Resigned to Paint the Fence

Resigned to Paint the Fence, 2022

Improvised live drawing performance

Photography credits: J. Wilce

By 40 I’d achieved a lot but still struggled to find my place, my health was in tatters, and in 2020 I was diagnosed with ADHD. I was painting the garden fence one evening after another impossible day in the office, and after a few hours I became aware that my head was as calm and clear as a glacial lake. I was shocked that the mundane act of painting the fence could refocus my mind from sickly to slick. This got me thinking more about the intersection between my creative essence and existential experience, particularly the power of focussing on a physical object to shape my capacities and situate me.

Like me, I consider that most of us are in too much of a hurry to grow up, get a good job, and entrust wiser grownups in our formative years to influence our fate: ironically these are the same grownups who empower us with cautionary tales and limiting beliefs about what’s right and wrong. It’s only in our later years that we have a flurry of ‘aha’ moments and we wake up one day and wonder what the fuck we were thinking, but by then we have 2.4 children and a salary that defines our success (or failure). Well, bollocks to that. Breaking all protocols, in 2021 I walked away from my 20-year career (yes, really – was I mad? Hell, no!) and made a pledge to do what I dream. I signed off my resignation letter with “I Quit. Off to paint the fence”, a signifier of my newly found courage and growing sense of purpose.

Now, in act two of adulthood, I responded to that milestone by putting myself in the centre of a theatrical performance and painted the garden fence adorned in professional office attire. The act was recorded in a photographic still loaded with symbology to help me negotiate my own identity issues and announce who I was. The process was liberating, but more than that, the story of how I came to make again, allows me to recognise the value my practice plays to safely reactivate old narratives and reconcile personal experiences that have impacted me greatly. I guess, it’s kind of like setting the record straight through the mediation of art.