Every so often I rediscover a story that reminds me why I became an artist.
Recently, while researching my family history, I came across old photographs, newspaper cuttings and memoirs that revealed more about my great grandmother, Charlotte Hewish.
As a young woman, Charlotte was an aerialist. Together with her sisters she trained in Paris before touring Europe, Russia, Japan, America and Canada. Depending on where they performed, they appeared under different names, including The Onetti Sisters in Europe and the Patterson Troupe in America.
These remarkable women performed astonishing aerial routines, often without safety nets. My grandmother later wrote that they performed triples, walked the tightrope and seemed “to perform what were miracles.” Reading her words, I found myself imagining the extraordinary courage and trust that such a life demanded.
In 2005 I created a bronze sculpture inspired by my great grandmother, Charlotte Hewish. It was exhibited in my solo exhibition Great Australian Male and Others at Stephanie Burns Fine Art in Canberra, where it was later sold.
I was never interested in making a portrait of Charlotte. What fascinated me was the extraordinary courage her life demanded. To perform on the trapeze without a safety net required absolute trust, discipline and a willingness to accept risk every time she climbed into the air. Those qualities became the subject of the sculpture.
Looking back now, I realise I wasn’t simply making a sculpture about my great grandmother. I was exploring ideas that have continued throughout my work: courage, memory, human endeavour and the stories that pass from one generation to the next.
My work is shaped by experiences, memories and stories that reach back long before we were born. Family history becomes part of the imagination. It influences how we see the world and the questions we choose to explore.
Our relationship between people and nature, between memory and making, between individual experience and our shared humanity is explored throughout my work. Looking back over forty years of sculpture and painting, I can see that this bronze sits naturally within that continuing exploration.
Perhaps we inherit more than eye colour and family names.
Perhaps we also inherit stories, ways of seeing, and the courage to make.
Sometimes a sculpture begins long before the sculptor is born.
