‘Creativity & Healing’ Monthly Mater Class Series, showcasing leading experts in their creative and healing fields to bring you collective wisdom, specific content, practical skills and knowledge for your own personal and professional growth, and move towards a deeper place of healing.

This very special Q&A features celebrated contemporary painter and performance artist Theresa Byrnes.

1. Your personal story –  You are a really prolific artist, and had your first show at 16 years old, where did your creative passion originate? Could you share some anecdotes from your early years as a child that could shed some light on your zest for creativity today. 

THE DIVINE MISTAKE, Back Cover

2. Identity – You have said, “My whole adult life I have risen from the ashes – destruction of identity to reinvent who I am and what I feel beauty to be.” Can you share more about this concept of identity and how critical art has been to reinventing yourself.

I have identified myself as an artist above all else, and without doubt since I was 13 now 50 years later, I still do. I have not changed that much nor has my focus. I primarily examine the forces of nature and the creative urge in synchronicity with that. Life and painting seem to be about mastering control while also letting go.

I have studied it my whole life in painting,’The Divine Mistake’ (it was the title of my autobiography, published in 1999)  By harnessing the power of freedom in its purest state – the mistake, one reaches way beyond self. I make art combining that force with technique and also live by how I make art by riding the accident, the unknown, the struggle, progressive disability and it takes me to greater beauty and more splendid resolution.GLIMPSE (the performance I did in April 2021) is the culmination of a life-time of painting.

I was consoling and, explaining to my seven year old son Sparrow on Sunday night, he was having a tantrum about no longer being able to draw. I explained, you can’t expect to see beauty you’ve never seen before straight away, you have to wait a while. Sometimes the drawing or painting knows better than you do. When you have caught up (to the painting) then  you have that ahhh moment, awakening to a new way of seeing.

“But Mum I can not draw what is in my head anymore,” He cried. I gently replied, honey “It is great to have a vision, but let it lead you. That’s what is exciting about making art, you are entering the un-known… if you knew exactly what would happen it would be boring. You must be brave , make art like taking a great leap. He nodded, his sobs quietened, and I continued, “That is  why in my last 2 performances I fell, because that is the thrill and the commitment you need to be an artist.”

My mum had a similar talk to me when I was about 15. I was a week into painting a large canvas in my make-shift studio I had set up in the dining area at home. I was crying and ranting that I had lost it and just did not know what to do next. Mum consoled me, calming  my frustration by saying, “Darling don’t worry, it is the quiet before the storm.”

GLIMPSE performance, 2021

Photo Credit: Paul DeRienzo

3. Disability – You seem to have a full life being a practicing artist and have become a mother. How has your disability modified and impacted everyday challenges? How does your physicality impact your artwork and approach to creating it?

Being disabled and having disabilities are two completely different situations. An inanimate object can be or become disabled and a sentient being has disabilities.

Having disabilities is time consuming. Thankfully I am a great time manager. I am not concerned if others perceive me as disabled or treat me as sub-human. The most challenging thing for me is finding enough time to do it all, to be an attentive mum, keep up with the constant avalanche of ideas and adequately take care of myself. Now I almost always get the opportunity to exhibit or perform current work. I am almost always on deadline. It is stressful when an aide calls out or does not show up on the day of an interview or a performance but somehow I suck it up and pull through.

BROKEN, a performance based video, 2018 that was commissioned by Georgetown university. The commission prompted me to address the terminology disabled, challenging me to express why I think the term is flawed and why I have always hesitated to self-identify as such.

The word disabled means that normal abilities have been taken away for whatever reason but it also implies that you have no ability. I do not feel disabled. In my 35 year long career I have never addressed “disability” in my art (even with the interminable morbid fascination of virtually every arts writer and journalist who writes about me). Here, in BROKEN I have made an exception.

Origin and Etymology of dis- from Latin dis-, literally, apart

Origin and Etymology of dis short for disrespect, First Known Use: 1980

dis as a prefix : opposite or absence of : not

dis as a verb slang : to treat (someone) with disrespect : to be rude to (someone)

dis as a noun slang : a disparaging remark or act : to criticize (something) in a way that shows disrespect, to treat with disrespect or contempt : insult

I know what is meant (in the best sense) by being categorized ‘disabled’. Running, dancing, walking, and talking clearly are abilities that have slowly evaporated from my experience. Fantastic as these empowering attributes are, they are not the be all and end all. People have disabilities, I have disabilities but calling someone disabled is another thing. 

