The Clown

My father always had an appreciation for fine art.

He is not remotely artistic. The family home was filled with artifacts from his and our many travels.  Carvings, paintings, sculptures, posters, shells, bags, jewellery you name it and from every remote and exotic corner of the globe and were displayed on every wall and shelf and table in the house. 

Why am I starting an art career in my fifties you may be asking? Well, it hasn’t been an easy road and there has been much heartache to get here now. The here now is lovely by the way.  Here is a little early snippet starting from the beginning….

When I was a kid, around 7 years of age, I was put in the back annex kind of room of the house.  It was freezing and full of spiders, but I enjoyed it out there. It was coming up to the Melbourne Royal Show. Back then that was a very big deal and we feverishly devoured the special edition newspaper looking mostly for the rides and descriptions of the show bags; of which we memorised the contents for every single one.

One day I noticed on the wall in front of my bed a new glossy full-page colour poster from the paper advertising the show had been stuck up with blue tack.  Dad must have put it there.

It was the most glorious and captivating poster I had ever seen.  It had a full-face picture of a clown that I could see had been originally painted in oil paint.  The face filled the poster with gleaming eyes and a huge smile.  What captivated me was for the first time I’d seen evidence of movement of paint and that each brush stroke had created the image, not line.

That was mind-blowing.

Every day I would lie and stare at the poster in front of me and study every blotch of colour from the white face, red nose and magnificent flowing red hair.  Nothing had ever fascinated me so much and how it had been created is all I wanted to know.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but that painting was the first introduction to what I wanted to do with my life.  I had subtle ideas but now knew I wanted to be an artist. 

To me, it was the most brilliant thing any human could do, create art like this clown. To me, it was an extraordinary gift to be able to create life and form from blobs of colour moved around with a brush.  I had never seen or done anything like it, it was just obvious to me that is how it happened, knowledge of blobs of paint.

There were no artists in my immediate family but we did have a history of artists, I even had an Aunt in the Heidelberg school that was rarely mentioned and my grandmother had a couple of her paintings in her living room that I adored and also studied with a similar obsession to my clown poster.  However, there was this undercurrent of not taking anyone artistic seriously and it was seen more as a kind of personality quirk, a rather unfavourable one.

I asked my parents to take me to art school. No dear. It wasn't even a considered no, it was a flick-a-fly-away kind of a 'what a laugh!' no.

My friend at school who lived one street away had an artist mother who I discovered ran children's classes on the weekend.  Her mum to me was almost mystical and divine.  Beautiful and warm and magical. 

No.

I was never given a reason why no matter the depth of sincerity or eventual drama of my plea, my parents swept it away nonchalantly.

We did lots of activities though.  Every night after school and most weekends we engaged in swimming, tennis, horse riding, ballet, football, basketball, netball, sailing, you name it, we did it.  Add to that bush walking and camping and Sunday school at church.  

Some days I’d be pulling the jodhpurs on in the car over the ballet tights and leotard on the way out to the farm where mum’s horses were kept.  We were in this never-ending rat race of stuff to do, and our feet never touched the ground, and I don’t think my parents ever consciously thought about for even a second what they were doing and why.

I wanted to learn how to paint my clown. It was obsessive.

One day the clown was gone.

I asked both parents, but neither knew what I was talking about. The back room was now my little brothers, and I was moved back to my original room with no posters on the wall which was rectified over the years with pin-ups of Peter Garret.  I know, I'm different.

On my next birthday, I asked for art classes and art materials.  There was an art shop in town and mum finally took me in.  I marvelled and fondled the materials and to my delight, on my birthday I was given a sketchbook, some charcoal sticks and a kneadable rubber.

Oh, happy days! Please note here I also had a delicious set of Derwent pencils from my Nana that all kids got as some kind of rite of passage.  They were seen as the best at the time, and it was a status thing or a flex at school to have the full set, which I did and loved them.

Moving charcoal and altering the shade with the rubber was like an alchemist creating and experimenting with potions.  The book was soon filled and that was the end of it.  No more paper or materials ever came. 

My grandfather often bought home from work some leftover computer paper that had perforated strips with holes on the side we could easily pull away.  I’d staple the pages into sketchbooks and make pretty covers and fill them with whatever I could think of but mostly things to do with my life – the beach, horses, ballet and what I found around the house. 

I don’t understand why it was so hard, why I was allowed to do so much in many ways but not what I most wanted.  It was an energy that stayed with me almost my whole life, this opposing force, some kind of shitty karma.  Other things as I grew up persistently got in the way and many times, I’d lose heart and put the pencils down, pack them away as it was too painful to be reminded of.  Always other things, other people, other responsibilities.  It became stressful and my skill was impacted, and I took it so personally, as we do when young and with burning desire. 

