In this interview artist Kate Elsey discusses her collaborative work with Neil Cownie. Kate’s painting “The Glass Tree and The Billabong” was selected by Neil and his client for the Roof Garden House in Floreat. Kate talks here about growing up an artist, career highlights and working with Neil.
Born To Make Art
When did you know that you wanted to be an artist?
It was always a part of me. I drew every day. I would make up drawings and collages and draw in the sand. It was the easiest way for me to just be me and communicate with the world. I put everything else aside as I was getting older. If I was asked to do the homework, the Maths books would be covered with little pictures and patterns.
When did you start to paint?
Kindergarten – preschool. I know that Mum has hundreds of books of my painting from preschool. She was always giving me and my brother little art projects. I can’t ever remember not painting. I wanted to create. I remember getting into collage by making shapes and sticking them on a landscape. It’s interesting that my work has evolved in that direction. Painting was my very first love.
Kate’s Studio
Can you describe your studio?
Our place is a 1970’s, architect designed house in a developing suburb on the fringe of Melbourne. We really love it.
It has a very beautiful large garden with big native trees and some West Australian varieties. The studio faces out to the garden and we custom built it for when I was needing a wheelchair. I’ve had some issues with my bones. The building is all very accessible and flat. I could do all of my healing and recovery and also get on with my work.
I’ve pretty much done three exhibitions in a wheelchair and I work on quite big linen, so it’s been a practical studio to me.
Meeting People
Can you tell us about some of your career highlights?
I think every time I achieve an exhibition it’s an achievement. I really don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how it all happened. I like meeting clients who connect with my work and purchase a painting to have as part of their life. Every time is a highlight for me.
A Mystery Patron
I also have a mystery supporter who really wants to challenge me. They ask me to do interesting things and create interesting things. I get to make art with this interested person on the sideline. At one stage he called my work, “repressed impression.” I think to me that was a highlight because people had been asking, “What’s your style of painting?” That invented term gave me an understanding of the direction I was taking.
The Foyer Commission
In 2015 I was commissioned to do four paintings for the Ernst and Young Foyer in Brookfield Place in Perth. That was a highlight for me.
Telethon Auction
I donated a painting for auction at the Leeuwin Estate for Telethon. It sold for a large price. It was to assist the Type 1 Diabetes Family Centre. It’s a place where the children and their families can experience all the best care and education in the face of an overwhelming diagnosis. It’s a friendly and fun space and very close to my heart.
Muralist Tom Sanders
What have been the major influences on you as an artist?
I was just looking at Instagram and I saw a post by Neil regarding a mural. It’s a mural by Tom Sanders in the foyer of the Perth Concert Hall. As a kid I really loved this piece and I loved the Concert Hall. I think it’s one of the outstanding places in Perth. I think that subconsciously that mural been a big influence. The form and the life energy that it gave me as a really young person. Years later I’ve ended up meeting my partner who’s Tom Sanders’ nephew and so the circle of life is interesting. We now collect his work.
I also really enjoyed the minimal line and bold colour of the German expressionists. Mark Chagall was a really interesting earlier one for me, because I found it really poetic and sensitive and the colours are always really exciting. Music’s always conjuring up images. Music’s one of the greatest forms of inspiration or influences for me. Anything that transports me in any form of art.
The Glass Tree and The Billabong
Can you tell me a bit more about how you came to meet Neill and his clients?
Neil was aware of my work from an earlier exhibition. He thought my work would be appropriate for his Floreat project. He made his clients aware of my work. He then invited them to visit as the exhibition was being hung. I got to tell Neil’s client about the painting. I really enjoyed that.
In that painting The Glass Tree and The Billabong I am depicting the cycle of life, the vital capillarity of our own circulatory system to that of nature. We need to nurture the environment that sustains us as we obviously share air, water and life. These billabongs dotted throughout the landscape are vital for the environment to keep ticking along. To be creating spaces for nature and human interaction in a sensitive way by designing true living spaces with integrity is beautiful.
The confluence of this painting with Neil’s architecture has a very special appeal for this reason. I am very excited to see the final build and how the painting sits within it.
How do you work with architects?
Architects collect my work, and commission me for their projects. Neil’s approach takes that further, in getting me involved a lot earlier and talking face to face. His interior design work incorporates his obvious understanding of art – he has a keen sense of what will work.
Neil’s work is unique, he is bringing back the old values of the great architects. It involves a collaboration of humans and the environment. That’s what my work is about as well. I appreciate meeting another soul who appreciates art and where it will work well.
In the future people will look back on Neil’s work as some of the great architecture of this time. Collaborating with him has been exciting.