Disabled as a naming word is misleading and demeaning, in and of itself discriminatory. Disabled as a medical term should be etymologically correct not flatly meaning life apart from ability. 

I believe in a neurologically diverse humanity – there are many ways to experience life. Typical physical ability is just that. There is no master genetic-code. I do not care to be searching for a cure to have normal abilities. I do not aspire to be typical.

A term to categorize a whole community of people that is inaccurate is also unethical. One can excel, or one can cower no matter what your physical circumstance. Look at my work, not my legs!

In BROKEN I choose broken, old wood and follow it becoming art, as an analogy for how  deceptive our eyes can be and dismissive we can become when convinced that perfection does not incorporate disorder.

4. Creative process and themes – your work can seem so raw and vulnerable, yet strong and joyful. It has been said that you are pure and uncompromising in your approach. Using your whole body can be confronting and liberating. 

What is your creative approach? e.g. do you plan a theme in advance or is it a more spontaneous process? How does your creative process compare when working across different projects e.g. painting, indoor and outdoor performances. Are you creating for pure self expression or performing for audience reaction and participation? Do you use your physicality to express yourself artistically, is it relevant to your art? Is your whole body something you use to express yourself?

The performance aspect of my work is full body immersion into a painting process that has developed a particular idea. Veronica Vera, Author, Doctor of Human Sexuality  came to my recent exhibition and screening at GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE in November 2021, she was telling me about her late, great friend, performance artist Frank Moore. Frank had a disability too and declared it was the perfect body for performance. I felt the truth of that but I started performing 30 years ago before I had a disability. Being in a vulnerable human body is powerfully  perfect enough. I have performed before the on-set and all the way through the progression of my disability. I do not feel limited nor perfected in my work by progressing disability I become more awakened. In “sublime trauma” (to quote John Dileva Halpern) we dig deeper. 

I am re-born every year or two into a body with less ability, void feeling loss. I feel the opposite, I feel constantly re-born into a new way of experiencing the world. Who would have thought that becoming progressively disabled would be intellectually stimulating and culturally revealing?

When I performed ROCK the first time in May 2021 with Heide Hatry, I fell off the earth immediately. The second time I performed ROCK in September I was so focused on the fall, it happened fast and I was too cradled. On November 13 I clung to the rock as long as I wanted to and when I fell, I fell alone. Because beyond all differences we are all equal in the fall.

Being an artist, making culturally significant objects could be self serving and self obsessed but for me an artist is about being a social activist. As an artist and especially in performance my body becomes our body, I become archetypal. Being an artist is not so much about self expression, I represent humanity.

My first performance in New York (undocumented) was in December 2001. It was part of a multimedia arts event at St Mark’s Church, WAR AND CHRISTMAS. The event, curated by Frank Morales and Bob Cooney, was an attempt to give local artists a forum to express how they felt about 911. For months after September 11^th 2001 I could not bring myself to paint.

I rigged up a blank, raw canvas; slides of my paintings were projected onto it. I rolled out beside the canvas/screen and threw a mix of motor oil and ink from the motor oil container. Dark oil dribbled down the canvas over the projection of colorful, gestural paintings. 

This started the performance aspect of my art. I felt driven to physicalize and choreograph my thoughts and ideas after 911. My reactions and conclusions needed emotional immediacy. To write about the reverberations of the event was too cerebral, to paint it was too safe and private. I wanted to express my ideas and challenge the community directly.

THE PRE PERFORMANCE PAINTINGS – I make paintings in the weeks and months preceding a performance with the medium I will perform with. In DUST TO DUST the series of paintings, and in the performance, the materials were dirt earth pigments, ink, hair, water and watercolor paper. As I resolve these paintings a technique develops leading me to want to more deeply penetrate an idea. The painting process becomes a method of thinking and informs me of what and how the performance will proceed. Like my colleague and fellow painter and performance artist Carolee Shneemann, I am a painter first and foremost; performance art comes from that.

