Visual Artists' Accounts of Significant Influences in Their Early Lives Edward Broomhall University of Tasmania, Launceston This research developed from the writers desire to identify the best strategies to support, encourage and challenge those children in a school or non-school setting who, from an early age, demonstrate a keen interest in visual arts. The writer also aimed to define the best learning environments and the strategies thought most appropriate to assist a child realise his/her potential in the visual arts. School curriculum outlines designed for art education generally identify a primary purpose to be for teaching art to all children, usually to the end of grade eight or when children are about fourteen years old. However, the writer wished to research how such a curriculum impacted on the future careers of those children who decided to be involved, as adults, with the visual arts, at a professional level. This study was conducted using thirty four artists who were resident in Tasmania at the time the original data was collected. The subjects were recognised by local public and private galleries as high profile artists whose work would be recognised and appreciated by their peers and by others who are involved in the visual arts culture in Tasmania. Background to the Study The original idea for this study was generated by the researcher reflecting on his own childhood art making experiences, both in the context of his home environment as well as at the schools he attended at primary and secondary levels. The researcher developed an ambition to become a professional artist while still at primary school. An early influence was provided by the researchers parents who provided art materials and who gave him encouragement to produce his own art works. Two primary school teachers, in particular, also provided encouragement and guidance. On one occasion, during primary school, a piece of the researchers art work was selected for a State-wide exhibition. This event was very significant in reinforcing his motivation to become an artist. At secondary school, an art teacher helped the researcher expand his understanding of art by exposing him to examples of contemporary art by lending him art journals and encouraging him to attend art exhibitions. On reflection, these experiences had a very positive effect on the quality of the researchers production of artworks both in the school studio and at home. The researcher has taught at primary and secondary schools, as well as at tertiary institutions and is mindful of the need for children who are interested in art making to be encouraged and supported by the adults in their environment. One of the objectives of this research was to identify how the teachers, parents, grandparents, friends or peers encouraged and developed the inherent trait evident in the subjects. Adults can play a particularly important role in the encouragement and early development of children who focus on art making as a favoured activity.. The subjects and artists included in this study all viewed themselves as possessing an inherent, passionate interest and skill in making art from an early age. Many of the subjects, when interviewed, actually indicated that there was never a time that they could remember not wanting to make art. In many instances, their parents recognised a special ability or interest and supported their child by providing art materials and picture books while grandparents sometimes encouraged what they perceived to be artistic talent in their grandchildren. In the school setting, often it was a perceptive primary school teacher who provided special attention to a child who they believed was talented in the area of drawing and painting. Sometimes, on the basis of an observation made by a primary school teacher, parents were encouraged to enrol their child in a special art class which usually operated out of school hours, for example, on a Saturday morning. Several of the subjects were befriended by one of their secondary art teachers and encouraged to continue their art making before and after school hours as well as at weekends. From the data gathered as part of this research and from the literature about historically significant artists, it appears that the intense interest in art making is identified by the parents of the child and usually supported and encouraged by them. In most instances, when the child entered school-even, in some cases as early as kindergarten, a teacher identified the child as artistically talented and developed strategies to assist and encourage art making by the child as part of the school program and sometimes in specialist classes outside the school setting. An outline of the study The study was undertaken with the aim of gaining insights and to collect information specifically concerned with those factors which have helped support, develop and sustain a young person's interest and involvement in the visual arts. The study directly involved thirty four contemporary artists, who are residents of Tasmania, through a process of conversational interviews following an interview schedule which was provided for the subjects to peruse well before the interviews were conducted and recorded on audio tape. The interview schedule which was sent to the subjects was designed in a chronological sequence beginning with before school experiences and following through primary school and secondary school. To complete the interview the researcher asked the subjects to share some thoughts about their present involvement in art making. Subjects had a copy of the schedule with them during the interview. Some, but not all, had heeded advice about jotting down thoughts and