I came across some old emails the other day, and found one that was written as life was returning to normal, post-Covid. I’d sent a birthday message to someone I’d met in 2009, after a day at the theatre – a day that will forever be one of my life’s most memorable. I’d been to see a show called ‘Gatz’, which was essentially a performance/reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby, in its entirety. It was the most extraordinary piece of theatre I’ve ever seen and, to cut a very long story short, soon after that, I met the man who had played Nick Carraway, the story’s narrator. Not only did I meet him, but I spent a fabulous day with him here in Sydney.
In response to my email, when I’d asked how things were in New York (‘Gatz’ was a production by an experimental theatre company – Elevator Repair Service – based in New York), I received the following from Scott Shepherd:
‘Theater in New York is only just beginning to come out of hibernation. I've seen a couple of in-person shows announced. Downtown I mean. Broadway's still closed until Sep 14. I'm in Oklahoma all summer with Martin Scorsese and the Osage Indians. Oklahoma's greener and lovelier than I thought it was going to be. I guess I was expecting a dustbowl. But it's all rolling bluestem-grass prairies and cattle and horses and bison.
‘Plus a lot of roadkill, possums and armadillos mostly, feasted on by buzzards. Nature!’
And I was reminded again why I love that wonderful concept of six degrees of separation. I’ve never received anything that even closely resembles the sentence, ‘I'm in Oklahoma all summer with Martin Scorsese and the Osage Indians’ (Scott was there filming ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’), and somehow over the past few years I’d forgotten all about it, but when I came across it the other day it made me think of the quote I have on my home page, by Gerald Murnane:
‘If you could fill each square on a calendar with a picture instead of a number, and if each picture could show clearly some event or landscape or recollection or dream that made each day memorable, then after a long time and from a great distance the hundreds of pictures might rearrange themselves to form surprising patterns.’
I lead a very ordinary life (which, for the most part, I consider a blessing), but there have been moments (both good and bad) that will always be highlights in my pictorial calendar. Those good memories help sustain us, the bad ones make us stronger – and hopefully wiser.
None of that is reflective of the past month in my studio, but listed below you’ll see where my work is, or will be, showing.
Lane Cove Art Awards, at Gallery Lane Cove, 164 Longueville Rd, Lane Cove (NSW), until Sunday 6 October
NBAS Annual Awards Exhibition, at The Creative Space, 105 Abbott Rd, Curl Curl (NSW), until Sunday 13 October
DAS Members’ 60th Exhibition, at Drummoyne Civic Hall, cnr Lyons Rd and Marlborough St, Drummoyne (NSW), from Friday 4 to Sunday 13 October
CASS ‘Art at the Royal’, at the Royal Art Society of NSW, 25–27 Walker St, Lavender Bay (NSW), from Friday 11 to Sunday 27 October
KAS Spring Exhibition, at The Gallery, St Ives Shopping Village, St Ives (NSW), from Monday 14 to Sunday 27 October
Until next month.