DUST TO DUST a performance, 2011

Watch full video here

“From primordial humus to osmotic independence, I move from one primordial state to another. Life oozed from the ocean and into the earth 2 billon years ago, all living creatures including humans rose from that. Between the passive moon and the active sun is the earth. We humans roam free with the pull of the tides still in our organs. The mess and filth we clean and control is in actual fact stardust. The Earth is the compacted dust of thousands of exploding stars. From dirt we came and to dirt we shall return and in between is life. We are custodians of the most magical substance — dirt, nothing more and nothing less — it is a grand job.”

I did my first performance in 1989 before I really of knew of performance art. I lay in front a 6 by 4 foot painting titled “Tienimen Square. I lay on a large red paint spill resembling the map of China.

There comes a time in my painting when I am no longer satisfied to find painterly solutions for evolutionary, environmental and cultural questions. I have to get inside the picture plane – and so I plan for full body immersion in the painting and in the contemplation – a performance art piece. The performance becomes group contemplation and it pushes us to new levels of understanding.

Painting is for me the ultimate form of contemplation, an experiment where the solution culminates in a painting. The painting echoes the question and its fierce beauty suggests the answer. Unpredictable methods and cyclical processes, a balanced combination of the scientific and the intuitive propel me to continue to examine life through the magnifying glass of painting. Performance brings my intimate alchemical relationship with painting into a public space.

5. What’s your personal philosophy/work ethic? How did you set about making a creative life, one which you can provide a sense of personal fulfilment expressing yourself creatively? Where do you draw your strength to continue as an artist when it is such a competitive field and life can be harsh? 

Self is all of us. I feel a responsibility to humanity and the earth. When I was in my 20’s and 30’s, I was more hedonistic. Still building a stockroom of paintings. Pre climate change awareness made the oil paint and its solvents not an issue. I painted with passion and fury.

My high energy is the result of making my vision a reality. Health and wellbeing puts the show on the road, I weight train and am vegan. I’ve been vegetarian since I was 11 years of age. I discovered bodybuilding when I was 21 years oF age  I. sculpt my body out of hard work and kindness. I have gratitude and respect for my body and for all other sentient beings. Eating ethically and training hard is my religion and at the core of my life.

Now I am less cavalier about what kind of art materials I use. I do not want to join the treadmill of normalized global destruction. I question the ethical and philosophical validity of being an artist and using materials that contribute to polluting the planet.

The idea that archival art materials are of utmost importance hinges on the fact that to be a viable economic player you must have a solid product that will stand the test of time. I think it is time artists get back to their cauldrons.

We all want to live forever, be remembered. We fear death, of vanishing without a trace. Value is hinged on how long it will last, not how graciously it will fall apart. 

Plastic should be treated with reverence and not thoughtlessness. Plastic should be contemplated. OUR WASTE WILL LIVE FOREVER and we begin to know true value – leaving life without a trace.

I believe that central to all life is decay, and that biodegradable art making is powerful and elegantly sustainable. I began using trashed wood fragments to paint on in 2001, my hair as a paint brush in 2008, earth as pigment in 2011, single use plastic bags for mark making in 2019 and turmeric as pigment in my 2021 performance, GLIMPSE.

FRESH series

INTO THE FIRE

Ink on Moulin De LarrouqAquarel Paper

27 inch dia

2019

FOR SALE: $4000

INFLUENCES

INDIGENOUS CULTURE – I was accepted into the Marika Aboriginal family in remote Arnhem Land Australia in 1991. I was taken under the wing of Roy Marika and Burupu Yunipingu (traditional painter). Burupu used human hair as paintbrush, tree bark as canvas, ochre and clay as pigment.

Abstract expressionism made me feel the act of painting and led me to see painting as an experience not an object, to make me want to get inside the picture plane and make a painting not separate from the impact but within it.

I came to know Carolee Shneemann (1939 – 2019) 20 years ago and strongly identify with her as she was a painter and her performance art stemmed from the action of painting.

Painting led me, took me on this whole adventure. When you are driven by a cause you have no fear. I have not known anything other than being creatively fulfilled my whole life.

I am a process artist. I am always chipping away until done, always in process. Everything is exercise, washing up is meditation, all is creative, it just depends on one’s approach. I draw my strength from the earth, from the force of the planet I do not think of competition, success or failure I just do me, express what I believe to be true  and powerful.

