption of the image says one of these faces are worth $860 million dollars.

Farago who is no media hack, studied art history at Yale and won the acclaimed Rabkin Prize in 2018 for art criticism, is rather cynical about selfies. He writes “In the eyes of us poor moderns, it seems self-evident that a picture can capture who you are. That your posed image, your face and your clothing, express something essential about your personality. It’s the myth on which every selfie stands”.

Farago argues that Dürer is the principal perpetrator of the myth upon which selfies stands. In this respect he looks at Dürer’s self-portrait painted in Munich in 1500. It is a magnificent painting. More so because flat mirrors did not exist at the time. Farago writes that the detail in the portrait evokes divine inspiration. Just look at Dürer’s hair in the image. Dark and light intertwined, displaying immense skill. Study the eyes and ask whether you see a window in them. Dürer’s gaze is intense, so much so that it troubles lookers. One person even damaged those eyes by poking needles into them. Farago also writes that the myth about self-portraits, is not innate but manufactured. He sees arrogance in the portrait but also believes that it is the best portrait ever.

Berger in turn regarded Dürer as the first one man, avant-garde. Dürer did his first self-portrait, a drawing, when he was 13 years old. His talent, even at that age, was remarkable. Like Farago, Berger sees the divine in Dürer’s self-portrait of Munich 1500.

Albrecht Dürer, Self-portrait at 13

Berger wrote that Dürer’s self-portraits were theatrical in the sense that they conveyed something more than what he actually was. In the Munich portrait, Berger suggests that Dürer presented himself as deity. It is not blasphemous because the artist was a devout and practicing Christian. Berger’s suggests that the divine is an awareness of the artist and of his creativity. At the very same time Dürer was aware that he was living in a world of suffering and that his magnificent creativity was impotent to do anything about human suffering.

Both critics conclude that self-portraits are designed to represent the ego in a flattering manner. In that sense the artist, whether it is the hand holding a telephone for a selfie, or a brush loaded with paint, is misrepresenting the self. Upon looking at the Dürer self-portrait two things stand out. One is that Dürer was truly a magnificent artist. His ability to do detail is genius. He was concerned with portraying himself exactly as he was. The missing part is, despite the self-portraits, we do not know who and what Dürer was like. That question hangs in the air, just like with most selfies.


Written by Luisa Blignaut.

Eva Hesse, No Title 1963

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In the early 1990’s, while working in a part time job with the installation team at the NGV, an artwork by Eva Hesse, No Title 1963, struck me as being a successful echo of some of my own struggling artistic preoccupations. It was unlike anything I had encountered before. Or rather, it has elements of things I had encountered before but scrambled together in a way I hadn’t seen, at least in the flesh. The explosion of new unbridled painting in the late 1970’s and early 80’s, a lot of which can now seem dated and ego driven, had ended in a suspicion within the curatorial circles of the International and Melbourne art worlds of painting as a viable way to move forward. However with this explosion, the seeds had been sown.

Also at the time a small book of the work of the German artist Martin Kippenberger caught my eye in the NGV bookshop and I was instantly intrigued with this work that also scrambled styles, in a more brutal way than Hesse but with absurd humour and pointed intent. It seemed to be a way forward and at this time the Hesse picture, for me, joined the dots back in time to an idea of multiplicity and possibilities rather than the notion that an artist must choose a single branch in the great arc of art history.

Martin Kippenberger, Untitled (Krieg böse), 1991
© The Estate of Martin Kippenberger. Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth. https://ocula.com/artists/martin-kippenberger/

Eva Hesse’s No title 1963, gives me the feeling that the artist has decisively chosen to not choose and has preferred to combine the orthodoxies of the day – gestural abstraction and hard edge colour field. Both in danger of becoming clichés and each burdened with their tribes of patriots. Hesse could see, possibly subconsciously, that to break this binary would open again the doors of perception. She brought a voice of Dadaism into the mid-century and as a female artist in New York’s heavily competitive male dominated art scene there was a desperate need for new voices to challenge this status quo.

No title 1963 is painted with oil on canvas, The texture of the ground and paint surface is fresh and directly worked- almost like a large work on paper. To achieve this fresh aliveness demands sure direction and confidence, remarkable here as Hesse was apparently quite unsure of her painting abilities and became more renowned for her sculpture- a form less reliant on the sensitivity of touch in the moment of making that comes to the fore in this painting.

