In the creative arts, it’s normal to continually ask yourself if what you’ve created is original, consciously derivative, or worse, unconsciously derivative. But don’t let that stop you from looking outward, because it’s the chance meeting and the serendipitous find that can make your creative arts one-of-a-kind.
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A study into one mans journey into the creative arts.
I started making sculptural pieces with some of the larger plastics that had been washing up on my local beaches. I made totems and installations made with thongs, coke bottles and all of these things. The process was organic and took on a life of its own. It is a beautiful process working with these materials, where the doors of opportunity and variation are kept wide open.
People would tell me to look at this person’s work or that person’s work. At the time, I decided it was best for me just to continue making my body of work and going into various avenues that it took me and really solidified what it was that I was doing with these new materials instead of looking to other artists for inspiration. This enabled me to create work that was fresh and to make my own mistakes to learn from. My work was not a derivative of anyone else’s work. This was important for me and has always been.
I shifted again back to painting after working with found objects and recycled materials for so many years. I was asked by a very major recycling company in Australia to draw up some public art proposals for works that were intended for placement outside buildings and factories throughout Australia. When I toured one particular factory I noticed that their plastic fabricating machines were pumping out what are called “purges” at the end of a run. These were like big blobs that would be squeezed out of the machine to clean the machine at the end of the day or week.
I found these objects incredibly interesting and immensely beautiful in their own way, and I proceeded to collect a number of these objects that were either destined for a landfill or for recycling and chose to exalt them on plinths in my studio. I then created a series of paintings about these plastic objects. This got me back into painting again, almost accidentally. The public art projects never went forward because of financial difficulties on the part of the companies, but in the meantime I re-entered the realm of paint.
As a direct result of painting for an extended period of time, I began a series of paintings reflecting my daily walk around the lighthouse here in Byron Bay. Essentially I ended up painting seascapes and landscapes of beaches that I had spent the previous 12-14 years picking plastics up off. It was an interesting turn of events.
