Like Wild Horses Running Away Over The Hills

For me art has in some way or another always been an integral part of my genetic makeup – the child I was, the person I am. I have come from a long line of master tailors. They came from Egypt to these Antipodean lands and they brought with them their passion for life. My father, grandfather and mother all worked in creating beautiful garments.

They instilled in me from an early age that all aspects of creating a garment was important. I still remember my father showing me how to prepare and complete a buttonhole. A small part of the total work but one that could not be neglected.

I realised that the artistic process, the creation, encompassed everything; that art existed in the very air that I breathed, the food I ate that was magically created by my mother and grandmother, by the clothes I wore that were made with love by my father. Even the language we spoke in our household moved across Greek, Arabic, French and Italian as guests came in to discuss this and that, to argue, to laugh, to watch rugby.

These images were later developed into the work The Tattooed Tailor that was exhibited at the Melbourne Fashion Festival in 2005. This is an ongoing work in progress and is continuing as a short film.

I was never to please my father and follow in the tailoring tradition but my father and mother gave me the strong belief that ideas are to be chased down. They are like “wild horses running away over the hills” and so you need to be very determined to catch them.

For me an artist is someone that knows nothing and is continually searching. As Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “an expert is a person who has stopped thinking; he knows.”