Eva Hesse, No title. (1963), oil on canvas,  183.2 × 152.8 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
© The Estate of Eva Hesse. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth 
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/5356/

On close observation the gestural expanse is composed of rectangles of hand’s width sized marks resembling a scrawling handwriting in greys, ochres, whites and one rectangle in the lower right mainly in blues that pulls the eye down in a cascade from top to bottom. Squinting at the painting, similar to the Sansom painting I discussed last time, the stabbing black chunks punch holes in the surface and give tension and spatial definition to the murkier indistinct scrawling blather. With easy humour that challenges abstract expressionism’s claims to the sublime this dynamic gives articulation to something inchoate and absurd. The one element that completes and adds greater complexity to the chromatic and spatial world is the pinkish brushstroke running from top right to midway. This is echoed with a similar angled white line tucking behind a gestural moment and delving into a dark aperture. Directing this play of forces is the massive intrusion of hard edge wedges of industrial lemon yellow, white and warm ultramarine and cooler teal blues painted toughly yet with give at the top of the canvas. This is a wonderful play on one of the cornerstones of creating space in Western painting- the misty background of a Titian or the Mona Lisa cut over with a more sharply defined figure – here unsettled and topsy turvy.

Despite the vast history of artists pulling the language apart, the state of repose, or at least coherence, seems to be one of the most sought after qualities in art. It’s still really surprising to me that in No title 1963, the hot struggle to resolve the inconsistencies yet keep them living and breathing relaxes into such a natural repose. Contributing powerfully to this resolve is the way the division between the flat wedges and the looser paint below is essentially flat- the primacy of the surface, as the ruling critic of the day Clement Greenberg expounded, is insistent but sneakily there’s a blackish zone that appears to slip behind and under the leading edge of the white triangle.

Eva Hesse No title, 1964 Collage, gouache, watercolour, coloured pencil, and graphite on construction paper
45.9 x 32.4 cm,
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Hauser & Wirth
https://ocula.com/artists/eva-hesse/artworks/

In writing about this work I’m surprised how I feel like I’m writing about a painting concerns of my own, however it’s now almost 60 years since Hesse painted it and realise it’s more productive to think about connections and shared ideas and sensations than the delusion of originality. Hesse was a great originator about how the grotesque, awkward and absurd, both visually and psychologically, can be incorporated into a materially rich art. Surrealism, Dadaism, Automatic drawing and writing, the idea of the unconscious and more had come before her but she managed in her short life to bring threads of the play of these forces into an agreement with the demands of the highly tuned modernist mid-century New York art world. She proved that the idea of a single way forward is mere convenience amidst the flux and flow of our contemporary lives.

Written by David Palliser.

The art of Luisa Blignaut

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After Anaesthetic

Driven by a freight train of a mind, Luisa Blignaut’s acrylic paintings frequently and impulsively veer off track into unexpected, fertile territories.

The painting After Anaesthetic describes the minutes after Luisa woke from surgery and looked out of the Box Hill hospital window towards the Dandenong Ranges. Below is the city, with geometrically abstracted buildings. Luisa paints her reflection in the window where the rolling mountains and hills stop for the self portrait which is itself a geometric construction and traced by rainbows. Luisa has described this experience of waking and then slipping away again to wake again in another room.

“It was a rainy day and I saw a rainbow when I opened my eyes. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, I was in another room, remembering the rainbow.“

The hills musically echo the rainbow, as if Luisa has recognised herself somewhere within them, somehow, in the rainbow also. A part of these elements but aware of self as constructed, geometric, like the buildings. This seems to be a description of a slipping in and out consciousness, from apparent void into self. To be both separate from things and a part of all things, a sense of the tentative and the universal, of being in-between. The in-between of things characterises much of Luisa’s work.

