In her words: Gai Saunders
Creativity seeps into every area of Gai’s world, and it’s been this way for as long as she can remember...
AS TOLD BY Gai Saunders
Born in Western Australia’s beautiful southwest region, I was surrounded by nature including the incredible Indian Ocean. When I was growing up, days were spent exploring bushlands or swimming and sunbathing. From the time I can remember I have always harboured this magical feeling inside that there is something really special about life – it felt like a burning secret that no one else seemed to talk about.
Now that I am older, this feeling grows in intensity as time moves on, and I shed light on this concept in both my work and family life in any subtle way I can. My husband, who spent over 20 years travelling the world as a professional musician, and our two beautiful daughters are all creatives and we all share this similar outlook on life.
My creative journey
I think my visual life started at around five or six years old. Memories are hard to grasp before this. Mrs Headly, my Year 1 teacher, asked the class to stop and look at a drawing I had been working on. She held it up and announced with clear authority that “Gai will be an artist one day!”. This carried such gravity that it is the only memory I have of that year and it went on to influence who I was to become.
Since then, every aspect of my life has been viewed through a creative lens. Perhaps this was always who I was, and Mrs Headly was the one who brought it to my attention…
Leaving my hometown to go to university, I studied teaching and majored in Theatre. I then went on to teach, as Mrs Headly did, and made it my goal to attempt to lift every student up as high as they were willing to go. I spent hours decorating classrooms, adding stage set-like work areas in the corners – some with electrical lit-up signage. After about 10 years of teaching, I yearned to explore more of my capabilities in the visual arts. I was employed as a project officer advocating for disabled and disadvantaged artists in Western Australia. This was made possible by Artsource, a Perth-based organisation providing a range of resources for local artists. The office was central to a series of art studios, so every day I was able to interact with professional artists and this had a big impact.
I went on to do further study in art and design and in my final year, had my first solo exhibition.
When my children were young I didn’t really work much as the stop-start nature of trying to spend time in my studio while being a parent made it too difficult and I was always torn between the two. My love of interiors, patterns, fabric and furniture kept me going during this time as it was more immediate to sew some cushions or paint and collage a mural on my daughter’s wall than to focus on a series of works in my studio.
I own a ridiculous amount of interior magazines and flipping through these has influenced and inspired me to imagine fanciful scenes and vignettes in my home and art practice. Over the years, torn pages have been catalogued into reference-style scrapbooks that I still pour over today.
Since my children have grown up and become more independent, I have been a full-time artist who has exhibited in group exhibitions, been selected as a finalist in recognised Australian art awards, and my work is hung in many private collections.
My inspiration
I have so much I want to communicate through my work that I am continually experimenting with new ideas and materials. There are so many techniques to enable me to say what I want to say, and there is a plethora of materials to say them with – the impulse to create is always from an aesthetic perspective.
My studio is full of paintings, sculptures and mixed media pieces. Two-dimensional works have informed sculptural works and vice versa, and you can usually find me working on them consecutively – alternating from one to the other.
Assembling handmade, found and readymade objects is a way I can tell a story to complement those in 2D form. They take on a life as a 3D collage. There is an insatiable lure to trolling through op shops, antique stores and salvage yards, collecting objects that can ignite a new idea or add to one I am already working on. I am inspired by how these objects can trigger an emotional response, just like an artwork can.
Collage with paper has also played a big part in my art pieces and I continue to explore and expand on ways of using these elements by layering selected paper pieces with paint. It has more of a graphic quality to it than when juxtaposed with other mediums and can create a unified tension that makes the composition stronger and more immediate.
“There is an insatiable lure to trolling through op shops, antique stores and salvage yards, collecting objects that can ignite a new idea or add to one I am already working on. I am inspired by how these objects can trigger an emotional response, just like an artwork can.”
Uncovering truth and beauty
The pieces I create can sometimes be generated from a line of poetry, or something that I hear uttered in conversation. I keep diaries full of notes on potential ideas and usually an artwork starts with a concept that I cannot stop thinking about. I spend time researching and curating these ideas from stories, music, philosophy, current affairs and people I admire.
Recently, works have centred on truth and beauty. By interpreting these ideas into a visual form, I can sort out how I really feel about them as well as delve deeper into understanding them. For me, it is during this process of making that enables me to sort out my thinking and come to some kind of resolution around these concepts. It’s thrilling when I begin a new piece, and I have learned over time not to give up when it gets tough halfway through as it inevitably does. Once I push past this uncomfortable point in the process, the results are so rewarding and can sometimes end with a work that has evolved into taking on a life of its own.
After I moved from the city back to the country, my studio started exploding with fresh ideas and new artworks. In this rural setting, I’m surrounded by a cacophony of sights and sounds that invite nature to continually be reflected in my art practice more intensely than in my suburban studio. Nature has always been the backdrop to the theatre of my life, so moving back was inevitable.
All of my artworks are figurative in style and almost always have a narrative, focusing on the relationship we have with flora and fauna, light and dark, yin and yang and order and chaos. Described as whimsical, my work has a conversational element between the art piece and the viewer, evoking emotions or triggering memories.
Those who inspire me
Looking back, I am also acutely aware of the influence my parents had on my destiny. Both of them now in their early eighties, are creatives who met when they partnered in ballroom dancing competitions. In their spare time, they played musical instruments, acted in the theatre, sewed, sang and staged theatrical productions and comedy nights for their friends on the weekends.
Together they ran a business in interior design products. Our small humble home was experimented on with a different style of wallpaper in every room, chandeliers hanging from the ceilings and other special design features. I was surrounded by wallpaper and paint sample books, with endless patterns and colours to peruse in my spare time.
There was also an amazing English teacher in Year 10 who introduced me to the joy of how the written word can create powerful visual images. I was attracted to the work of poets such as E.E. Cummings – the unique approach he and others had ignited something inside of me. As a result, my own work flourished that year and I was presented with the Principal’s writing award.
Now, instead of writing, I view my work as a visual form of poetry or prose where the shapes, colours and compositional elements tell a story in place of words. In our new location, I’ve also been lucky enough to meet an amazing artist who teaches how to cut, grind and weld steel. This has opened up a pathway to sculpting, assembling and collaging with metal. I’m able to create things I’ve always dreamed of.
Video by @biancaturriphoto
Continuing my journey
Living a visual life doesn’t stop when I leave the studio. It colours everything I see and do. Creativity seeps into all areas of my world. It is a life filled with the love of beauty, curiosity, striving and seeking.
As I move past the middle point in age, I am more determined and motivated than ever to strive to squeeze in as much as I can. I have visions of my next solo exhibition, publishing a book, animating a short film and painting more portraits – just to name a few.
Being an artist builds resilience in all sorts of ways and not everyone will love what I do. There are rejected art prize entries to contend with, but there is also the joy of being selected as well – and over time, this all balances itself out.
Making things feels like it has the power to resist entropy and through the creation of fantasy, can transform how we view reality. In continuing on this visual journey I am trying to carve out selected bits from this world and make something of them that is unique to me, in the hope that others will find something in them too.
@gaisaundersartist
Western Australia
