Why I Create

Remember making a mess with paint on your hands in kindergarten? The feeling of the wet paint slipping through your fingers and transferring your handprint onto that butcher's paper. I do. I can close my eyes and see the teacher creating me a palette of primary colours from those 2L bottles of paint onto a paper plate that is typically used at a picnic. I'd add so much paint onto that off-white paper that it would start to go soggy and rip. I added layer after layer of colour, making marks all over the page. My creative journey started at a very young age.

With my mother being a dressmaker, I always remember having a love of fashion. In my early adolescent years, I would sit in my grandparents' rumpus room for hours on end, creating fashion sketches as if I were about to pitch myself to Anna Wintour and imagine my creations in Vogue. Every dream I had always involved creating something with my hands and my imagination. I always felt I had a bit of flair. I was a bit outside the square, and I was always an out-there kind of kid. I never wanted to be like anyone else. In those formative years of my life, I wanted to be a fashion designer and a tattoo artist. I was born a creative.

I wasn't always that attentive to the things in high school that I was expected to be good at. My creativity pulled rank over academics, so my workbooks contained doodles and scribbles rather than essays and algebra. Creative subjects had my full attention. It wasn't just art, but photography, textiles and cooking — all things that, to this day, I also use as creative outlets alongside my art. When I finished high school, I chose full-time work. As a child who struggled to focus, I didn't think that university would be the right fit for me. Even if it were an arts degree, I didn't want to sit in a classroom for another four years.

I've worked in many roles across many different industries trying to find myself a 'career', but I never found a job that made me truly happy. When the lockdowns happened in Victoria in 2020, I lost both my jobs. It was a curveball that turned into one of my greatest blessings. Forced to stay inside, I found my love for art again. I focused on portraiture of celebrities and began offering commissions of pets and families using watercolour. With each piece, I improved my skills in realism and, while each piece was technically sound, I wasn't 100% sure that it was who I was as an artist.

I'm lucky to live so close to the Barwon River, and my daily walks outside with my Staffy, Rosie, became what I looked forward to most. I love being in nature; it slows down my overactive mind. I think it's because nature doesn't have to be anything — it just is. It's funny though, as I never thought to bring nature into my work back then. I just stuck with the realistic portraits because I knew I was good at them. But just because you're good at something doesn't necessarily mean that you feel connected to it. Maybe referring so closely to a reference made me feel like I wasn't using my imagination like I used to when I was younger.

Once the world opened up again, my creative practice started to lose priority. In the past 12 months, my internal creative voice began to get louder. Wanting to step away from the technical perfection of realism, I experimented with abstract art. It was fun feeling like my little kindergarten self again, making a mess with my hands. The only trouble was, I was a fully grown adult now who had adopted a perfectionist mindset, and my abstract art was not technically perfect. So while the process of making a mess was fun, each piece came with an inner critic.

Getting into the swing of things hasn't been smooth sailing. I'd love to say I have this wildly successful, intimate daily practice, but that is not the case. I have taken brief breaks, battling self-doubt and, in turn, procrastination, but I do finally feel as though I am finding my voice as an artist, bridging my skill in realism with a more contemporary mixed-media style. The playful process, the layers of intuition and trust in the medium make me feel like that little girl who would make a mess of the paper in kinder. It feels less about being perfect and more about self-expression and exploration.

Nature is now at the heart of my practice. I love its imperfect and ever-changing beauty. The imperfection is something I try to find peace with in my practice, and the ever-changing nature reminds me that I will evolve throughout this journey, as we all do unconsciously as humans. I want to create art that makes me feel like I do in nature: grounded and at peace.

So, if you were to ask me why I create, it's because nothing makes me feel better about myself. When I finally overcome the thoughts of my inner critic, nothing makes me feel more accomplished or proud. I am proud of the woman I am becoming and the artist I am evolving into. And I know that the little kid making mud on that butcher's paper and the young girl sketching in her grandparents' rumpus room would think I'm pretty damn cool.