Bark Blues

Luisa has a deep love for contemporary classical music, experimental music and jazz. She finds joy, meaning and integrity in improvised and experimental music. She frequently parallels natural textures and patterns with musical ones. In Bark Blues, subtle tones and textures correspond as much with music as with the bark of the trees, the title being a play on both texture and rhythm. Music and the improvisation of blues and jazz give the best insight into Luisa’s working process. Luisa has said that she “thinks all the time when painting, whilst thinking nothing at all at the same time“. Of all Luisa’s quotable quotes, this is my favourite. She also describes this as a “conversation between cognition and intuition displayed on a canvas with paint and brush. Brush strokes explore, discover and react. The resulting paintings are spontaneous and improvised.” Bark Blues describes Luisa’s way of thinking and working in a wonderful mixture of spontaneity, musicality and visual revelry.

The painting Polyrhythms uses the landscape to describe a musical composition which combines contrasting rhythms. As with Bark Blues we are seeing the two elements, visual and musical simultaneously. Each element of the landscape – sky, sea, beach, coast and even the poles have their own rhythm which simultaneously contrasts and seemingly harmonise with each other. Luisa has created the visual equivalent of a complex musical technique.

Polyrhythms

European Bee Eater, Thorns and Namaqua Spring all directly reference Luisa’s South Africa. Luisa was a frequent bird watcher and walker. Each of these images translates Luisa’s memories into a play of colour, form and space across the canvas using direct spontaneous brush marks. Thorns, uses the native vegetation to create a patterned abstraction as a homage to South Africa. Likewise, the intensity of colour in Namaqua Spring is extremely subjective, referencing an intense personal connection to a place where Luisa frequently found solace during turbulent years.

European Bee Eater
Thorns

Namaqua Spring

Hay Fever Near Coober Pedy, references Luisa’s experience of driving across Australia’s Nullarbor Plain whilst suffering hay-fever. It is as intense in colour as Namaqua Spring but more topographical in its structure, appearing to describe a spatial vastness.

Hay Fever Near Coober Pedy

The work, Maybe somewhere else, has a blue band of light at the centre which splits the composition top to bottom as if universal and all encompassing. The warm orange and reds surround the cooler blue. What is, Maybe somewhere else? Perhaps, for moment there is a pause here, a reflection of what lies outside the immediate and the material. As painting it contains an integration of all the elements discussed so far, organic, memory, visual and musical, but then asks a very seemingly simple question, what else and where?

Maybe somewhere else

As with After Anaesthetic, the painting Conversation combines the human face with natural elements, in this instance the textures of the bark of a tree. The eyes double as knots in woodgrain, and the simplified rhythmic forms also seem to reference music. This is a painting which knows no constraints. Is it a portrait or portraits? Yes. Is it comical? Yes, and also dry. Wry? Yes, but not cynical. It is biographical but altruistically, in that it is generous to the self and others. It appears to describe a moment of frustration without being mocking, drawing out the comical elements of the situation. The works brilliance is in bringing tree bark, the face(s) and social interaction together successfully into an expressive artwork.

Conversation

A series of paintings which Luisa entitles wth the word Bifurcation use the same simultaneous integration/separation of elements we have seen elsewhere in Luisa’s work. These abstract paintings, limited to two colours/tones play two fields against each other. Which colour is the top layer? We can’t quite tell because they shift and refuse to be grasped. Bifurcation means the division of on element into two. These two fields are both one whole organism which refuses to allow distinction of its parts and also, two elements. The apparent simplicity of these works hides a tactical resistance to being defined.

Scattered Bifurcation

Luisa’s works often combine elements of landscape and abstraction; rich memories from her original South Africa, and of Australia combining with her extensive musical knowledge. They form intuitive contingencies to hold together elements which become deeply biographical images. The works feed off a great depth of experience which is channelled through spontaneous painting decisions, making them appear disarmingly simple. Yet they contain complex strategies that are intriguing in their visual and conceptual structure.

Written by Marco Corsini.

Outside of place, a reflection on the work of Margaret Dunn

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Margaret Dunn

Margaret Dunn’s paintings build environments, often domestic and exotic at the same time, often modern and ancient also. These environments seem to be in flux, suggesting that while we exist in this time and place, it’s in the transience and conflicting aspects of our experience that we have the possibility of greater perspectives.