Life is harsh and poetic just as nature is merciless and magnificent. To live harmoniously with that sheer power is a privilege. We are walking a fine line and seem to have forgotten who is the boss.

6. Inspiration + reality – How do you integrate all this around being a mother? What are the rewards, priorities and lessons learnt that you can share with the group – that have really made a difference, and those you are still figuring out?

Inspiration is a cascading waterfall in my life (I can barely keep up with myself). I am never blocked and always working on a project I am passionate about. Ideas descend on me in a phrase, a visual, an action, in a dream or in a combination of those.

Inspiration comes with simple clarity, even if pulling it off in the real world is epic and seems impossible. I am good at pulling off the impossible because I make no excuses and just get started.

If I run out of money to self-fund a performance and with projects back to back I don’t have time to write or wait for a grant. 50% of my income comes from barter and trade agreement based on respect for my work. I find a way around money, art becomes my currency.

Once a project gets motion it begins to speed toward completion. The vision of the project; painting, series, performance is so clear it has its own will, it is like I am just pulling strings in this dimension to make it happen.

Breathing, waking every day on this glorious planet fraught with human made problems inspires me. The human made problems, political and environmental inspire me to unravel them and bring us back to the truth of our alignment with the force of nature That is my reward too, when I paint, write and perform I feel so plugged into the force and get that overwhelming surge of doing what I am meant to do and then I get another idea. I am almost constantly beaming and radiantly awake.

I painted all through my pregnancy until I was 9 months pregnant. I stopped.using resins and solvents. My pregnant belly was so big I could barely reach over the canvas  on the table to paint.

When Sparrow was born I wore him in a sling around my neck, I painted while he slept on my lap. I painted with water, ink and earth. When he would wake and breast feed I would serenely continue to paint.

I had a solo exhibition when he was 3 months old. I have done 17 performances in the 7 years since my son was born. I have had 8 solo exhibitions and 5 group exhibitions. I have never laid down my brush. I have not stopped painting for more than a month in a career that now spans 36 years.

Artist Theresa Byrnes painting with baby Sparrrow

To achieve a life of freedom takes extraordinary discipline, focus and management. There seems to be an assumption that if you have a child your career is over and you are no longer free.

When I was four months pregnant I was advised by two successful women to have an abortion so I could to continue making art. Prominent women in the arts have stated that they choose not to have children so as to focus on their work. But I knew my baby was being born into my world, a life that was 100% self-actualized. Being a mother is not a disability and being in a wheelchair does not disable you from attaining greatness. Being average, normal and comfortable thwarts creative thinking and softens character.

My parents were workaholics, they were self employed. I would nap under my mum or dad’s desk and have free reign of the stationary closet. I grew up in their office, it gave me a strong work ethic. I hope Sparrow learns that work ethic too, he sees I am always working with paintings developing in the studio, performances coming about, or writing about or for my art. I hope it not only gives him a strong work ethic but shows him how magical life is, how you can live and give beauty and truth doing what you love.

Am I too busy? I am so glad there is wifi in the playground. I am the only parent who brings a laptop to the park. Sparrow is very social, I am not so much anymore. The parents chill together but I can’t warrant the time to just hang. I hope I’m not missing out on a social life, but I never miss a Friday night movie with Sparrow in bed.

7. Mess into our lives – many mothers are fearful of letting their kids get messy and dirty, but kids love it, especially mud which is so primal and natural. Can you share some insight into the benefits of allowing kids to get dirty and messy as they play and create? 

KIds love my performance, they probably think, wow so you’re allowed to get messy? Getting muddy or covered in pigment carries a sense of defiance. Sparrow doesn’t like getting too dIrty so much maybe because he is allowed or because I do.

Just before my first mothers day Sparrow did his first performance with me, BEING TWO – May 2015, “Beings” was a series of paintings done in 2006. The Beings series is about relationships, two people, the primary relationship being mother and child. The commonalities at the birth of most beings is water, swaddling fabric and love. In these works I use swaths of fabric to hold ink and water to make marks. Soon after I completed this series I decided to get amongst the fabric and under the dripping ink and be a being within a “Being” leaving a shroud and thus the performance “SleepStain” resulted in 2006. Now I am a mother, my child and I will lay together and leave a  mark.

