Images Of Aradale

A friend once said to me many years ago “It’s a pain in the backside when you are driven to do something that’s not economically viable”.  By which he meant - art.  But then, perhaps it depends on what type of art practice we are talking about.

When I was at art school in the 1990’s, I was made aware of an exhibition called the Cunningham Dax collection of psychiatric art that was on show at the Victorian Artists Society in East Melbourne.  Talk about art on the edge!!  Years earlier, the head of the mental health authority in this state, Eric Cunningham-Dax, had rescued from the dumpmaster hundreds of drawings and paintings produced by patients of psychiatric hospitals.  They are now on permanent display at the Dax Centre, Melbourne University.  The last time I saw the exhibition, it had been sanitized compared to what I saw years before.  That is, not half as confronting.

Evening At Aradale, 2007 oil on canvas, 80 x 106 cm

The whole issue of mental illness, of an existence outside the mainstream, has long fascinated me.  Not to mention the history of mental illness in my family.  (Given recent events, I would imagine the prevalence of mental illness has skyrocketed generally.)  In the early 1990’s I attended an open day at the Willsmere Psychiatric Hospital in Kew just after the last patients had been removed.  Unforgivably, I left my camera home.  I didn’t make the same mistake when I visited the former Aradale facility in Ararat in western Victoria a few years later.

View From The Tower, Aradale, 2021, oil on canvas, 84 x 84 cm (available for sale on the Bluethumb website)

Aradale certainly attracted its fair share of adverse publicity over the years, largely due to underfunding by increasingly stingy governments.  It was opened for business in the late 1860’s and in its heyday was surrounded by 100 acres of land.  The facility raised its own cattle, sheep and poultry, did its own slaughtering, grew fruit and vegetables and thus was largely self-supporting.  Coal for the furnaces was about the only thing that needed to be brought in, apart from patients of course.  The facility also had its own tailors producing uniforms, a chapel and a morgue.

Winter At Aradale, 2021, oil on canvas, 66 x 86 cm (available for sale on the Bluethumb website)

Whilst facilities such as Aradale courted controversy from time to time, there is no doubt that “asylum” means refuge and sanctuary and many of the former patients would stand little chance of surviving in the outside world.  The notion of “least restrictive environment” governs mental health policy these days, thus we have the reality of “sidewalk psychotics” as the Americans call them. 

I held an exhibition of paintings based on Aradale at the  Ararat Gallery in 2004.  One of the gallery staff told me she drove past the entrance to Aradale the morning after it had closed in 1993 and saw what she believed to have been former patients gathering at the gates.  They may have been crazy, but they weren’t stupid.

Aradale Evening, 2022, oil on canvas, 71 x 86 cm (available for sale on the Bluethumb website)

Some year ago I got fully involved in exploring ‘issues’ in my art and was producing rubbish more often than not.  So while the issue of deinstitutionalization still lingers in the back of my mind, (as I see it as a symptom of a less caring society), I’ve learned to focus on the art.  Perhaps it’s better to cajole someone to a particular point of view rather than browbeating them.

Hello, my name is Geoff. You may be interested to know that I’m a fulltime artist these days and regularly exhibit my work in Victoria, but particularly in Melbourne. You may wish to check out my work using the following link; https://geoffharrisonarts.com

Hugh Ramsay - Timeless Portraiture

Although very adept at landscapes and still life painting, it’s in the area of portraiture that Hugh Ramsay made his mark - especially in portraits of children.  His output was prodigious in a tragically short career.  The forth of nine children, Ramsay was born in 1877 in Scotland and he sailed with his family to Melbourne as an infant.  The family eventually built the house “Clydebank” in Essendon in 1888 near the banks of the Maribyrnong River.

‘Clydebank’, Essendon c. 1930

He entered the National Gallery School at 16, against his father’s wishes, and made rapid progress under the disciplinarian Bernard Hall and the more popular Frederick McCubbin who was drawing master.  Later, Ramsay attended classes run by E. Phillips Fox and Tudor St George Tucker in Heidelberg.

A sketch from his days at the National Gallery School

Ramsay was very close to his family and at the tender age of 20 painted a remarkable portrait of his sister Jessie.  At this early stage of his career, the candour that characterizes his portraiture was already in evidence.

Jessie With Doll, 1897, oil on canvas, 109 cm x 54 cm

In 1900, Ramsay sailed to England and Europe.  He was hoping to qualify for a traveling scholarship but failed, so a group of friends and fellow artists got together and assisted him in raising the money required.  Whilst in Paris, Ramsay was invited to share a bitterly cold studio above a soda factory in Montparnasse with James McDonald and this studio became the setting for many of Ramsay’s portraits including self portraits which, naturally, spared him the expense of a model.