Margaret Dunn
Margaret Dunn

A Rothko like painting on a wall with glass of wine in the foreground. Perhaps we are in a New York apartment. Out of a window we see both a cityscape and the ruins of an arch. There is no consistent spatial correlation between the elements, rather this is a narrative about the conflict between the apparent permanence of our moment in time and its inevitable decline. Permanence, represented by the city with its great crowning victory of culture, the painting. While these are all celebrated in the moment, with wine, it is all contrasted against the ultimate decline apparent in the ruins which sounds a clarion call.

Margaret Dunn

We look out from the ruins of a building. An unusually large carrot leans precariously, humorously, in the distance. Dunn has mentioned that the carrot represents Trump leaning against a missile. There is a precarious fragility to this moment both through the imminent threat and through the decay, an awareness that it all can, and is ending. However a tree in blossom anchors us back in the moment and points to a natural and logical hope. The hope of new growth and of a future. Yes, all is transient but not without meaning or hope. Perhaps a fine balance contains the tension between transience and hope. Perhaps it is all one.

Margaret Dunn
Margaret Dunn

A complex weave of of staircases and buildings envelopes us. Are we destined to remain enmeshed in the the confusion of our built environments, our ideas and our culture? Are we trapped in this one moment as if it was our definitive and confused place? It’s in the confusion and the clash of the present with its myriad of experiences and possibility that we occasionally see windows and doors to other places that are beyond our present experience. There is a hint that as with the seascape that provides a stable and reassuring horizon in the distance, there is an opportunity for us to go beyond the limitations of ourselves, of our times, and that there is a reliable, consistent place there. 

Margaret Dunn

A building crumbles and its structure merges back into an abstract background. The transient and decaying building gives way to a new form of diagonals and planes. The building is limited but it flows out into an infinite rhythm of abstraction. All is in flux, flowing from the temporal to the infinite, with both existing simultaneously.  

Margaret Dunn

The camel rests in the desert, not in the tent which meets an immediate need for shelter, not in the tombs of great cultures and not within power, represented by the turret. Rather, the camel rests alone, beneath a limitless sky with the moon as its companion. The camel is not limited to this time and place, because it avoids entrapment, rather it has available to it, the infinity of the sky and of the desert plain.

Written by Marco Corsini.

Margaret Dunn attends Studio Art classes with Marco Corsini.

Sarah Murray – Internship Experience

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Sarah Murray, pictured here with her artwork, 2019

Of the many things that I have learnt in doing an internship with the Melbourne art class, the most prominent was the importance of fostering community and art’s unique ability to reach people whoever they are. I am a Visual Arts student studying at the Australian National University in Canberra and have been completing a course requiring the students to pursue an internship in an arts-based organisation. I jumped at the idea of doing my internship in Melbourne, the lure of a new city with an amazing arts culture, a multitude of galleries to explore and artists to connect with. However, I was most interested in the prospect of working with Melbourne Art Class for the unique opportunity to do practical studio work with an artist and gain teaching experience in the art class setting.

In Melbourne Art Class children’s classes and adult studio classes I observed how Marco taught and I also provided assistance to the students and gave presentations. Melbourne Art Class puts a focus on the individual’s development and fosters each student’s learning in establishing technique and creativity through their own directed works. I learnt that teaching is more beneficial when it is through guidance rather than instruction, that the teacher must meet the student where they are and to leave your ego at the door and accept that you do not know all the answers. The classes that I attended had a great sense of community, each group had gotten to know each other and created a great learning environment where the students could learn from what each other were doing as well as from their teacher.

Unnamed, charcoal on paper, Sarah Murray 2019

In the studio work I had the opportunity to do some life drawing, some of my own work and the underpainting or first layer of Marco’s work. I was most excited for the time in the studio and not only learnt practical knowledge but had the opportunity to pick Marco’s brain about his experience as a working artist and fostering an art’s career. I learnt that process and consistency are essential to creating work. I really benefitted from working through a process of conceptualising and idea, sketching the composition, drawing details and then painting. This process allows for problem solving along the way to reach a successful work. The consistency came from setting a schedule to do studio work and staying faithful to the routine in order to get the work done.  It was so wonderful to see into how another artist works, starting from the initial idea and going through the process to achieve completed artwork.