memories in response to the questions, during the time leading up to the interviews. Some probe questions were developed for each of the original questions. These were used to extend the possible responses from the subjects. The probe questions were used at all of the interviews. Many of the subjects commented on their lack of memory about before -school experiences, however many surprised themselves when they responded to the probe questions or when key words were offered which often triggered memories they had not managed to tap. Often these words were associated with materials or typical childhood art experiences such as Magic Painting books. Although the interview schedule was designed in a reasonably chronological sequence of questions, it was made clear in the introductory comments to the subjects that they could basically follow through an idea or a memory even though it might skip from one period in their childhood to another as long as I was able to tag it with a comment. It was also explained that the tapes would be transcribed onto a computer data base and that the information would be cut and pasted , where necessary, to produce a reasonably accurate chronological sequence to their information. A significant teacher. Twenty seven of the subjects interviewed mentioned the impact of a significant teacher. In most cases the significant teachers were encountered at secondary school and usually they were specialist art teachers who had empathy for the subjects need to make art. He was a wonderful teacher in that he allowed us to try all different things like sculpture- cast work which was new to us and he encouraged us to use different finishes on our work-this was in Grades 9 and 10. we were encouraged to experiment with the various media ... he really extended our understanding of what art is. I used to idolise my art teacher. He was dedicated to his work- teaching art to children ... I followed through into art as a career because I got on so well with the art teacher. My art teacher was the biggest influence on my life at that particular time because he was a very courageous man. I idolised him because of what he had been through and what he had done. The stories associated with him and to produce the things he was producing at that time-to a 15/16 year old his work was absolutely incredible. It was magic. The public was saying this too and I thought they must be right. They (the art teachers) were very encouraging and exposed me to all sorts of new materials, different colours of paper to work on and really opened my eyes in lots of ways to what art could be, so I owe an immense debt of gratitude to those classes that I had with my art teachers - they were really great. My art teacher in senior school was a big influence on me. He had a good knowledge of history of art and ... he was able to make it come alive. He encouraged a love for the subject which I .... still have. He used to take us out of school. He used to hire a van and we'd all go and dig clay somewhere ... We had involvement in so many aspects of art making. He took us painting ... we did watercolours ... he also encouraged figure drawing ... It was a great introduction to art school. It was so different to what I'd experienced in earlier classes. I had a good teacher at Matric. She was more technically knowledgable. She showed me how to actually paint because up until then I really didn't paint, Nobody had shown me technically how to go about painting. She was probably my first real art teacher. All the others just gave us projects and let us go. She was the first to show examples and help me with problems I was experiencing with perspective. In some instances, the teacher supported the subjects in their desire to pursue art as a career when there was opposition from some members of the subject's family. I had a couple of art teachers that I really liked. One guy I got on really well with, who was really supportive ... and we had a young art teacher ... who looked fantastic ... she had amazing clothes and she took us outside to draw. We'd never been outside to draw in the country. She had a lot of interesting ideas and she basically took me under her wing and looked after me My art teacher gave the notion to my parents, particularly my father, that art was okay. There is nothing wrong with it. - I remember being told that I had to leave school by my father and get a job and all this kind of stuff. My art teacher supported me through that and tried to talk him out of it - tried to make him understand. The significant teachers often represented a behavioural role model in the way they behaved and dressed as well as make art. I remember there was a group of young people on the art staff when I was at high school. They were a bit more fascinating-a bit more mysterious ... they were people who were in their casual clothes ... the principal was giving them a hard time about how they looked as much as the principal was giving certain students a hard time about their behaviour and things. I always remember the art room as being comfortable space and the teachers being very relaxed ... I saw my art teachers making art. I was working with the painting teacher who sort of worked ... like Rousseau ... really lush greens. Sort of idealised vegetation in a tropical setting ... he used to have a picture in the classroom that he would sort of be working at and we would be able to watch his progress I had two fantastic teachers ... it felt like that they were artists. They were both quite outrageous in lots of ways compared to the other teachers and they were very outspoken and liberal in their views. That was just lovely at that sort of age because all the freedom