He has painted with me in the studio since before he could walk. When he was six I set  up a solo exhibition and it sold out. He had $1300 cash and he proudly kept on showing everyone his bulging wallet until we opened a bank account for him. Sparrow advised me, “Momma ,if you want to sell more paintings you have to sell them cheaper, like I do.”

He is a natural salesperson too.

Sparrow’s sold out show

Sparrows second performance with me was in 2016 MUDBIRD, a performance about death, life and renewal. I had been told since I was16  that Friedreich’s ataxia was fatal. The doctors told me I would not live past 30. At 50 I still felt 30, with a weighted heart I asked my neurologist how  much longer I had to live? She looked confused and replied, “As long you stay as healthy as you have you have normal life expectancy. For the first 4 years of  Sparrow’s life I thought I would pass before he was ten. Thus MUDBIRD.

MUDBIRD NYC 2015

 I AM DEATH

I AM MOTHER

MY CHILD IS LIFE

WE ARE THE CYCLE

WE PLAY IN THE STARDUST

Playing in the stardust together when he was 1 year old became a Sandbox War at 4 years old in MUDBIRD ULURU.

MUDBIRD ULURU 2017

Sparrow has done 6 performances with me. The first 3 were without an audience, only for video. Now he helps behind the scenes too, he is a pro!

Getting messy is a result of getting so involved with the work or play, that you lose track of the rules and of one’s self – that is a good thing for everyone and should be a regular family experience.

 8. Future – what’s next for you? Do you have any plans for new exhibitions and themes or does it unfold as you progress through life, live day by day?

I have a back-load of things to work on, some will wait and some will hit the cutting room floor.

After I edit this I will finish the commissioned painting I am working on by January 2022, a group show of performance ephemera at GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE in December and finish re-doing my performance portfolio covering 20 yrs of performance which got stolen.

“An unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates. In March I hope to take a year to finish writing my new manuscript. I am 1/3 of the way through. I paused writing it when I was pregnant and have not had time to re- focus in 8 years.

This memoir is a sequel to “The Divine Mistake ” published by Pan Macmillen 1999. It is a tumultuous memoir of being an artist in the real world. Moving from Australia to New York, it combines my growing awareness of and calling to the disability rights movement with finding empowerment and expansiveness in an increasingly debilitating condition while being an active artist, an activist and a single mother.

I am a painter studying the nature of freedom. I am an artist becoming progressively disabled and yet increasingly free. If the body with disabilities does not stop one from achieving freedom, I suspect suppression of intuition and separation from one’s true joy are the real disablers.

If funding falls through in March, my new book will hit the back burner once again. I will take on another painting commission. Either way I will work out more and become stronger in every way.

MUDBIRD Uluru, 2017

Photo Credit: Geraldine Anton

9. What’s your message for creative mamas who lack confidence to overcome their adversity and follow their creative path?

Adversity should be followed and observed not run from and used as an excuse to stagnate.

I don’t think it is a lack of confidence in self as it is more the belief that self is separate and not supported by the cosmos and the earth .Have faith that your joy is supported by the earth! 

Art making happens irrelevant of success, audience or acceptance. When one gets into “the zone” you become so focused on achieving aesthetic harmony that every need, ache and desire fade. When you know how to get in and out of “the zone”, one can never get lonely, dissatisfied or disappointed.

Most of us chase the dollar to survive and that has diverted most if not all our focus from knowing, developing and sharing what we are born to do, living who we really are.

CONNECT/FOLLOW/SUPPORT THERESA BYRNES

Website: Theresa Byrnes

Glimpse Artworks

Rock Performance, with Heide Hatry, 2021

Youtube Channel: Theresa Byrnes

Instagram: @TheresaByrnes

Twitter: FeistySparrow

Email for book & painting enquiries:

theresabyrnesstudio@gmail.com

This interview is part of our special ‘Creativity & Healing’ Mater Class series, showcasing leading experts in their creative and healing fields to bring you collective wisdom, specific content, practical skills and knowledge for your own personal and professional growth, and move towards a deeper place of healing.

To view the rest of our incredible line up, please visit here.