Unnamed, charcoal on paper, Sarah Murray 2019

In this time, we also visited many amazing local galleries to gain inspiration and knowledge from other artists which can feed back into the studio practice and fosters the art community. One of my favourite galleries was the Australian Galleries stockroom in Collingwood. The stockroom had paintings covering all the walls and sculptures surrounding the floors, it was bursting with art from many different artists, it was incredible to see so much work and in a unique way to how it is normally displayed in an exhibition.

My time with the Melbourne art Class and with Marco Corsini has been incredibly formative and sparked a way to see that an arts career is not so unattainable when surrounded by community.

Written by Sarah Murray.

Building Melbourne, creatively

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Swanston Street, 9 -10 February, 1985
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 2019

The idea of building a creative city has been at the forefront of how we imagine and develop cities like Melbourne for the last decade or two. As an artist, I’ve found this city creatively liberating and I’m thankful it has given me a place where my own skills have been developed and shared. However, at times, I’m made aware that I am living in the midst of suffering due to drugs or homelessness or mental health issues or some form of displacement. The recent reporting about injecting rooms and some of the associated conversations I’ve had with friends have highlighted the dichotomies present in our city. I do believe that working in a creative industry does build and enrich our lives and Melbourne supports this well, but how do we think about creativity in the context of the city that is often suffering?

There has been a significant influence upon our city policy makers concerning the role of the arts in our cities. In recent decades Richard Florida and Charles Landry have influenced many planners across the globe including those planning for Australian cities.[1] Florida’s book, The Rise of the Creative Class, has had a particularly big impact. Florida makes a connection between a successful economy and economic development based upon the presence of technology, talent and tolerance within that area. Florida’s argument is that in order to attract creative workers, that city has to have a lifestyle that is attractive to the new ‘creative class’. This ‘creative class’ values diversity and tolerance in the places they live. Florida says that companies will follow creative workers who have taken the opportunity to choose their location based on their preferences. For Florida, attracting and retaining talent rather than focusing on capital projects such as buildings and stadiums is the means to economic growth.

Rowland Atkinson and Hazel Easthope believe that there are significant reasons for the popularity of these ideas by Florida and Landry. They write, ‘First, the ideas of both Florida and Landry fit well with a broader recognition of the importance of the cultural industries in the economy… Second, particularly in Florida’s formulation, the creative class thesis is not at odds with economic rationalist or neoliberal policies.’  However, they raise the concern that gentrification tends to accompany the attraction of the creative classes which raises housing and living costs, displacing a sub section of society. They conclude that it appears that ‘urban governance approaches seek to enhance’ the possible benefits of a creative city agenda but are ‘generally ignorant of those excluded from, or unable to join, the new economy.’[2]  So, while there are many benefits touted about building a creative city, the focus on economic gains sometimes means that we fail to see those that are marginalised by the aspects such as rising house prices.

Charles Landry’s work which is concerned with urban renewal is perhaps better suited to creatively solving the problems of a city such as Melbourne. Landry’s, The Creative City, written with Franco Bianchini in 1998 argues that creativity can and should be used to tackle economic and social problems. Landry states in a later interview, that all aspects of a city are required to contribute to sustainable cultural environment, not just a creative class. While people in the arts can provide content, it is those working in infrastructure that are key. ‘If content is to have any effect, you need creative logistics analysts, creative engineers, creative educators. Above all, you need creative bureaucrats.’[3] Perhaps along the lines of Landry’s argument, broadening the scope of who is creative, to insist that all roles need to be creative, could enable more diverse solutions to our cities problems.

The original idea of a creative city has its basis in the works of several thinkers of the 1980’s, notably Australian David Yencken in 1988 who described ‘The Creative City’, in an article of that name, published in the literary journal Meanjin.[4]  It was Yencken who paved the way for imagining Swanston Street closed to traffic when in 1985, he proposed that for Victoria’s 150th celebrations, Swanston Street should be turned into a giant green park. So, for one weekend, 13,250 square metres of grass was rolled out along four blocks of Swanston Street. Tens of thousands of families picnicked in a park that had previously been a bleak road in the centre of the city.[5] Yencken was offering a vision that this car ridden centre of Melbourne could eventually be made completely car free. This eventually happened, as after being restricted to traffic from 1992, Swanston street was made completely traffic free by 2012. This serves as an example of how Melbourne was a beneficiary of creative thinking that didn’t come from an artist, rather from David Yencken as secretary of the Victorian Planning Ministry.

