A personal note, An upcoming floor talk and Singapore AFF

KILLING COSMIC DARLINGS – A personal note inspired by this body of work. 

I have now been a full time artist for 16 years. You can listen to the full story as I tell it to Cathrine Mahoney on her podcast here. In 2009 I went on maternity leave to have my son Jack and it was a goal of mine to paint and to not go back to a day job. I am reflecting on this today as I fly from Melbourne to Singapore to exhibit  at the Singapore AFF this weekend, (if you have friends there send them my way).

The highs and lows of my personal life, have somehow always been documented in my creative life, as an artist the two are so closely interwoven. My lessons, learnings and observations end up in front of me in my paintings and other offerings. I am thinking of this now with regards to my current body of work and how as my art moves forward in the world so do I. I feel I am living the quote art imitates life. There is no better place for contemplation than a long haul flight and it has been some time since I went deep here on my blog. So I have decided to share a more personal post than I usually do.

In these last 16 years of being a full time painter I have become a mother three more times, meaning I am now blessed with five children. My painting practice has always weaved around my domestic life in a symbiotic kind of way that I adapted to long ago. For me it somehow works. I married and divorced again, and in a two year period suffered what felt like a barrage of loss. My first husband, his father who I was very close to and my own father all passed away one after the other quite unexpectedly. At the same time I had a close call with a melanoma, a serious car accident, my beloved 18 year old cat died and I experienced a number of other grief’s and misfortunate events too complicated to share here. We as a collective were also all dealing with c*v*d and all its complications. So, as all this personal loss happened I also found myself a self employed and single person dealing with a very unstable financial future. All I can say is that life since 2019 has been profoundly challenging.

So, why am I telling you this? It is because I despite all of this I am still here and I feel stronger and less afraid than ever before. All of this turmoil and uncertainty has fundamentally changed me, but for the better. It has made me a more deeply grounded person. In that time of acute sadness I learnt to meditate and to live in the present, as I really could not handle any big picture thinking. It was so much to take in all at once. Despite all the difficulties however, I have never lost the desire to paint and make art and I am so grateful for that. My creativity has been a consistent thread throughout my life and held me in this time as it has in others.

It has also felt like it has been in all these cracks in my reality and the heart breakages, that the path to a new life has appeared. One I had not prepared or planned for or would of chosen, but the one I have which feels somehow very much in alignment with who I am and what I have been put on this earth to do. I have been left with a life does not look as I expected it to look, but I find myself more able to live very fully and in the present and with a level of un attachment that I previously could not have been comfortable with. And all this feels like an essential aspect of being a fully immersed artist. So I got to where I needed to be just not via the route I expected.

It’s funny how life works. I did not imagine I would have children I would share care of and not live with all of the time, but I did always imagine myself to be an artist and to be free to travel and write and to have the solitude and space to do that. So my loss has had a gift buried within it. In a way it’s like it was always unfolding as it should be, even if at times my bargaining with the powers above and my bereft soul has wished so very deeply that my life could have gone another way. Yet I am at peace with it all now, truly, and the more I surrender to the softness that is the acceptance of things as they are, then the easier everything feels. I hope if you are reading this and it somehow resonates that you find comfort in my experience.

I have this written on my wall at the moment; “The more adaptable you are the easier it is to be happy”. I am not saying that you just fold to every situation, more that you expand to the acceptance of what you can’t change, that you be like a river, like the water you flow and let go.

This then comes around to the essence of my KILLING COSMIC DARLINGS body of work. Every piece has some link to this premise within it. The fight for life and the contrasting awareness of our humanity and our fragility. The duality and paradox we daily live with. The brevity and beauty of life and that stab in the heart that is married with the need to be in the absolute present with it all. Living lightly and living fully.

The KILLING OF COSMIC DARLINGS sums up all of this musing on life. It’s been a very loaded show for me to paint. It includes the Trampoline of Transcendence which documents the appearance of a kind of unidentifiable object in the air in my backyard about twenty minutes after my Father passed on, I share this story in this Into Deep episode, and then the Last Call for the Heart Sutra Song which was the first work I did after his funeral. These are personal works, but also they are universal. As we all experience our own versions of losing people we love. Death does not discriminate. I know that these works connect on an emotional level because they were created on one. To see these works please scroll to the end of this page.

Then there is the Queen of Cosmic Hearts, a revisiting of the hearts I once painted obsessively when I was younger. This piece really was an exploration of myself in relation to love, not just the romantic, but the universal kind. At this time in my life I feel like I am stepping into a new version of myself, being married as a 17 year old and then becoming a mother at the same age has meant that my identity has largely been shaped around these roles, as well as my artistic life. Most of my excess energy has been channelled into my work and my family and my relationship to self has been somewhat complicated. So this painting is something of a reclamation work. A recognition of my own sovereignty and power and also of my capacity to love and to live a life guided by this over fear.

These are just two of the paintings, all the works have a narrative attached and you are welcome to get in touch directly to find out more about any particular piece. The Cosmic and the Divine is a very large and ethereal painting and another work so much better experienced in person. If you can make it along, a great time to see the show would be to attend a  floor talk in the Gallery where I will speak and take questions regarding my practice and this exhibition. This will be a good opportunity for a more personal experience. It is at 2pm on the 16th of November at the Compendium Gallery. 909 High st, Armadale. Melbourne. You can visit the Gallery website here for further information.

All the paintings are now available for purchase and I have discussed  making available flexible payment options which allow more people who wish to collect to be able to do so. Please just chat with Elle the curator for more details and also to discuss international shipping. It does feel important to me that that paintings go where they are loved and appreciated. Link to her details is here.

I will wrap up now with a thank you for all of you who are following my journey. I daily ask for wisdom and strength as the road before me gets wider and the opportunities more numerous than I can take. It is a blessing to be living this one wild and creative life. It also feels like I have come completely full circle with this exhibition. I have loved this space since first exhibiting there with Scott Livesay almost a decade ago, (scroll to the end to see this photo). The serendipities in life never cease to amaze me…

Much love to you all and the world..

Jasmine X

Install images taken by Simon Strong