The Creator: An Interview on Art, Religion and Mental Illness

– Esther Carlin interviews Claire Louise
On a cold Tuesday around midday I met with Claire Louise, a fellow first year Visual Art student, at the ANU School of Music café. She was dressed in a layered way with a long skirt and denim jacket, and I remember the beautiful ocean green ring she wore on her left hand. We weren’t the only ones seeking warmth and nourishment at the café however, and the busyness forced us downstairs to an identical but eerily empty foyer space. We sat on a small leather couch at the back, and watched the world go by out the window, as Claire answered my questions.

So Claire, how did you come to art?

Art has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was a child I would carry around this pink little notebook and constantly draw fairies in it. When I wasn’t sitting in the corner drawing, I would go up to other kids and ask them how their drawing was going just to show them mine! At home, my parents weren’t particularly artistic, but I was lucky enough to have an aunty who loved to draw. When she noticed my drawing she sat me down and told me to draw what you see, not what you think you see. She also bought me a term of classes at Lavender Art Studios. I was eleven years old. It’s not really the sort of place where you just come for a term and then move on though. I’m still there now, and these days I don’t know if I have much of a choice in this particular form of expression. Art has been such a big part of my life for such a long time.

What does art mean to you today?

Art is an important way of processing for me. When I was eight I was diagnosed with anxiety. Anxiety affects my day-to-day life significantly. Sometimes my head feels like a very messy, clouded, cluttered place, and I find it easier to draw rather than have it all sit up there. People [counsellors and others] have told me it’s not a good outlet. I think that they believe it’s too much in your head. But I like drawing. It is my thing. Besides it is an act of externalising. Often I find if you’ve got stuff going on in your head, you can’t just sit with it. You need to physically occupy yourself or else things can spiral further out of control. For me, when everything gets too crazy, I sit and I think about what my head looks like in that moment and how I can turn it into something creative. It’s not always a conscious act though. Nor is it necessarily a literal process of drawing anxiety so to speak. Just drawing. Just the process.

Do have an example of how anxiety manifests itself in your art?

Yeah! One of my favourite drawings is one that I recently created when I was in a state of anxiety. It was during semester break, and I was in the car coming back from the coast. I really like being at Uni because it gives me a sense of direction, and without this, in the holidays, I found myself in a bad headspace. So I sat there using the movements of the car to draw these faces. I was working with black pen tracing continuous lines. It was very liberating because the style is so unrealistic. You have to get into the space of not thinking about what it is you’re drawing because if you think about it too much it starts to become really forced. That’s why I love working in the car so much. Suddenly you go around a turn and the line becomes wonky. I’m not sure if you see that anxiety in the uneven style but it is definitely interesting for me to look back at it; as one of my drawings that comes most from this space of not being able to cope mentally.

I am aware that you are Christian, how does this affect your art making processes?

The space inside my head is strongly connected to my belief in God. I grew up in a Christian house, and we always went to church. When you’re little I guess all you are doing is going along with your parents. You might have a bit of an understanding of faith but you don’t really start to take it that seriously until someone actually explains it to you. For me that someone was my nanna. She ran a holiday program at our church when I was eight. We talked about bible stories, and the question of whether or not we wanted to ask God into our hearts, which I decided I did. Then I went through a period around the age of 13 or 14 of seriously questioning what it was that I actually believed in. I think you’re always going through periods of questioning. At least for me that’s what it means to have faith. I have to try to reconcile the idea that God loves everyone and the life he has created for us is meant to be good and great, with the fact that I know God does love everyone but life is not always good and great all the time.

At Art School the culture sometimes feels about as far from that of the Christian community as you can get. I appreciate the challenges that this presents though, and faith does strongly affect my creativity. I believe that it is God that has given me this passion for creating and making art, and that one of the best ways I can honour him is through doing that. These beliefs drive the reasoning behind why I make art more than the actual physical conceptualisation of work. The world we live in may be very secular but this is always a little thought process in the back of my head; how can I best use the gifts God has given me, to glorify him?