For most people it doesn’t happen every day, but for Jack Featherstone it’s barely happened at all. Until now. For the first time in 35 years, and for only the second time in his life, yes, my father is having an exhibition of his paintings. And it’s at the Canberra School of Art. Which is not bad – and slightly ironic – for a self-taught artist who has next to no connection with the art world whatsoever. For the last sixty years he’s just been painting, just doing it, just making shapes and colours on whatever he can find – canvases, bits of stone, bits of bark.
When my brothers and I were kids our father would escape into the roof of the family house where he had a very basic studio – essentially it was just an easel balancing precariously on the joists. Later, he was able to upgrade to a ‘studio’ beneath the house, where he’d sit amongst the damp soil and cobwebs and boxes of toys no longer used. The way I remember it, he was always painting – he just always seemed to be doing it. Of course, it’s never been his ‘profession’; no, to bring in the cash, he spent his life fixing people’s teeth. Did he want to be a ‘professional painter’? I have no idea, he’s just painted. He’s never had classes, and I very much doubt that he’s ever considered – however briefly – the thought of actually learning to paint.
Ten years ago he retired to Braidwood, a small town in New South Wales, where he spends his days painting and walking and feeding his chooks and doing more painting. Every so often he’ll submit something to the folk-art section of a regional agricultural show and score the odd ribbon, but then he just bunkers down again and gets back to it – making shapes and colours on whatever he can find. He’s never thought of having a formal exhibition, mainly because he had one thirty-five years ago, in Sydney, and the critics tore him apart. Well, one critic did, and I’m not even sure it was a proper critic, just someone who clearly didn’t have an encouraging bone in his or her body. I guess it was the 70s back then – it was a time when people said what they wanted to say, and offended all and sundry in the process.
So Jack Featherstone kept painting, just doing it, because he’d fall apart if he didn’t.
Then, a year ago, Associate Professor and Associate Head of the Canberra School of Art, Nigel Lendon, dropped in to my father’s little blue house at the bottom of the mainstreet, fell in love with the work stuck on every surface and hidden behind furniture and vowed that he’d work towards putting on a proper show. Last Wednesday, that ‘proper show’ became a reality. Within 24 hours, my father was interviewed on ABC radio and had stories appear in the print media. A senator even turned up at the launch; my father shook his hand and there were smiles all round.
I won’t go into the qualities of my father’s work – over the decades most people who were lucky enough to see his pictures considered them the output of a ‘naïve’ painter – but Nigel Lendon, who curated and launched the show, has written an expansive piece over at Iconophilia. It’s well worth a read. For me, it’s all about someone who has just painted, not to have work shown, nor for the accolades (though this recent event has certainly been very much appreciated).
What is it that makes someone want to create? Is it about seeing something and wanting to make some kind of record? Is it about interpretation – not understanding something until it’s been taken apart and put together again? Or is it about simply having something to do? If it’s the latter, then why not just have a veggie garden, or make model airplanes?
Obviously, part of this post is about pride, pride at what my father’s achieved. But it’s also about realising that for some people – perhaps many people, many more than we care to think – there’s an innate need to make, to create, to explore, to communicate. But there’s something else: it’s about doing something for life (in more ways than one), sticking with it, being determined, but not necessarily having aspirations, just a desire to do, to keep at it, not to achieve any kind of end-game, because the making is the point.
Because creating makes us feel properly alive.
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October 11, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Jack Featherstone (and his world of parallel universes) | iconophilia
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October 11, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
TF
Wonderful.
I was going to say art must be in the air – but it’s probably never not in the air.
And I LOVE the idea of somebody spending a lifetime creating for creating’s sake. Art in its purest form, if you ask me.
October 12, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks Tristan. Yes, there’s certainly something to be said for a lifetime spent making art for art’s sake!
October 11, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Ms. Moon
This is so beautiful. I am happy for your dad although I know that just the doing is enough for him. Still, it is always nice to get recognition.
And I have thought much about why we “create” and I think it all boils down to the fact that creation is the thing which makes us happiest.
And that we must do it, one way or another.
October 12, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Ms Moon, perhaps it’s all about birth – the birth of a new human being, the birth of an idea, the growing of that idea into something new and fantastic (or not, as the case may be). And maybe it’s this that sets us apart – we can dream things up and make them happen. And we also want to explore and understand. As I write this comment I’m looking at my cat who appears to be meditating on my couch (it’s raining outside): I wonder if he hungers to create things? No, he just hungers, full-stop. He’s not the creative type.
October 13, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Gabrielle Bryden
What a wonderful post and a wonderful father. I think humans are by nature creative (even if it is creating and molding children, a village, a life) – producing something new, that wasn’t there before! Artists of the visual variety fascinate me no end – a great way to spend your time.
October 15, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks Gabrielle. I agree that humans are essentially creative, though I wish we could encourage more people to be more creative. That would be one way for the world to be a very different place. And – most likely – much better!
October 14, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nana Jo
What a beautiful tribute to your father, and one that really touched me because his paintings are my writings, so to speak. My house is filled with journals and folders and notebooks containing of my words, written for the joy of their composition, and because as you so wonderfully say, “because creating them makes us feel properly alive’.
I recently wrote about framing some of my seven year old grandson’s paintings ( http://ananasjourney.blogspot.com/2010/10/unsolicited-gifts.html ). As he says, “Having paint on my fingers makes me happiest of all”. I think when we create we find our true selves and all we love.
October 15, 2010 at 9:16+00:00Oct
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Nana Jo, “Having paint on my fingers makes me happiest of all” – now that makes ME happiest of all. Thanks heaps for sharing!