In the past couple of weeks, I have been feeling particularly inspired to create. My mind is buzzing with colours, techniques, patterns and pottery forms! In Australia, I have been to several little galleries and I find myself drawn to the paintings with bright happy colours and bold strokes. The colours and shapes don’t necessarily look exactly like they do in real life, but they convey a sense of energy and positivity.
I love the way art makes you think. It can be visually appealing – fun, bright, humorous – and at the same time be a medium for political activism. The pretty patterns reach out and draw us close. We are disarmed and more receptive to important messages. For example, the painting below, titled “I like to name everything after myself”, calls out the ridiculous arrogance of colonialists “discovering” Australia. The headless birds represent extinction. In the other artwork, “The Allegory of Painting”, the artist Kent Monkman is making a commentary on how nude female figures were used to personify 17th-century paintings but women were unable to be professional artists. Both paintings are clever, beautiful and a little silly.
I reckon the artists spend more time thinking about injustice while they try to figure out how to creatively express it. So many things can be art: music, cooking, photography, storytelling. I wonder how we can be more creatively radical in our own lives?