Dan Nelson

I’m not sure who first dubbed our beloved neighbouring stormwater drain and its grassy banks the ‘Styx Riveria’, but the poetry was not lost on any of us. The name also reminds me of one of my father’s favourite sayings, ‘flash as a rat with a gold tooth’, which captures for me the alchemy of NAS: unexpected things of great value happen here.

I love the contrast of the NAS building’s grungy facade against the lush parklands of the Hunter TAFE campus, and how this is amplified by the surprise of the expansive white gallery space inside.

Through great luck, I currently inhabit a studio on the top floor of NAS with artists Fran Loudon, Serena Owens and Marilyn O’Brien, and previously with Annemarie Murland, Jaymie Maley and Alessia Sakoff. The windows are high, so there is a feeling of being with the birds and sky. Sound echoes up from the schoolyard across the creek. The school bell and kids’ laughter have made their way into my creative routine: stop for lunch, try not to take yourself too seriously, tap into a childlike sense of wonder, if you can.

Over the years I have painted in bedrooms, kitchens, sheds, warehouses, paddocks, forests, on riverbanks, beaches and windy headlands. The studio where I painted my first exhibition was a tiny old kitchen at the back of our house. If I stood still in the middle of the room, I could reach out and touch all four walls. By necessity I made smallish works, moving them out into the hallway or the back yard to get a longer view.

Not long after my first exhibition, at NAS Gallery, I moved into a large studio in NAS’s old location in Parry St, Newcastle West. I had taken lessons there with Peter Lankas and Mazie Turner for a couple of years and was deeply excited to join the region’s longest running arts hub alongside many artists I admired. My works improved and got bigger, along with my confidence.

Around the building there were constant signs of the artistic people who worked there, as well as those who had inhabited that space over the years. A little dog-eared drawing or old exhibition invite thumbtacked to a pinboard, an easel with the name of an artist scrawled in permanent marker, handmade ceramics in the tearoom, and lots of weird and wonderful oddities snuck in by the creative cleaner Greg Meyne.

Studio hubs like Newcastle Art Space are immersive and promote incidental learning and peer support. There is real and enduring camaraderie at NAS, and I find it is often the hallway conversation or opportunity to get feedback from other artists on works in progress that pushes my creative process forward.

Having a studio here is so much more than ‘a room of one’s own’. Being in dialogue with artists who are on their own creative journey is interesting, supportive and deeply enriching.

This work about memory and wayfinding seemed like an appropriate one to put forward for 40+. It brings together many of the things I have learnt about painting from NAS artists over the past 10 years. In it, I see in it influences of Peter Lankas, Pablo Tapia, John Morris, Rachel Milne, Virginia Cuppaidge and the late Mazie Turner, all of whom have been role models if not active teachers and mentors.

I was especially delighted to see this work captured in Rachel Milne’s recent painting of my studio.