Creative meetup

It has been a long road for me to come back to art after over 40 years in the workforce selling my time for enough to live on, but just enough. I sometimes wonder how many other adults are in the same position as I was. It seems strange to me that we encourage kids to engage with creative activities but as soon as they become adults there is no support for them to continue nurturing their imaginations, their intellects, and their souls by making art.

We appear to care about children, we fill our screen with rage bait, we celebrate the artistic achievements of children with posts on Facebook and X. Government has exhibitions at the art gallery to feature works by school kids. Sure some of the works are very good, I admit. Full credit to parents and teachers. Yes we show kids’ portraits of fathers and aunts as part of the annual Archibald Prize, again at the art gallery. We set up activities at public galleries. You can make things with clay, you can make things with paper and glue. Heaps of fun.

For children. At school your kids have scheduled classes where they make art. There are community art showings for children. Churches run special activities in their properties, again for children. Young adults for their part get mental health awareness day, R U OK day. The statistics for presentations are staggering. It’s not the predators, it’s the way we neglect the very things that keep us sane. 

Our priorities are only positive in other areas, STEM subjects, languages, or the study options that reward memory skills and the retention of facts. Naturally if you are not brain well you will have problems with recall but this is not a priority for governments and civil society. Why aren’t doctors up in arms about our dysfunctional employment system. It seems pretty obvious. I’m never going to downplay the mental health of children, they have every right to happiness. The problem is that some of the poor outcomes that seem to influence adults’ lives, actually a lot of them, are due to the need to find something to compensate a lack of creativity. We all seek meaning in our lives, in its absence we look for ways to compensate.

It is impossible and unfair to expect adults to neglect their imaginative sides. The result is clear. It is disappointing to see the stream of news broadcast segments on seized drugs. We see the ads targeting drink driving, why are these even being aired. Surely the adults who are the targets of these TV tabs deserve better than to be blamed for alleviating the psychic stress of going to work, keeping a job, maintaining a healthy family life, and being a good citizen, looking after friends etc. Looking after parents who might be getting older. And paying paying paying for everything. So that they can go home and get plastered.

All these negative effects of a lack of feeling. Adults who self medicate are often just trying to feel something, anything. Or relieve the crushing burden of a plethora of stresses. Usually we blame the men. Ironically the cohort of the population that is most likely to be interested in art is women. 

For me the early betrayals inflicted upon me by school and parents have caused me to have to completely refashion my life. I could say it has not been easy but I’m not going to. In some ways I am more fortunate than many. On the other hand the drive for me to make art, long cruelly suppressed, is probably stronger than it is for most men. So it cuts both ways. You do what you can with what you have.

As for Esag, we try to bring people (adults) together because there are not many possibilities that are low or no cost. For adults. We don’t charge for anything apart from artworks and books. The creative sessions are free. We go to art galleries in the commercial sector that do not have a cover charge. Even the poetry nights I sometimes attend have no cost at the door. But if you want food from the kitchen you must pay.