When I took early retirement from the Trib three years ago, it was with the stated aim of pursuing my creative interests. Like so many others, I had spent many busy years juggling children, work and creativity. I felt the time had come to get more serious about tapping the artist within.
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Not that I am implying that children and work do not exercise one’s creativity; in the good times they do just that. But it is easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of everyday life. For instance, an editor can get really creative with ideas and design, but the work also involves nitty-gritty-nit-picking work, such as: where should the apostrophe in the upcoming celebration sit? Is it a day for individuals to celebrate their own particular father (Father’s Day), or is it a day for society in general to recognise fathers (Fathers’ Day)? While Fairfax Media comes down on the side of individuals ie Father’s Day, and there is still plenty of debate, it’s not exactly an exercise in artistry.
Once your children no longer need you to tie their shoelaces or drive them to sport/music/friends, or you decide you enjoy the view from the greasy pole at your current level, or your health or other circumstances say ‘slow down’, many people decide that instead of throwing a slipper at their howling creativity, it’s time to unclip the leash.
There must be something vital to our humanity in music, art, poetry, prose, drama, dance… they all go back to the earliest human civilizations. People painted on cave walls, they danced around campfires, they entertained each other with stories - stories to explain the inexplicable, to pass on their history, to emphasise their connections to land and people, to connect emotionally with their community. ‘The Arts’ survive and thrive despite periodic authoritarian regimes that try to stamp them out and other more tolerant regimes that would see them simply starve.
Somehow it seems our society is pleased to pay someone with the skill and energy to mow the lawn or clean the house, but expects the artist to provide their talents and energy for free. While reading is a very popular pastime in Australia, you could probably count on one hand the novelists who earn a decent living from their passion. Writing is not a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end, it is something people do because they feel driven to. It’s like a pressure cooker, where the ideas build up and the fingers act as the pressure valve, tap, tap, tapping until the story, poem or play is cooked. And what a feeling it to take the lid off and say, ‘It’s finished’! So satisfying you could almost taste it.
While I have zero, zip, nada experience with producing visual art, I am in the process of creating my first painting since school for the YassArts Secret Canvas Art Auction. Although I don’t have the technical expertise or artistic eye required to produce a masterpiece, I can see why people do it. I can see the creative process is similar to writing. You have an idea, work on it, change it, find a detail that delights you and then you work, work, work to bring it to fruition.
That’s the thing about creating something, it’s hard work. It takes perseverance and perspiration. But in the end, if you produce something that generates an emotional response in someone else, you’ve helped that person understand more about themselves and their place in the community. And that’s always worthwhile.