Ramsay’s studio at Montparnasse

These self portraits gave Ramsay the opportunity to experiment with composition, lighting, pose and dress.  He would study the portraits of Whistler and Sargent by day and often paint at night.

Self Portrait in White Jacket, 1901, oil on canvas, 92 cm x 73 cm

In 1902, Ramsay submitted 5 paintings to the new salon in Paris and had 4 accepted which was considered an amazing achievement.  One of the paintings was the famous portrait of Jeanne, now hanging at the National Gallery of Victoria.  She was the 6 yo daughter of his concierge and Ramsay had to bribe her with Australian stamps to sit in an uncomfortable pose.  One can almost detect a slight resentment in the sitter.

Jeanne, 1901, oil on canvas, 130 x 89 cm

Whilst in Paris, Ramsay was introduced to Dame Nellie Melba who was keen to meet this Australian artist who was making a name for himself at the time.  Melba, who was at the height of her career commissioned Ramsay to paint her portrait.  However, the combination of working too hard in a freezing studio whilst neglecting his diet took its toll on Ramsay’s health and he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.  He was advised to return to the warmer climate of Australia, which he did in 1902.

Lady In Blue, 1902 oil on canvas, 172 cm x 112 cm

The title of this painting was thought to be a nod to the way Whistler titled his works, such as “Arrangement In Grey And Black” - the portrait of Whistler’s mother.  It’s actually a portrait of James Mac Donald and his fiancé Maud Keller. 

Upon returning to Melbourne, Ramsay began painting with greater urgency partly due to his illness, greater public recognition and Melba’s patronage.  This, of course did little to ameliorate his health problems.  In 1903 he painted the portrait of Miss Nellie Patterson, Melba’s niece.  She kept slipping off the cushion and Ramsay had to bribe her with sweets.  This is one of my favourite Ramsay portraits and it’s thought to represent the greater influence that Sargent was now having on his work with its bolder brushstrokes and panache.

Miss Nellie Patterson, 1903, oil on canvas, 122 cm x 93 cm

In 1902, Melba held an exhibition of Ramsay’s work at her house in Toorak - the only solo show of his work during his lifetime.  His health continued to deteriorate and he died at ‘Clydebank’ in 1906, never having completed the Melba portrait, aged just 29.  Bernard Hall once described Ramsay as the most brilliant student in his 43 years of teaching.

Hello, my name is Geoff. You may be interested to know that I’m a fulltime artist these days and regularly exhibit my work in Victoria, but particularly in Melbourne. You may wish to check out my work using the following link; https://geoffharrisonarts.com

References;

‘Hugh Ramsay’ by Patricia Fullerton

‘Hugh Ramsay - in conversation with curator Deborah Hart’, National Gallery of Australia podcast

Howard Arkley - The Artist Who Didn't Airbrush Suburbia

An artist whose career was tragically cut short, Howard Arkley (1951-1999) first became aware of the airbrush in 1969 in his first year at art school.   He realised early on that he was not going to be a physical painter and the attraction of the airbrush was in being able to create an image without touching the surface.  “I was never going to love paint and wallow around in it.”  He said he wanted to make an image without getting his hands dirty.

According to Arkley’s biographer Ashley Crawford, Arkley absorbed the booming arts, punk rock and fashion scene of late 1970’s Melbourne in his art.  The airbrush gave Arkley the opportunity to make marks quickly without using much paint and with little “physical involvement”.   He agreed that what he was doing was going against the grain of painterly art that flourished in the 1980’s, in that he found the idea of mixing paint with turps and having the stuff “running down his arms” off putting.

Family Home 1993

So why the suburbs as his choice of subject matter?  “They are my life, that’s where I grew up, my childhood, my formative years and this is what formed me both in my personal life and artistic life”.

Arkley was awarded the Alliance Francaise Art Fellowship, an artist’s residency in Paris in 1977 but he also visited New York and his experiences taught him that there could be a unique Australian urban art.  He decided to use the suburbs as a cultural motif that had not been used before, and the wrought iron door with its flywire screen was the catalyst.  The infinite variety of styles fascinated him and it gave him an avenue to explore an Australian artform divorced from traditional landscape art.

