INSPIRE: Mt Barker artist Barry Mackie finds painting beauty in oils helps him deal with life’s curveballs

If life’s delivering you curve balls, it’s time to go and see Barry Mackie. The Mt Barker artist has dealt with a few major ones in his time but rather than retreat into his studio, he has opened his world to anyone who fancies learning to paint or wants to brush up on their brush strokes. Mackie loves landscapes, he loves portraits, and he loves the pioneer culture, but he especially loves oils, his favoured and only medium. It’s creativity and skill mixed with therapy and it has enabled him to create beautiful, textured art of people and scenery, be it abstracts drawing on his travels around Australia, re-imaginations from drone pictures, or copies of old masters — perhaps with added Mackie details — which give him great pleasure and to which he returns whenever he’s seeking inspiration. Monday night is oil painting night at his studio but he’s also the co-ordinator at the Art Chatter Gallery in Mt Barker, showcasing the works of local artists, some of whom started their journey in his evening classes. “I love seeing other artists progress, and someone seeing their first painting on show is just a marvellous feeling,” he said. “It’s therapeutic, especially when life intervenes; I tend to start creating, get absorbed and not think about what else might be going on. “When my first wife was ill and I was her carer, I would have gone barmy but for art. “Painting is so good for your mental health, especially for older folk, as it gives them a chance to keep being involved and being social.” The curveballs he’s had to face include losing the sight in one eye and much of his hearing courtesy of his time in the navy, losing his wife to early-onset dementia and then, only last September, his partner Carol. Rather than hide away in his studio, this charming man has decided to embrace new challenges, collaborating with a local drone pilot and preparing to start work on a giant canvas of the Stirling Range and the Porongurups which he said would take six months. By the time that’s done, he’ll have an image on the front cover of the Southern Art and Craft Trail’s literature and be installed, as part of the Trail, at the Handasydes Cafe in Albany working on yet another piece. An outlier in terms of his family — his brother is an accountant and thinks Mackie is “weird” — his father was a sheep shearer before World War II and then spent 50 years as a railway worker. But Mackie always loved art, though it took him a while to do something about it, which he did once he had moved to South Australia. He studied for four years at the Adelaide Central School of Art and met two artists who were to become his greatest influences. Terry Lewitzka and Rod McCallum developed his skills and, most importantly, helped him become confident about his ability. “I just lobbed up at the right time — they were fantastic,” Mackie said. “I learnt not to be concerned about what people think about my work and to enjoy exhibiting.” It’s hard to know what he loves painting most, as his studio houses a remarkable variety of styles. There’s the Pilbara orange of Rock Wallaby Country, the sepia tones of The Scaling of Bluff Knoll, the realistic hues of the Valley of the Giants and, tucked away, a copy of a Rembrandt self-portrait. “I love going back to the portraits and the old masters,” he said. “I must have painted McCubbin’s Down on his Luck a dozen times. “People want the medium and feel of the original, rather than just buying a print. “I always come back to them for fun, especially if I’m going through a stage when I’m feeling a bit uninspired. “At those times, I’ll paint an old master or drive off into the scenery and do something en plein air. “I have a great admiration for the pioneer culture — I have an attraction to that time when life was simpler, though not easier, of course. “People went into the bush, took over the land — the argument over the white invasion aside — and just created a life. “I greatly admire them, especially the women.” Although he loves exhibiting, and will be doing so during ArtSouthWA’s Easter Arts Festival, he’s not remotely competitive and said he had not entered a painting into a competition for 15 years. It’s a privilege having someone “open their wallet” for his work, he said, but competitions are not for him. “I’ve taken a bit of a dislike to artists competing for money at the whim of two or three judges,” he said. “We don’t need to adopt a view of what’s good or bad art — it’s just art. “We need to encourage people — and if ever the world needed art, it’s right now. “Van Gogh sold one painting when he was alive and that was to a friend of his. “So I think there’s hope for the rest of us.”