In grade five I had a teacher who detected my skill and would give me materials at school to keep.  I loved her and kept them hidden in my desk and never took them out of the room or shared them with anyone.  They were my precious. She encouraged me and called me the class artist. Heaven.  She got me to make all the activity posters in the classroom and would call on me any time she needed a drawing for a notice or something like that painted on the walls or windows or paper.  She gave me hope.

My aunt was dating a guy who was a graphic design teacher at high school and to me, therefore, he must be like a god.  He loved doing pointillist pencil works and one year gave my mother a drawing of her horse and again, I couldn’t take my eyes off it.  I begged him to teach me.  He always laughed it off.  UGH.

I gave up.  Tail between my legs and surrendered to the only thing that worked – whatever mum and dad said I was to do.  Eventually, the rollercoaster ride of my family life took hold and getting by was all that mattered.  I looked forward to art classes at school only to find eventually the teachers telling me things like I was too creative for their classes and that I didn’t do things like paint within the lines. 

Credit to my father again, he was oddly some kind of thread.  He didn't dislike artists or art; he simply didn't want that for me at that stage.

Whilst living away at 12 in the country, Dad arranged for all of us to go on a world trip during the school holidays.  My brother who was living in another town and I flew over to meet the rest of the family in Singapore and off we went. It was glorious.  I loved it, every bit of it.  We experienced, even if briefly, so many cultures and cuisines and tonnes of art and architecture from Greece to Egypt to Russia to India, Sweden, France, and the UK and much more. 

There was one thing, in particular, he wanted to show us.  He took us to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He took us up an escalator and walked us around until he found it.  He stopped and stood in wonder, and I turned around and saw it too. His favourite painting.

The Night Watch by Rembrandt.  I think I have bored you about this before, but it seems persistently relevant, which in itself is a revelation to me so we will continue...

The Night Watch (although I always called it the Night Watchmen). Remarkable, breathtaking.  Almost too much to comprehend. All the art we had seen, all the galleries we had been to, and this was the place and the work he wanted us to see.  I got it.  I totally got it.  I was also intimidated by it.

Many years later my then-husband and I bought a car and drove around all of Europe. I was keen to go back and see The Night Watch to see if it still had the same magic. It did. My father had no idea the gift it had been, well maybe he did. At least I could devour and appreciate art in galleries and read books.  His religion was travel and exploration and we were often dragged along, and I always loved it and benefitted.

By 15 it was all over, any hope of art or becoming an artist.  By 16 I was away at boarding school.  Luckily studying music.  I think that was the compromise by my parents.  I’d grown too tall for ballet and had dislocating knees that stopped any sporting career.  My great-grandmother had died and we inherited her old piano.  It was a very crappy piano and we never had it tuned but it was my lifeline. 

I played and played and poured all my emotions into it.  I was just as musical as I was artistic and, eventually, did everything I could from the piano, violin, viola, orchestra, and choir.  I was in everything at school and felt at least I could do this even if it was a replacement for my heart’s desire. 

One day I remember clearly, I was in the music department in one of the cubicles, practising for 1-3 hours daily as was required.  Most kids had started music lessons when they were young and had probably already spent 6 years learning.  I had only 2 years under my belt and had caught up due to an incredible dedication to practice.  But this particular day I heard talking and laughing in the courtyard below.  I looked out the window and there were the art students.  Each of them had a large sketchbook and some pastels and had been sent down there to draw the flowers and garden.  They were happy and smiling while I was stuck in a little cubicle doing countless scales and arpeggios with a metronome clicking.

The devastation in me was too much.  The pain inside was too great.  I will never forget that day or that feeling.  I felt like the meaning of life for me wasn’t ever to be known and I was destined to do what others wanted. That plus overwhelming personal issues and illness and I shut down.  My mystical nature was growing, and I already knew that the life others were thoughtlessly working towards I didn’t want.  

This dance with karma, life purpose, and art has always continued.  The story continues with more heartache and twists and turns which will be another captivating article soon – my ‘guru’ and spiritual community bullying me to quit -  yet here I am at 51 years of age, able to look back at it all as I am up at 6 am with this strong desire to write these words and then start my day in the studio and get to work. 

I’m a published author, I love to write even if I am not a writer.  I play the harmonium for my programs and sing even though I let the music slowly fade away when younger and never took my music anywhere and am completely average as a result, but I still love it.

The beauty of the difficult path I have had is that I know not to waste any time by letting my mind compare me to my contemporaries who are already world-famous at this age.  I don’t obsess or think about what is missing or how to catch up.  I don’t care.  All that matters is creativity and the happiness it brings, and that art comes through me that is uplifting and tells a great story of my inner mystical life; most of all it is in service to humanity in some way.  That is fortunate indeed. X

©MataKamaleshwari