The repeated patterns in these doors formed the basis of later art including some abstract works, but more importantly in the depictions of the house itself where these patterns appear almost in abstract form, both in interiors and exteriors – he drew no distinction between the two.  He saw patterns in houses, even those that contain no art at all and he didn’t want his art to be perceived as satirical.

Deluxe Setting 1992

When he spoke of inspirations for his work, Arkley reminds me a little of Andy Warhol.  He often spent time in supermarkets buying products for no other reason than the design on the packaging, the dynamic use of colour and form.  He also was influenced by art in the age of mechanical reproduction and he insisted that he wanted his paintings to look like reproductions, not the original, as though they had appeared in a book.  Speaking of which, he also drew inspiration for his interiors from magazines such as House and Garden and from real estate advertisements.

He didn’t intellectualize about his art.  He was a great gatherer of imagery and if he saw something that appealed to him, he would include it in his art.

Arkley had a love/hate relationship with suburbia “this suburban thing is in danger of swallowing me up, it’s a problem, and perhaps I should head for the You Yangs and get some relief.”  It’s this love/hate relationship that kept fueling the fire “you can’t grab it and come to terms with it.”

Freeway 1999

He was chosen as Australia’s representative at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and it was thought that the significance of his art was in breaking the mould of European perceptions of Australian art, and it was a great success.  I saw the exhibition “Howard Arkley and Friends” at Tarrawarra Museum of Art a few years ago and it was a revelation with his bold use of colour and stensils that seemed to bridge the gap between abstraction and figuration.

Portrait of Nick Cave, a 1998 commission from the National Portrait Gallery

In his 1999 ABC interview, Arkley came across as a hard working, unpretentious person with a few surprises.  “You go where your art takes you – it sounds romantic but I’m a romantic person.”  But he also had his demons.  His chaotic lifestyle was a concern to many of his friends and his addiction to heroin was a source of shame - he did his best to hide it.  I can vaguely remember seeing an interview with him many years ago when he was clearly stoned and it was disturbing viewing.  Shortly after the Venice Biennale, he had a sellout show in Los Angeles and then returned to Melbourne with his new wife Alison Burton.  Just a few days later, he died of a heroin overdose aged 48.

Hello, my name is Geoff. You may be interested to know that I’m a fulltime artist these days and regularly exhibit my work in Victoria, but particularly in Melbourne. You may wish to check out my work using the following link; https://geoffharrisonarts.com

References;

Howard Arkley 1999 ABC TV

The Guardian

The Independent

Clarity Of Vision - Isabel Quintanilla

An appreciation of the importance of the ordinary, the everyday in our lives has a long history in art.  It dates back at least as far as the early 18th Century in France with artist Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin and his painting “A Lady Taking Tea” from 1735.  The setting is unpretentious, modest even and there is an air of calm self-absorption in the scene.  The skill of the artist is in transforming an ordinary occasion with simple furnishings into something almost seductive.

Chardin, A Lady Taking Tea, 1735, oil on canvas, 81 x 99 cm

Author Alain De Botton argues that given the way the world is going, we need all the reliable, unassuming and inexpensive satisfactions we can get.  He believes that it lies in the power of art to honour the elusive but real value of ordinary life.

This may have been the motivation behind the art of Isabel Quintanilla (1938 – 2017).  In Spain, the practice of granting a special reverence to ordinary everyday objects dates back even further to the Baroque masters such as Velazquez and his ‘bodegones’; that is, art depicting pantry items, game, food and drink.  Quintanilla was a member of the Madrid School of realists who graduated from the Academia de San Fernando, where rigorous training in the traditional academic manner had been upheld since the 18th Century.

Quintanilla, Cabracho (Scorpionfish), 1992, oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm

Like other pupils of the time, including Antonio Lopez Garcia who is arguably the most famous of the Madrid realists, she had to develop her skills against the backdrop of the intellectual and artistic repression of the middle years of Franco’s dictatorship.

While some may regard the art of the Madrid realists as minimalism, what makes them unique is their ability to “de-nude, de-code and explicate the essence of our collective consciousness”.   What we are viewing is the object itself, free of any socio/political contexts.  The subject matter of Quintanilla’s work ranges from simple still life to panoramic landscapes.

Quintanilla, Glass On Top Of A Fridge, 1972, pencil on paper,  48 x 36 cm

Viewing work like this is very instructive to me.  Occasionally I get sucked into producing grandiose scenes forgetting that some of the simplest compositions can make the best paintings - if the artist has the skill.   Perhaps it’s a matter of being in the moment, focusing on the object itself free of any distractions.