that you wanted was there. I can remember in secondary school meeting the first art teacher that I had ever met. He didn't stay long and he used to sit out on the steps and play his guitar and sing. We were allowed to paint and do all sorts of things. My subsequent art teachers were totally different-they were unique people. It wasn't until later that I fully appreciated their uniqueness ... Some subjects developed very close relationships with a teacher and were sometimes invited to the teacher's home environment Because I was very good friends with the daughter of my art teacher, as we moved through in to the upper secondary I got to know__________on a personal level. I visited her house _________was a person who had passionate involvement with art making and it just didn't stop at making pictures, it was a lot about exercising an aesthetic judgement about all sorts of things that came within your experience of life so it was about design of household things like cups and teapots and in one way and another this was something that transferred itself to the students ... these were ideas that I'd never considered - had never been spoken of anywhere around me - the fact that a teapot could be beautifully formed and that it could pour beautifully and this was because the designer of the teapot had made it right. I used to go down to her place (the teacher). I found that experience very challenging because she was the first one who really introduced me to conte, oil paints and the work of other artists. She was a jolly good teacher really. I went over to visit her on a couple of Sundays and we worked outdoors. she was quite a big influence on me. Some of the subjects were given special privileges such as access to the art room and art facilities during the school holidays. This only applied to subjects when they were in their senior years at secondary school. Some of the subjects related that their teachers had allowed them to use the art room at lunch time and other out-of-class times, in some cases even at the weekend. At secondary school I had a very good art master ... he was a sculptor. He was long, gangly and balding. He was the only alternative figure at the school. He lived in a big house away from the place and he was never really part of the school. He was very encouraging. He made materials available outside the formal art class time. We were all very close to _____________ . Most of the boys played hockey. We worshipped art and hockey. On Saturday afternoons after we had finished hockey we'd get the key to the art room. We would let ourselves into the art room and spend the whole afternoon there. We had access when ever we wanted and we could stay as late as we liked. When we were in Matric. we spent our whole May and September holidays-6 o'clock in the morning we went down and we'd stay there until midnight. We would spend the whole day in the art room working. Several of the subjects mentioned teachers of other disciplines who were significant influences on their development as artists. Usually it was an appreciation of art and culture or perhaps an appreciation of the natural environment which encouraged the subject to take a more open and considered view of the world. I can think of two people who were major influences on me as a very young artist. The first was a high school teacher who recognised that I had a talent and so encouraged me to pursue art and encouraged me to look a lot at prints in books and secondly my history teacher who encouraged me in history and helped me to develop a love of history. They were the two people, both teachers at secondary school, who in retrospect were strong influences on my development. I liked the art teachers- they were good people I thought and I liked them very much. It is amazing how much that interpersonal sort of stuff between yourself and teachers influences your performance. I really liked my Biology teacher too-and that was an opportunity to draw because we did a lot of drawing on Biology. Mrs._________decorated her home with paintings. I suppose that this was the only home I went into which would have had on the walls original works of art. She was a big influence on my life. Support and encouragement of parents and grandparents. Thirty three of the thirty four subjects made at least one reference to the fact that they had received encouragement and support of some kind from their parents and/or their grandparents. In some instances, the subject was immersed in art by at least one parent. My father was a sign writer and a painter . He filled the passage and the bedrooms and his shed and various other places with these images from television which we'd been looking at for only 2 or 3 years. Both my parents were artists. My dad started painting first. My mum - basically she'd been employed as a young woman painting greeting cards in London, just before the war and dad launched into it basically as a hobby thing, but mum , being a professional artist took it on and went with it. with dad it was always a hobby . With mum took it right to the end and became quite a well known professional landscape painter in Tasmania. My father used enamel paints and he used his sign writing brushes and sign writing materials and painted Goofy, Donald Duck,. And they were big. They had a real presence. Some times he'd borrow images from Pix and Post magazines of Saltbush Bill and in some cases they'd be pictures of rugged desperate farming people with cows being milked in humorous situations. That material was all around the house. I persisted because I was supported by my father. My father gave me positive feedback. It was recognised as something I could do well. I was aware of