Never too old to emerge!

This article was originally written for the Portrait Society of America’s blog. It was my first contribution as a member of their Cecelia Beaux Literary Committee and was published in June 2020. I have added some other images here.

Janelle Hatherly 2021

In retirement, after a rich and rewarding career in the natural sciences, I have taken up oil painting with a passion. I had always hankered to express myself visually and felt cheated that I couldn’t do art at school because of timetable clashes with science subjects. I wasn’t raised in an artistic environment, but my immigrant parents worked hard to give my sister and me a good education. So, with this as my background, am I too old to embark on a second career as a painter? I hope not, and here are what I have found to be positive attributes of being a mature emerging artist.

Starting later in life, I have the time, financial stability, connections and freedom to be as creative as I want to be. As I look back over my life, I think about the ways I had created beauty and aesthetics around my home and in my garden. I realise that I had actually been doing ‘installation art’ for years when I developed and project managed exhibitions in museums and botanic gardens. When I taught physics and biology to high school students, I drew diagrams to demonstrate concepts, and I constantly studied my students’ faces to see if these concepts were being understood. I think this is why I am now drawn to portraiture. I love studying faces … and learning. I’d like to think that over the years, I have also learnt diligence, perseverance, time management and how to cope with failure. I find all these skills useful in my art practice.

For me, there are two fundamental aspects to creating art successfully: mastering technique and having something meaningful to convey. This is where youth and maturity differ. We learn most easily when we are young. For instance, learning skiing, languages or musical instruments are child’s play when we’re young but get harder and harder as we age.

However, when it comes to having something to say, maturity has the edge over youth. Mature artists have a wealth of life experiences, knowledge and memories from which to draw inspiration. Personally, I’m bursting with ideas for paintings and have even gathered loads of resources for themed exhibitions I’d like to put on one day. But I am resisting the temptation to work on these until I master enough skills to be able to express myself competently.

To this end, well before I retired from the workforce, I took drawing classes in the evenings and occasional week-long workshops to learn some basics. I opened my mind to the different approaches of my various tutors and visited art galleries regularly. Because of my own teaching background, I read art books voraciously, took copious notes and supplemented practice with theory. I dabbled with different media to see which I enjoyed the most, and listened to podcasts to ‘think like an artist’. I struggled, I progressed, I plateaued and occasionally I produced something half-decent.

All this helped me judge that I wanted to excel in this field and have my art taken seriously. A good many people become recreational artists in retirement, but I knew I wanted more.

Several years on, I find making and studying art have completely replaced my professional passions and the challenges keep coming as I set my sights higher and higher. I am rewarded with the occasional insight or aha moment, or I create something ‘special’!

Hard work and regular practice have become a part of my everyday life. This is the only way I believe I will develop my knowledge of design and composition, improve my drawing prowess, deepen my understanding of value and colour and expand my ability to ‘see like an artist’. Serious artists have told me their art is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. When novices say to me, ‘I can’t draw’, I simply reply ‘Do you draw?’, and they invariably say ‘No’. Why do we assume artists have innate talent that spontaneously manifests itself whereas no-one expects a pianist or an athlete to excel without massive amounts of training?

It is good to stay young at heart and I believe fortune favours the bold. Around the time I retired I was invited by a good friend and colleague to paint portraits of twelve Principals of a University residential college, mainly nuns who had passed. I wholeheartedly and naively embraced this challenge though with what I currently know I would now seriously baulk at this seemingly impossible task.

Still, I learnt lots by researching, composing, painting and framing twelve 24’’ x 30’’ portraits on canvas. It also taught me the value of having a major project to work on, and I have subsequently gone on to paint other life-sized portraits.

In between major projects, I experiment. I love the freedom of trying out new techniques, doing landscapes and still life, and drawing and painting from life. With the wealth of on-line resources and ready access to the world’s best artists, there’s never been a better time to be a mature student!

©  Janelle Hatherly

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