In his review of a 1996 exhibition of Spanish Contemporary Realists held in London, Edward J Sullivan writes of the absolute immediacy and intensity of their vision.  But he also argues that it’s important not to draw to close a link between their work and that of the Baroque masters of the past.  Artists such as Velazquez were operating largely under the strict guidelines laid down by the Catholic Church and the counter reformation.

Quintanilla, El Telefono, 1996, oil on board, 110 x 100 cm

Unfortunately, whether I scanned this image from a catalogue, or downloaded it off the net, I am unable to convey the absolute clarity of the vision in this work.  This is beyond photorealism and I think it’s because of the use of light.  There is an intimacy in this scene that would seem to run contrary to the cold, clinical hard-edged nature of much photo-realist art.  You get the sense that you are entering someone’s private world.

Quintanilla, Vendana (Window), 1970, oil on board, 131 x 100 cm

Views through windows have been a popular topic for artists for centuries.  What fascinates me is the suggestion of furniture in the bottom left of the composition.  There is also the cool, clear light and a sense of imprisonment in the scene.  

Quintanilla had exhibited either individually or in group shows at the Prado in Madrid, the Marlborough Gallery in London and at many other venues.  Her work forms part of the collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC and in various galleries throughout Europe.

References;

Books;

“Contemporary Spanish Realists”, 1996, Marlborough Fine Art, London

“Art As Therapy”, 2014, Alain De Botton & John Armstrong

The Net;

Leandro Navarro Gallery

The Sculpture of Jane Cavanough

In an interview she gave with Arts Health Network New South Wales, sculptor Jane Cavanough was asked “As an artist, how do you use art for your personal health and well-being?”  She gave a very telling response,  “Art is very low on the spectrum of cultural appreciation in Australia – very different for instance in Europe.  It is difficult to make your living being an artist and I sometimes think I should describe myself as a gambler rather than an artist, because now, with every project I apply for, the client mostly asks for a concept, which not only takes ages to think about, but also requires 3d illustration, for which I pay someone….and this is expensive – I’m not sure how many professions require the answer to the question before contracting them – and this really gets me down.

I knew that if I stayed being a landscape architect I would end up depressed and unsatisfied. The fact remains, I love what I do, and it never feels like work.”

Like many people, I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with public sculpture and I’m not sure if the blame should be leveled at the artists or those who commissioned these works, or both.  The “cheese stick” looming menacingly over Melbourne’s City Link comes to mind.  Many sculptors seem to be motivated by a desire to confront or challenge the public and they forget that many of us are confronted EVERY DAY with their creations.  But at its best, public sculpture can be memorable because it engages with the public.

Touchstones, Bankstown Arts Centre, Sydney, 2011.  These copper and glass pebbles refer to the lapidary workshops located in the arts complex.

This brings me to Jane Cavanough who is based in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.  Her interest in sculpture dates back to the early 1990’s when she was working as a landscape architect in Sydney.  After studying at the Sydney College of the Arts, she instigated a couple of environmentally based sculpture events in Centennial Park and has continued to make site specific landscape based sculpture.

Endemic, Bungarribee NSW, Designed by Jane Cavanough and indigenous artist Enda Watson, a family group of corten steel kangaroos gather on the common at Bungarribee, developed by Urban Growth NSW.  Apparently, the locals dress up these sculptures every Christmas which gives Cavanough “a real buzz.”

Through her business Artlandish Art and Design, Cavanough works either solely or in collaboration with design teams for local and state governments, developers, statutory bodies and architecture firms to develop projects from concept through to completion.  The works are fabricated by artisans adept at working with glass, LED lighting, forged, stainless and mild steel, copper, bronze, brass, cast concrete, stone, timber, mist and water.

Boer War Memorial, Anzac Parade Canberra designed by Jane Cavanough and Group GSA, winner of a national design competition in 2012.

The aim is to create artworks that have a strong relationship to the site in urban, architectural and landscape settings. The relationship between people, sculpture and landscape lies at the heart of  Cavanough’s artwork. Rather than producing art that is willfully alienating or inaccessible to the public, she seeks to engage the environmental and cultural aspects of each site in her work.  She has won a number of scholarships and awards throughout her career.

You can read more of my blogs or check out my own art on www.geoffharrisonarts.com.

References;

Arts Health Network NSW

www.janecavanough.com.au

Jozef Israels - Painter Of Hardship

It’s sometimes difficult to avoid indulging in ‘accolade overdrive’ when discussing the significance of certain artists from the past.  Artist Jozef Israels (1824 - 1911) has been described as the ‘Dutch Millet’ who, is his depiction of the depths of human feeling, is regarded as a worthy successor to Rembrandt and an inspiration to Vincent Van Gogh.   He is also regarded as the most significant Dutch artist of the 19th Century. 