the fact that my father fancied himself as being a bit of an artist .. we had a garden shed turned into an art gallery - that was my father's initiative because he was interested in art and liked to encourage us ... When I was in high school he was very encouraging in of art and he actually paid for me to have private art lessons including drawing from the nude ... it was interesting that he encouraged me even in that respect. In some instances, subjects had been provided with technical assistance as well as help with the execution of their imagery by a parent. We weren't taught anything during the pastel drawing periods at primary school. Teaching was at home with my mum. My mother taught me all I knew about using pastels. I was never able to relate those processes to school. I never excelled in art at school. I had to illustrate a project about the apple industry in Tasmania and I can remember drawing boxes on a wharf and they looked peculiar with their funny little lines going in all directions and dad showed me about perspective then. I'm sure he showed me how to draw boxes on a wharf - lines going to a vanishing point. It just sort of clicked - I was ready for it at that time and consequently I could sit in front of a thing and draw it after that as far as getting it looking reasonably right. Some subjects were fortunate enough to have parents who, while they were not knowledgeable about art, provided opportunities for their children to be involved in art making activities. Before I attended school, I had a lot of support from my mum , dad in my art making. Although none of them were art makers they did make little drawings for me. They produced little examples of animals like pigs and ducks and birds, which I could then copy. My father did drawings, he was an engineer and did a lot of engineering type drawings but he was also very very good at quick sketches, caricatures of us, or cartoon sort of things he did. And I used to think he was pretty good because, it is rare to find a person who can actually draw something and who does it for pleasure. And in the attic of our house, sometime before the war when he was quite young had bought a set of oil paints and several books to do with how to paint landscapes. My parents and friends of the family realised that I was keen on drawing, so every Christmas and every birthday I was given books about art.. all the influences came from my immediate family ... my mother has always been my greatest fan ... My parents and my art teachers at secondary school were all very supportive and encouraging to me in my development as an artist. My parents were very keen for me to do what I wanted to do and have always been supportive. My mother has always been my greatest fan ... The provision of basic materials such as paper, paints and pencils was a common way in which some parents provided support for their children who were immersed in art making. We were given chalk to draw with (by my parents) and we would spend a lot of the day there drawing on the verandah ... My father gave me the paper ... it was thin paper and I used the tab and slot technique to hold the structures together Early on, I think it was at primary school , my parents gave me a box of water colour paints. They were aware that I enjoyed art and as and when they could afford it they provided me with art materials. My father worked at the government printers. so we always had access to pads of paper, and he always - holiday time used to be the time when he would bring home some pads. we used to go to Opossum Bay for our holidays always in the winter time. It was lovely. Mum used to take us and we'd have these big roaring fires and we'd sit up in the morning and we'd draw and draw. Several subjects were encouraged by a grandparent who was involved in art making. I was brought up in a fairly creative sort of family. I had a grandmother who painted, wrote poetry and did a lot of drawings on an amateur basis. If I was with my grandmother she'd give me paper and stuff or if I was with my mother she'd always be giving me pencil and paper My grandmother was quite a skilled painter and draughts person. She had been to Art school before the turn of the century, but hadn't, I guess done anything after she married. She had some paintings by a cousin and a friend, so she must have been part of that group, but I'd never seen her sketch books, or anything like that. Any way , she drew me a witch to take to school and it was a good witch.. My teacher went bananas over it! I had a grandmother who was an artist. Instantly I became an artist then too! It was absolutely inevitable.: that was about Grade 3. Although nobody said to me - you're an artist, I became an artist in the eyes of the world in Grade 3 My grandfather was a visual artist ... this was in Hong Kong so he was a Chinese visual artist ... what I remember is of an old man wearing glasses bending over a large table made of boards putting black lines in brush and ink onto paper with great dexterity and making beautiful pictures ... In terms of art I would say that my grandfather was a very pivotal influence . It seems that there was an inherent streak which motivated the subjects to produce art works from a very early age. In most instances, parents, grand parents, friends of the family or teachers recognised this special interest and desire to make art at an early age and encouraged, nurtured and generally assisted the artistic individuals in their art making activities. In those instances when the art making activities were ignored or even discouraged by an adult, the desire to make art was still so strong that the subjects continued to make artworks at every possible moment.