By Kylie, on March 24th, 2013  Too much certainty As I attempt to take my art more seriously and step out from the safety of ‘oh, it’s just a little something I do in my spare time’, I find myself my own worst enemy.
Is there a reason to make art if you’re not a success? If no one likes what you do, if no one buys your work, if you can’t make a living at it?
Last year I started to take and post iPhone photos. It started out small, which also meant safe, and gradually expanded from there. With expansion though the safety dwindled, until it got to the point where I felt anxious to create and share. In a small pond it was easy to shine, to feel successful and special. In the move from hobbyist to self-proclaiming artist the stakes become higher and the chorus of voices about why I shouldn’t bother is LOUD.
This is not easy. Modern, mainstream culture as well as my sensible, suburban background maintains a chorus of: ‘Why are you bothering? No one cares, or values this stuff. You’re not called to do this or you would have done it by now. You’re nothing special, you won’t be a success at this, stop wasting your time.’
I figure I need to create my own sense of success, rather than buying wholesale a version from a capitalist society that sees no value in anything beyond the bottom line.
It is gratifying to get some ‘yeses’ from the universe, to find a few people that respond to your work – but is it essential?
Why do we make art? Why did Henry Darger toil his entire life on The Realms of the Unreal and never reveal it to anybody? Why did The Holy Modal Rounders never give up on music? Why have Anvil kept at it all these years? Of all the artists in the world only a tiny handful can be ‘successful’ in the conventional sense of the word and yet we stick at it.
It seems to me the chief motivation for making art cannot be to make yourself feel special via the world’s love (fame, money, status). Surely that is unsustainable, or a recipe for misery.
If I’m honest, I am attracted to art for those reasons. Growing up I thought my artist brother was so special, and I wanted some of that too. But as I make my own art, I realise that making art so that people think you’re special is a fool’s game, and one destined to failure. That old chestnut persists: all the love in the world isn’t going to fill you up if you can’t love yourself.
So what is art good for? Why continue, even when other people don’t get it? I can’t speak for everyone, but for me making art helps with the grief of existence. It helps me to figure out who I am, and to accept what I find. It’s a welcome break from rationality (which seems so dominant in modern, Western life). It pushes me to engage more deeply with the world, to be more curious and open. Plus, it’s FUN.
The practice of art isn’t to make a living. It’s to make your soul grow. – Kurt Vonnegut Jr
If I look at it this way ideas about what makes a ‘successful’ artist become redundant. But if I have to measure maybe the only criteria is that you keep creating, in spite of all the voices (internal and external) that tell you it’s a waste of time.
By Kylie, on February 17th, 2013 
They call Narrabri shire “Big Sky” country and it’s easy to see why – it’s flat and wide, and the Nandewar ranges keep their distance, flattened way up against the horizon.
When we go to Narrabri though we visit a different place, Nan’s & Pop’s place.
We see the inside of a lovingly kept home, where time and life occupy deep, smooth grooves.
We listen to sepia-toned tales where grandfather walked miles to fish along the banks of the Namoi, catching yellow-belly, catty and cod.
Or the time when Nan and a friend played hopscotch out the back and were the cockatoos for her friend’s SP bookie dad. And when the D’s did come it was okay because the tickets were hidden under the clucky hen.
A place where people are called Old Mother Shillshay, and cards are still a way to pass the time.
By Kylie, on February 11th, 2013 Hmmm, a path, I think I’ll take it…
Helloooo! It’s been a while. I’ve been busying myself with other projects, chiefly photography, but I have not lost the itch to blog, so here I am. I return with a new slant, one that I hope will take hold of me and keep me posting. There are three facts that have dawned hard and fast on me lately:
I am 40. And that kind of freaks me out. I’m not happy. I’ve hung about on the sidelines of life, waiting for certainty and consequently not going . . . → Read More: I think Seth Godin might be right
By Kylie, on April 9th, 2012 We walk out to get breakfast the day is hard-to-get-at-beautiful shimmering blues, gauzy yellow green high contrast, even at this early hour I am sharpish too and I cannot wear this day I am muddied and muddled And so, though the day is wide and fluttering like a scarf I notice the bird shit all over the post box and the spot brown bodies of dead moths in the light fixture at the cafe Worse still I am jammed in my head eyes like anchors.
By Kylie, on April 8th, 2012 Turquoise
some might say not sure blue not sure green but you carve out a territory all your own away from sure firedness
of sky and marbled waters veined with the earth golds, greys, bubbling blacks you encircle our breath and our molten cores
mingling strands luminous and deep
By Kylie, on April 8th, 2012 Remembering “Spring” (or I Draw the Line at Hearts)
Do I remember the first poem I wrote? I do. It was my first year of high school (a first within a first). We were in the demountables. Demountables. What a strange word for a classroom. Sounds like a euphemism. I don’t think that occurred to me at the time. They were meant to be temporary, the demountables, they weren’t. They were: flat roofed, with puckered metal external walls and thin sheets of biscuit brown wood on the steps. The class: Japanese? The teacher: a woman, forgotten now. The behaviour: mine, . . . → Read More: NaPoWriMo #5
By Kylie, on April 7th, 2012 Yes, I am behind. Yes, I am struggling. But. I will not give up. (Self, I hope you are listening).
Enough of my whimpering.
The prompt was to write a blues lyric. I only managed a stanza, and it’s nothing great, but I’ve decided to hit publish and move on, since I need to hurry the hell up.
We sit on the train, all facing the same way We die on the train, all facing the same way Lord knows my song is in here, but I sure need the pay
By Kylie, on April 5th, 2012 Poem for a wedding
Dust motes mill about in bands of light we shuffle our feet and wait fingering loving lavender orders of service velvet print like black ants swarming The groom stands up front jiggling one knee.
I, mote-like, am brightened by the sunny ritual and grin wide and hard.
The bride arrives, satiny perfection highlights fresh lips shining Words and bands of metal are exchanged The minister makes a little joke at one forgetting the words or fingers that won’t work.
I cock my head and keep grinning.
Later we will dance to all the same songs and . . . → Read More: NaPoWriMo #3
By Kylie, on April 3rd, 2012 So it’s NaPoWriMo and I’d ummed and ahhed about doing it but decided not to – mostly because I’m terrified. But if life has taught me anything it’s that I get a lot out of doing things that I want to do but am totally shit scared about. So, here I am. Giving it a go. Bear in mind I am very much an amateur. Lots of roughness around edges.
My first offering:
Journey of a Lurgy
this lurgy first camped in the base of my throat where it crouched lumpen over my voice box it then found . . . → Read More: NaPoWriMo #2
By Kylie, on April 3rd, 2012 A new tradition in order to grease the wheels of creative practice, “The Week in Creativity” will be a weekly round up of my creative endeavours including snippets, slivers and small stones as well as attempts at interesting images and fully fledged Poems.
# this is a photo well & truly from the vault. It’s a little plain but I kind of like it – it has a certain Blue Velvet appeal.
# some small (& medium-sized) stones from March:
13.03.12 We, the day and I, are decisively blue . . . → Read More: The week in creativity # 1
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