Opinion
10 November, 2025
So, maybe I’m an artist after all
I’ve never considered myself an artist. I’ve always reserved that term for people like Rembrandt and Picasso and Andy Warhol – basically anyone who creates art or challenges the way we think about it.
I’ve never considered myself an artist. I’ve always reserved that term for people like Rembrandt and Picasso and Andy Warhol – basically anyone who creates art or challenges the way we think about it. I have a lot of friends I consider artists – and very good ones at that – I’ve just never pitched my tent in the same camp.
But I’ve exhibited at regional galleries, I have owned my own gallery and more recently found myself part of the Southern Highlands Arts Trail. Still struggling with the concept that the work I produce daily out of the sheer love of doing what I do may be considered art or artistic.
I was never artistic as a kid. Couldn’t draw, couldn’t paint, couldn’t work a pottery wheel. I used to look at the work my kids produced as five and six-year-olds and think ‘Wow, I wish I could do that, even now, as a 30-year-old’. Today, as a 54-year-old, I still wish I had the same level of talent they had back then.
Kind of blindsided as a youngster with colour blindness. It certainly restricted my career options but it should never have dulled (or killed) my interest in things that are primarily based on colour but unfortunately it did at a time when disability of any kind was a source of shame. I focused on things that work in black and white. Newspapers. The industry became my passion.
Thankfully, the newspaper industry also exposed me to photography. I had no choice really, given I was handed a camera on my first day on the job and was told to photograph things that I didn’t want to photograph. Car accidents, house fires, human tragedy – all the things that come hand-in-hand with regional journalism.
But the workplace requirement to take photos slowly evolved into something else. I sought out people and landscapes and it provided me with a connection to things that I had never enjoyed a connection with before. I evolved from a journalist to a photojournalist. National papers started paying me for photographs. People started asking me to photograph weddings, parties, anniversaries. I guess I still saw myself primarily as a journalist – documenting something rather than producing art.
Obviously a few years have passed under the bridge. Newspaper photos went colour. Darkrooms seemingly disappeared as did 1-hour photo labs – and my passion for photography evolved into something beyond photojournalism and a passion for beauty in everything, regardless of whether you enjoy it in full-blown colour or something slightly (or significantly) different as I do.
The Southern Highlands Arts Trail is a spectacular initiative and this year’s Trail demonstrated, once again, the amazing depth of talent we have in the local region. Don’t miss it when it comes around next year – you may be surprised at what you find.
In the meantime, grab a camera, a paintbrush, a pencil, a piece of material or anything else and do something with it. You might not consider yourself an artist but enjoy the creative process and the benefits it will inevitably bring.
· Stuart Carless thanks Community Links in Bowral for inviting him to be a part of this year’s Southern Highlands Arts Trail.
Read More: Southern Highlands, Southern Tablelands, Wollondilly, Bowral