Daniel Pink writes that the future belongs to a person who thinks like an artist, inventor, storyteller a holistic ‘right-brain’ thinker. For Pink, the aptitudes that will make a person successful will be those of design, story (listening and communicating), symphony (connecting various elements), empathy, play and meaning. Recalling Landry’s ‘creative bureaucrats’, it seems that deepening our use of these aptitudes in our work, whatever that work is, will enable us to connect with the bigger picture, solve the bigger problems. Perhaps this is the key; that we all remain creative, seek meaning, listen to the stories and communicate using stories, connect the obscure dots and carry empathy, so that we can find creative solutions to our city’s problems.

I recently had a  conversation with Luisa, a Studio Art student at MAC. She described creativity as ‘finding a door where you once only saw a wall’.  Applying this thought to our city, we are not going to fully realise what a creative city can be until we all look for a door where we only can see a wall.

Written by Marco Corsini.

[1] Rowland Atkinson and Hazel Easthope, The Consequences of the Creative Class: The Pursuit of Creativity Strategies in Australia’s Cities, 2009 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2009 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

[2] ibid

[3] https://www.strategy-business.com/article/10306?gko=f6f79

[4]Yencken, D. (1988). “The creative city”. Meanjin. 47.

[5] https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-man-who-helped-re-imagine-melbourne-20190705-p524mc.html

Pam Hallandal – Paper Walls

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Pam Hallandal, self portrait, 1983
Pam Hallandal, self portrait, charcoal, 1983

Pam Hallandal (1929 – 2018), Australian artist and Former Head of Drawing VCA, impacted the lives of many artists in Melbourne from the 1970s onwards, including our very own teachers here at MAC, Michelle Caithness and Michelle Zuccolo.

Glen Eira City Council Gallery is celebrating her legacy with an exhibition, Paper Walls, featuring her incredible work and her passion for drawing. The exhibition will also feature Pam’s past colleagues and students, including Rick Amor; John Scurry; Greg Creek; Allan Mitelman and Michelle Zuccolo.

The gallery will showcase the breadth of her artwork and highligh some of the themes she depicted including portraits, contemporary life in Melbourne (shoppers, casino patrons, workmen) and other images exploring the human condition. Pam was a visionary teacher and mentor, employing a wide range of emerging and established artists to work with alongside her, educating students through their shared passion for drawing.

Many have been fortunate to benefit from the rich experience of Pam’s teaching practice (1970s to 1994). Others have simply enjoyed viewing the quality of her drawings, prints and sculpture which now belong in national and state gallery collections, as well as in universities and library collections throughout Australia. Pam’s career highlights included winning the Australian Dobell Drawing Prize for excellence in drawing in 1996 and 2009 (the only female to do so). Pam has been included in “Backlash” at the NGV in 1986, in many major drawing related exhibitions at Heide, Mornington Peninsula, Gold Coast City Art Prize, The Centre Gallery, S.H. Erwin Gallery, Sydney, Kedumba Invitation Art Award, Australian Drawing Biennial, ANU and a recent major solo exhibition at Ballarat Art Gallery.

Two teachers at MAC studied drawing under Pam Hallandal, and are also represented in this exhibition. Michelle Zuccolo was employed by Pam for five years in the Drawing Department, Victoria College of Art and Design, Prahran. Michelle has been included in the Australian 7th Drawing Biennale, Drill Hall, ANU, Canberra and has been a finalist five times in the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, PLC, Sydney. She received an Honourable Mention by judge, Aida Tomescu in 2017.

Michelle Caithness recently participated in invitation-only the Keduma Invitation Drawing Award, NSW and is currently a shortlisted in the Dobell Drawing Prize, to be shown at the National School of Art, Sydney. Floor talks are scheduled throughout the exhibition, and Michelle Caithness will be discussing her drawing practice at midday on Friday 8 March at the gallery in Caulfield.

Exhibition details:
Dates: 7-24 March
Time: Monday to Friday, 10am–5pm. Weekends, 1pm–5pm.
Location: Glen Eira City Council Gallery, corner Glen Eira and Hawthorn Roads, Caulfield
More information here.

Written by Michelle Zuccolo.