'Artists can swim against strong currents.'
Dr Gene Hart-Smith is a research fellow at Macquarie University, Australia, in the Department of Molecular Biology Sciences. He is also an accomplished fine artist, and in 2020 was selected as a finalist in the inaugural Darling Portrait Prize, at the Australian National Portrait Gallery. Gene documents some significant moments in his own life through his painting, in beautifully rendered and honest portrayals.
Where is your current studio? What would be your dream studio?
I’m sad to say that I’ve just dismantled my current working space. I’d cordoned off a corner of our apartment (dubbed ‘da daa’s corner’ by my infant son) using playpen barriers. We’ve now moved to another apartment, and I’ll do my best to find another corner from which to paint.
My dream studio – which already existed prior to its dismantling, and that I’m sure will exist again – is any quiet space where I have homes for my paints, books and trinkets, and in which I feel that I have a mandate to just be.
Do you prefer to work in silence or does certain music inspire you?
I love working with music. The Cocteau Twins and Nick Drake are always amongst my high rotation artists.
Studio life can lead to isolation, how do you address this/ keep a balance?
Being alone is something that I deeply value, but for me it is a rare occurrence. I am fortunate to live a life filled with people I care about. I earn a living as a research scientist; an occupation that is inherently collaborative. I currently do this part-time so that I can continue caring for my son. I share this responsibility with my wife, who is also working part-time, and we also get help from Casper’s grandparents. So for me, at this stage of my life, painting has sanctioned some isolation.
Describe a moment you had an epiphany concerning your creative life.
As a child, I would often imagine my permanent annihilation. This would drown me in terror. These experiences, which felt like epiphanies, made a lot of things seem trivial. Nothing much seemed to matter beyond understanding what it means to exist and die.
These experiences have directed my decisions in life, and were behind my choice of science as a career. However I’ve since discovered that science is a slow-burn communal endeavour. I value the insights that science can bring, but it is not a dependable means for finding answers to burning personal questions.
So I’ve since made efforts to sit with these questions from a place of quietude, of which painting is an active form for me. Following the birth of my son, I stopped my scientific work for the better part of a year. I had few spare moments during this time, but in the moments I did have, I took the opportunity to paint. I’m still very early in the process of discovering what painting means to me, but am excited to see where it goes.
What is your favourite/ least favourite part of the creative process?
I’m teaching myself to paint by observing the work of others and experimenting. I’m very much finding my feet, particularly during the preparatory stages of a creating a work. It’s still a very slow slog for me to create the foundations for realism that I prefer to have in place. I also have a strong sense of the colours that I find beautiful but a limited feel for how to mix them, so spend a lot of time pre-mixing my paints and storing them in a freezer. This grunt work has been getting a little smoother with every painting, but it’s still a chore. Once the foundations for a work are in place and my freezer is filled to the brim with beautiful colours, painting is an unmitigated joy.
Nature versus nurture- do you believe you have inherited abilities from creative parents, do you have creative siblings? Can you identify environmental factors or influences which led to your choices or directions?
I’m fortunate to have my family, who I love very much. I’ve always felt fully supported and trusted by my parents, and tremendous encouragement from my grandmother. Each of them instilled in me a sense that we do not need to fall into typical life paths. My grandmother made the unusual choice of marrying a poet (my grandfather, William, who I only met briefly), then made her way in the world as a strong, independent woman during a time when the barriers to this were even greater than they are now. She used her independence to live a beautiful life, embedded in nature and family. All of my paintings point to her. My dad has a wonderful ingrained tendency to quietly shun the norms of the world. He recently went on a lone trike ride from Darwin to Perth. And my mum made the unconventional decision to leave her home of Hong Kong to marry a foreigner. She completing a diploma and found a respectable office job in her new country. She had grown up in a very poor household, so it was a brave decision for her to give up the security of this job to prioritise her desire to help others.
Our culture dictates that we should make progress and build security. I doubt that painting will help me or my family with this. It will not pay off a mortgage or fund a retirement. It
may serve to place beauty at the centre of how we live. I feel lucky to have been born into a family in which this sort of idealism is encouraged.
What do you hope to convey through your work?
My paintings are fairly private; I haven’t put many of them up for display. They’ve just been products of my attempts to sit quietly, and to live in a manner that feels most right for myself and those I care about. This isn’t a straightforward thing to do in our world. If my paintings do end up being seen more widely, it would be nice if they could convey that this is a meaningful thing to try for.
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