Letter from Western Australia - Context is Key by Zaaron Crosby

This article and others from around the world can be found on Eric Maisel's new creativity portal at;http://ericmaisel.com/category/worldwide-perspectives/ 

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“ For me con­text is the key — from that comes the under­stand­ing of everything”
Ken­neth Noland Amer­i­can abstract painter

I was 23 when I left Lon­don. Until that time I had lived in South East Lon­don some­what entrenched in the day-to-day life of a low income, sin­gle par­ent, fam­ily. From my very ear­li­est days I remem­ber hav­ing the most intense desire to com­mu­ni­cate my thoughts and sens­ing that my words were in some way inad­e­quate. I cre­ated with medi­ums I found or was for­tu­nate enough to be given and as I grew I often “bor­rowed” paints and spray cans from sheds around my area and made can­vases from the doors of old wardrobes. I spent hours on the rooftops sketch­ing neigh­bour­ing churches with pen and paper; a back­pack full of provisions.
So it wasn’t sur­pris­ing (in hind­sight) that whilst work­ing in an office job on an unevent­ful day, dur­ing an aver­age week, among the grey­ness of cen­tral Lon­don that I applied for a VISA to travel around Aus­tralia for a year. My cousin had ven­tured “down under” sev­eral years prior and the pull of the unknown cou­pled with an intense unset­tled feel­ing at home drove me to book my ticket. At the time I didn’t know why I wanted to leave and I didn’t under­stand why I wanted to jour­ney alone but I did know that some­thing wasn’t quite right.

So this was how I found my-self 6 weeks later float­ing in the mid­dle of the Indian Ocean miles from shore, snorkel and flip­pers (feel­ing some­what unco­or­di­nated hav­ing never swum in an ocean before) being cir­cled by a 25 ft Shark in the clear waters of the West Aus­tralian coast­line. Luck­ily for me this shark was a plank­ton feed­ing Whale Shark, the largest fish in the world, which only seemed inter­ested in bask­ing for food and avoid­ing con­tact with any stray Eng­lish­man who may be float­ing in the area.



I had arrived in Coral bay, a small town in the North West of West­ern Aus­tralia a few days prior and after a num­ber of weeks in a hos­tel made from old ship­ping con­tain­ers I ended up aban­don­ing my trav­els around the coast in favour of “check­ing out” with no plan in mind. I spent most of my time swim­ming in the clear waters of the Indian Ocean among the stun­ning coral reefs just a few hun­dred metres off the coast and meet­ing amaz­ing peo­ple, artists included, who just came and went as they pleased. No sched­ules, plans or objectives.

It’s hard to explain in words but at the time Coral Bay was one of the most untouched, pic­turesque places I had ever seen, only matched by its remote­ness. When I say remote, I prob­a­bly need to put some con­text around just how large and remote West­ern Aus­tralia actu­ally is. West­ern Aus­tralia is huge and in the most part baron. Many a tourist has been caught unaware by their car break­ing down in the mid­dle of the bush with lim­ited sup­plies and no way to notify peo­ple of their predica­ment, a predica­ment that can become fatal if not taken seri­ously. As a com­par­i­son West­ern Aus­tralia is around 3 times the size of Texas and makes up 1/3 of Australia’s total land mass.

It’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine two more con­trast­ing expe­ri­ences than that of the hus­tle of Cen­tral Lon­don and the remote untouched beauty of West­ern Aus­tralia. I look back at my diary entries for the time in Coral bay and they include phrases like “see­ing for the first time” and “notic­ing the beauty of the world”. I returned from my retreat in the North­ern shores a new per­son, I became more of the artist I was to become and devel­oped the courage to cre­ate and explore the world around me. My expe­ri­ence allowed me to see and expe­ri­ence more of what life was show­ing me.

The power of my Whale Shark expe­ri­ence was based on the con­trast between the grey­ness of my expe­ri­ence in Lon­don to the tech­ni­colour of Coral Bay. If I’d stayed in Lon­don, obliv­i­ous to the rest of the world, maybe I wouldn’t have described Lon­don as grey at all. In a way Coral bay gave Lon­don its grey.



For me, as a painter I see the light and shade not only in my work but also in my expe­ri­ences, as one gives the other con­text and I have found the greater the con­trasts in my life the larger the insight, whether it be falling in love, trav­el­ling the world or chang­ing careers; they all pro­vide a new per­spec­tive and a unique oppor­tu­nity to see the world anew.

Zaaron Crosby is a Visual Artist inter­ested in all aspects of cre­ative expres­sion, includ­ing paint­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, sculp­ture and mixed medium. He has spent the past 15 years Career Coach­ing within the recruit­ment indus­try and is the owner and direc­tor of the online art gallery, Art­less Impact, www.artlessimpact.com.au, which pro­vides a medium for eth­i­cally minded peo­ple to pur­chase sus­tain­able, eco­log­i­cally sound, fair trade artworks.

Trained as a Cre­ativ­ity Coach, Zaaron runs the Cre­ativ­ity Coach­ing prac­tice “think.feel.dream”, www.thinkfeeldream.com.au and is pas­sion­ate about work­ing with cre­ative indi­vid­u­als and the cre­ative process. His main work as a cre­ativ­ity coach is based around Artists with day jobs and peo­ple who work in a career out­side their cre­ative pas­sions but still wish to pur­sue a pro­duc­tive cre­ative life.

zaaron@thinkfeeldream.com.au
www.thinkfeeldream.com.au
http://creativitycoaching-thinkfeeldream.blogspot.com/
www.artlessimpact.com.au