Israels had an extensive and academic arts education which included studying in Paris, and in his early career was a history painter depicting scenes of national heroes that were poorly received due to their stiffness and theatricality.  But he began to take an interest in the work of social realists such as Jean Francois Millet of the Barbazon School and Gustave Dore.

Children Of The Sea, oil on canvas 1872

Jenny Reynaerts, senior curator of 18th and 19th century painting at the Rijksmuseum  has some interesting commentary on one of Israels’ most famous paintings “Children Of The Sea” from 1872.  She tells us that at an early stage of his career, Israels fell ill with rheumatism  and was advised by his doctors in 1855 to move to the coastal town of Zandvoort to improve his health.   

He immediately began taking an interest in his surroundings and, in particular, the lives of the local fishing community.  He decided this would become one of the main subjects of his future work.  The poor clothing suggests that these children are probably members of a fishing family and the composition is thought to be a portent of the lives that lay ahead of them.  The boy has a little girl on his shoulders whilst another girl hangs on to his clothing.  This suggests that one day the boy will become a fisherman, carrying the weight of the family, and the girls will be waiting on the coast for his return.

Awaiting The Fishermen's Return After A Storm,  51 x 64 cm

Israels often painted scenes of women waiting on the shore for the return of the fishermen after a storm, hoping they have survived and have a sufficient catch to take to market.  Thus, there is a level of anxiety in these scenes.  Reynaerts argues that “Children Of The Sea” can provide an incentive to look around our local area to find inspiration for art. 

Israels became a leading member of The Hague School, named after a coastal city in the Netherlands where a group of Dutch artists lived and worked roughly between 1860 and 1890.  The school reacted against traditional academic painting, preferring to present realistic images of rural everyday life and poignant scenes of the simple, often lonely lives of peasants.  The artists generally used a sombre, muted palette that saw them dubbed The Gray School.

When One Grows Old, 143 x 89 cm

In his discussion of Israels’ painting “When One Grows Old”, critic Robert Rosenblum refers to the woman’s gnarled hands, the crude wooden chair that evokes a life of hardship and the chill of winter invoking her imminent passing. And yet Rosenblum also refers to the “softened haze of sentimentality” that exists in Israels’ work that obscures the harsh truths of his themes.  He is drawing a comparison with the tough crudity of Van Gogh’s early depictions of peasant life. I’m not sure I agree with this assessment.  

Alone In The World, 38 x 55 cm, c.1878

His depictions of village life earned Israels international fame and he exhibited in Paris and London as well as Holland.  He taught numerous pupils including his son Isaac.  The Venice Biennale honoured Israels with a retrospective exhibition following his death in 1911.

References, the web;

The Art Story

The Rijksmuseum

                      Books;

Art of the Nineteenth Century: Painting and Sculpture by Robert Rosenblum & H. W. Janson

Toilet Humour Or Art?

We could have just ignored it, or laughed it off. But no, the contemporary art world had to tie itself in knots over Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”, which was submitted to the Society of Independent Artists first exhibition in New York in 1917. Fountain is one of a series of “readymades” produced by Duchamp at the time.  

Duchamp later recalled that the idea for Fountain arose from a discussion with the collector Walter Arensberg and the artist Joseph Stella. He purchased a urinal from a sanitary ware supplier and submitted it – or arranged for it to be submitted to the exhibition. The Society was bound by its constitution to accept all submissions, but it made an exception to Fountain. It was excluded from the exhibition and Arensberg and Duchamp resigned from the Society in protest.

‘Fountain’, 1917

The decision of the Society seemed to run contrary to its advertised ethos of “no jury – no prizes”. Duchamp had moved from Paris to New York in 1915, and with his friends Henri-Pierre Roche and Beatrice Wood wanted to assert the independence of art in America.  

In its article, The Tate makes reference to Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending A Staircase No.2” being withdrawn from the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1912. Duchamp apparently saw this as an extraordinary betrayal and described it as a turning point in his life. Thus, the submission of Fountain could be seen as an experiment by Duchamp in testing the commitment of the new American Society to the principals of freedom of expression and its tolerance of new conceptions of art.

