Writer in Residence

Am I the new Jackson Pollock or what? Who hasn’t made a mess with paint at least once in their life and said that?

Oh, okay, some of you aren’t quite that grandiose. Well, good for you.

The answer in my case must be What??? since I’m clearly not the new Jackson Pollock. I’m about to make that as obvious to you as it is to me (and to my father, who dropped in and said ‘Blimey …’). Here’s what happened. I’m jumping the gun, in a big way, but here goes.

I’ve mentioned War Child’s next mighty fundraising scheme - the auction of pillowcases painted/decorated/otherwise adorned by genuine visual artists and/or celebs, using an image from dreams of their childhood. I think it’s still supposed to be a secret, but I wouldn’t be being honest about the past 24 hours if I didn’t jump on the next tangent passing and go there.

For, oh, about six weeks now I’ve been circling my pillowcase (as a War Child Ambassador frequently prepared to do something foolish for the cause, chances were I’d be on the list). I’ve been watching the time tick away, getting on with many other things and occasionally passing the pillowcase and feeling naggingly uncertain about how to address it. I hadn’t even opened the packet.

Yesterday, with a Perth trip and the deadline starting to loom, I told myself I had to make my move. And I already have the paints, since I bought them for some earlier odd ‘celeb’ paint job. I’ve just thought about it now, and the pillowcase is my fourth painted item for an auction. That’s practically a job by stealth.

This is all part of one of my favourite mysteries of the writing job, or I guess any job with a public side to it. People ask you to do things you aren’t good at as a means of creating public spectacle. And I say Yes most times (that’s the big mystery).

I’m very much about comfort much of the time. I operate well in my tiny tiny comfort zone, sitting at this keyboard, jogging the same way to the city and back every day, cooking my best ten recipes, but this leaves me quite unprepared for the wider world, so I operate on the rule that I should say Yes to some things that stretch me. So, I’ve made a goose of myself on Good News Week, taken to the catwalk at fashion week in Melbourne, partnered rugby league legend Mal Meninga in a celebrity canoe race. I’ve baked, I’ve karaoked (someone paid $1000 to do that with me - my friends would pay fifty bucks for me to sit down), I’ve painted.

Early last year I offered naming writes to a minor character in Monica Bloom, and a wily auctioneer got $10,000 for it. It all went to a program to help homeless youth, which is excellent of course, but it did make me wonder if I’m going about this job the right way. Naming rights, product placement - what am I doing relying on royalties? Oh, integrity … But TEN GRAND for a minor character? I can be bought, people, of course I can.

Anyway, three times now I’ve painted for charity - a pair of mugs, a plate and a box lid - and this is the fourth.

Suddenly the pillowcase looks very large. I sketch on it with a pencil. Dreams from my childhood? I decide to go for the one about flight - the one where you discover that, with just a few subtle arm movements, you can fly and no one else can. So I think back to when I was about seven, and I sketch out a farmhouse. It’ll be naïve style (because that’s all I’ve got when it comes to representing things), and also I’ll exaggerate it Ettamogah-pub-style to create the perspective, show that I’m flying above it. Okay, to get slightly more arty, I’m borrowing the POV of a painting called, I think, ‘The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere’.

I outline the house, the fields receding to the distant hills, one open window (mine, with curtains billowing).

Later in the day, I take a look at my paints. I only ever bought little tins of blue, yellow and white. Hmmm. I might need black at least for some clever outlining, so that people can know what I’ve tried to do. Maybe I could do that with a pen of some kind? Can you feel the wheels loosening at this stage, and threatening to fall off? Sure.

I paint, some yellow fields - yellow for barley. An hour later, I can see the barley has bled to some degree into the adjacent fields which are blank and awaiting green. I mix up some green. It’s a crazy green that never was a field, but it’ll do. It bleeds into the yellow, and the unpainted bits. Pillowcase fabric was not, I suppose, designed for this.

I realise it’ll takes several coats, lots of finicky work over a couple of weeks. And I tell myself it’s all in a good cause. And then I accept that I have over-reached myself and I am slowly dedicating myself to a visual debacle, and that might not be good for any cause. I might end up with something that the wrong kind of parent might pay $20 for to hang on the wall and tell their kids ‘that’s what happens if you get big ideas about yourself’ or ‘there’s no future in art’. I am on the brink of becoming a cautionary tale told by someone I don’t much like.

I rethink. Hmmm. Okay, there was that other dream. The dream about being lost in the woods. Yes. Lost, thinking about a better world with yellow and green (slightly leaky) fields, but kept from it by a tangle of branches and vines and who knows what else. A tangle. Even I can do a tangle.

I go mad, I daub, I dribble. I create the thicket, I aim to capture panic. Just with blue to start with, but I’ve crossed a line. There’s no turning back.

Big Brother Adults Only is on, but I hardly even remember. I’m in the shed with the stink of paint and the movie Pollock in my head, throwing yellow, then white. Imagining my brow furrowed with intensity and purpose.

By midnight it’s all over. I’m spent.

Here is it is.

And don’t try telling me it’s not genius.