Gabrielle Brinsmead

8 by 12 centimeters

Oil on paper

Some art teachers have too many rules. Don’t use black. Don’t use white. Don’t use too much paint. Don’t use a small brush. Don’t use a big brush. Clean your brushes and palette with this and not that. Don’t stand too close to your easel. Don’t stand too far away.

My feeling is that there are not many iron-clad rules, apart from don’t eat your paint. It’s a creative process. Some things work, some don’t. But if you follow someone else’s rules all the time, then it’s not really creative.

In this painting, I apply thick, black paint with a short brush and am mesmerized by my results.

Oil on paper

21 by 30 cms

Finally I decide (better late than never) to examine myself.

Oil on paper

30 by 40 cms

I hide in this body. I hide in food. I hide in glory, and self-abnegation. I hide in wine, in love and in lust. I hide in children, in bottles and exhaustion and nappies. I hide in dogs and cats. I hide in Pakistan. I hide in books, and the never-ending busyness of universities and courses.

It’s an easy game for you, finding me, overturning my fragile barrows of dreams, and laughing, but kindly.

I try hiding in paint, but the paint speaks, sings: holy, holy, hallelujah.

Brush in hand, I give up. Lord, here I am.

Oil on paper

30 by 40 centimeters

I am what I am, resistant to the process of refinement or domestication. Forever a diamond in the rough. It turns out, I deeply identify with rough. Know it, love, understand it.

Oil on paper

21 by 30 cm

Oil on paper

12 by 16.5 inches

Oil on paper

12 by 30 centimeters

However highly you think of yourself, you are more magical and magnificent by far. You have hands and feet and entrails and a face and a heart; you can laugh and cry and hope, fear, destroy and create. You are an entire planet, guarded by angels and guided by stars.

Oil on paper

8 by 12 inches

Wherever love and memory lingers, so also do thorns and prickles.

12 by 16.5

My first completed painting in Melbourne is a triumph over adversity. Since we have moved to a tiny townhouse, I have to paint in my garage. It is very dusty, the light is poor, it is too hot or too cold, there is a car in the middle of it and it is also where I wash and dry the clothes.

More difficult than any of these factors is the shortage of time in my new home. I am running, running, running against the clock all day and at night, when I put my head down on to the pillow, it surges with ideas, plans, schedules, to-do lists and fears, so that sleep comes reluctantly.

When I was young, time and life had a different texture. Eating a banana or an ice-cream seemed to stretch out for hours. Walking to the shops was an event. Reading in my room was an experience so intense that it seemed to be outside of time. Now time runs faster and faster, so that my entire existence feels like a second or a minute.

Shortage of time, particularly towards the end of my painting session, fills me with an almost crippling sensation of panic and terror. I want more time, time that I cannot have. All that my painting needs to say, to create beauty, and peace, and a connection with spirits, and hope, even against hope, needs to be done with almost brutal rapidity. This painting is a message to myself: the time I have is enough to accomplish what I need to accomplish.

Oil on paper

12 by 16.5 inches

Not one of my copies is a perfect representation. The lilies I paint are not as beautiful as the ones I buy from the fruit shop. The yoga postures I do are not as good as the ones I see on Instagram. My abstracts are not as exciting as the feeling that inspires them. But for me, the real miracle is the improvement that comes from constantly creating imperfect copies.

And there is something childlike, fresh and optimistic about each imperfect copy.

Oil on paper

12 by 16.5 inches

The highlight of each week, for me, is Mass on Saturday. Behind the altar stands a wooden lattice that catches light pouring in through stained glass windows. A sea of liquid gold, and when it mingles with songs of praise my heart leaps up, so full and bright, with greater joy than I have ever experienced.

It would be easier to stay in church, not have to deal with the more ordinary and difficult aspects of life. Although I leave, somewhat unwillingly, I am certain that I am not alone, and that Divine Love, so abundantly present during the Mass, climbs on to the Box Hill tram and travels home with me.

Oil on canvas

30 by 30 cms

We drive down to Phillip Island, just for the penguins. In they come, bearing food from the sea, to a rapturous welcome from their young. Sitting there on a windswept wooden bench, in the light of a full-moon, I think of my grandfather and my grandmother, how they loved nature, the sea and in their own way, us.

Next day I ask my father if he ever went to Phillip Island as a boy, to see the penguins, and he said yes, we holidayed there.

I think my grandparents spoke to me that night, put their ghostly arms around me and told me not to worry, that we will all be caught up in the air together one day, not so very long from now.

Oil on canvas

30 by 40 cms

As I sweat and sulk my way through menopause, I think about what it means to be fertile for a season: to want to be beautiful, to feel the inexorable tick-tock of the body clock, to preen and self-decorate and fear the scorn and judgment of eligible men. I remember how terrified I was about getting fat, and being left on the shelf.

I think about the person I am becoming on the other side of this madness: harder, less fun, more ambitious, less tolerant. Still terrified about getting fat, although now that is probably more of a practical fear, since growing out of clothes is so unpleasant.

On Sunday night, I have a nightmare about my wedding. I can’t find a dress that fits, and that I like. The only available one is green and black, and, at size 28, I’m pretty sure that it’s too big.

When I wake up, I’m still married, it’s still cold, and I understand why I don’t wear dresses anymore.

Oil on Canvas

50 by 60 cms.

Sun creeps back into my tiny garden, and my heart. Potted tulips prepare to show themselves; pink and purple fuchsias are dancing. My son spends the day with his friend, my daughter sings in her room and shadows ever so gently caress, skate over my kitchen cupboards.

Oil on Canvas

40 by 50 centimeters

Having journeyed together for a time, I am now very aware, too aware, that we are traveling in different directions. Valete.

Oil on canvas

40 by 50 centimeters

Many years ago, a country priest baptized me with Holy Water. Joy, so strong that it felt like magic, raced through my body like electricity. A miracle occurred in me, at what felt like the cellular level. Even though I turned my back on it for many years, it was powerful and strong enough to pull me back from a dark and dangerous place.

Now I feel, bearing this in mind, that every time I pick up my pen, my paint brush, every time I step on my yoga mat, every time I say, I love you, I’m being baptized once again by the same Holy Ghost, that same fire.