‘Nude Descending A Staircase No.2’, 1912

So, what are we to make of Fountain? Was it part of Duchamp’s stated objective that anything can be a work of art if the artist says so? According to the Tate, the original is lost which begs the question why bother producing replicas of it and why is it considered one of the icons of twentieth century art? Artist Matthew Collings ask the question is Duchamp’s readymades all part of a ‘no skill is needed joke’? 

“It was really trying to kill the artist as a God by himself” - Duchamp, commenting on Fountain. He was keen to remove the artist from the pedestal that he created for himself. Collings describes Fountain as the measure of all irony, now preserved at the Pompidou Centre in Paris – although copies can be found everywhere including any hardware store, come to think if it. Yet when I visit the sanitary section, I never think of Duchamp. Why? 

“My idea was to choose an object that wouldn’t attract me either by its beauty or its ugliness, to find a point of indifference in my looking at it” - Duchamp commenting on his readymades. Collings sees Duchamp’s art as the first stirrings of avant-gardism in the 20th century, an avant-gardism that was not concerned with pursuing quality in art, but instead of quality. Collings believes Duchamp is responsible for the fact that no one really knows what quality is in modern art.

‘Bicycle Wheel’ - one of Duchamp’s Readymades

Duchamp’s first criteria for the art he produced was that it should amuse him, but then he thought it shouldn’t be what everyone else thinks art should be about – that is; the skill of the artist’s hand. He thought there should be something more – the artist’s mind was just as important as the artist’s hand. 

In the 1960’s, just before he died, he was asked why when he wanted to destroy art, his readymades now seem so aesthetic and so part of art, he replied “well no one is perfect”. It’s argued that Duchamp opened the door to freedom in modern art, to feel free to do your own thing. Yet, Collings argues that Duchamp’s readymades are a devastating one-liner that has us questioning if we’ve reached the end of art. “Where can you go after that?” he asks. Duchamp’s answer was to play chess for many years. 

Collings asks if Duchamp’s readymades are the sickly green light of cultures’ last meltdown. I like Collings’ description of Fountain being the asteroid of irony hurtling through artspace, a symbol of culture nowadays being empty and frivolous in the eyes of many. But he acknowledges the seriousness in Duchamp’s art too. 

But Duchamp never gave up entirely on art, he just produced it secretively. An earlier blog of mine “The Woman Who Conquered Marcel Duchamp” discusses this.  

References; 

Tate.org.au 

‘This is Modern Art’, BBC Channel 4, 1999 presented by Matthew Collings 

Can Art Be A Business?

In writing this I am aware that it’s possible for 2 people to call themselves artists and have nothing in common with one another.  So this is a personal perspective.  Some time back I did a rather expensive arts business training course, and I was introduced to the concept of the “customer avatar”.  

I prefer to use the term customer profile, that is, the archetypal person who buys my work.  The first thing that occurred to me is that one needs a few sales in order to determine the archetypal buyer, right?  Leaving that issue aside, I’ve always had my doubts about this concept.  My doubts were confirmed when I raised the concept with the director of an inner Melbourne gallery with over 20 years experience in the business.  His response didn’t surprise me at all - “it’s bollocks”. 

Let’s just imagine that I was able to determine my customer profile.  What am I supposed to do then?  Keep churning out the same work to appeal to the same type of buyer?  Where does that leave the creative process? I think the answer is to follow your heart.  My most successful exhibition to date is my most autobiographical which was very gratifying.  If you are authentic, that is, true to yourself, you are bound to touch a nerve with the buying public sooner or later. 

These courses seem to be predicated on the notion that we can all be successful business people and creatives.  Some of us are and I envy them, but most of us aren’t so we have to either engage a ‘business brain’ to help with that aspect of our art practice, or muddle along as best we can. 

Social media has definitely helped some of us reach a wider audience than otherwise might have been possible, but it requires constant vigilance which, quite frankly, gets on my nerves at times (algorithms constantly changing etc.)  It distracts from the creative process. 

Time management is something else we were taught.  It was argued that we should be able to switch off our creative brain from time to time and devote ourselves to the business side of things, then magically switch our creativity back on at will.  Hmmm...  Goal setting was another topic; six month plan, one year plan, five year plan etc. I can see the point of having a plan, it’s one of the things that get us out of bed each morning but you have to be flexible and adapt to changing circumstances. 

It appeared to me that the participants in the course who gained the greatest benefits were those who had several projects on the go and needed to learn how to prioritize. 

There were some useful hints in the course, such as how to approach a commercial gallery and I now have a website that works – as opposed to one that didn’t.   I guess it’s a matter of sorting the wheat from the chaff with these courses.