SHANNON GARSON

artist SHANNON GARSON

I’ve wanted to be an artist ever since I was a little girl in primary school. Back then, I didn’t even know what an artist really did and I certainly didn’t know any real artists, but I was searching. Living in a very small country town made this search difficult, so while I searched I also practiced. Art is an undeniable force that has driven me for my whole life.

Words Shannon Garson Photographs Shannon Garson, Annabelle Hickson

For many years I couldn’t even tell people I was an artist, because the words just didn’t seem true. This private, solitary journey to become was undertaken alone, mostly in my head. Yet, in the outside world, where I was learning skills and gaining experience, I found a powerful, generous, magical strand of people who helped me get the skills I needed and who have supported me throughout my career.

These magical people, I recognise now, are those who would be called my peers, other artists. My first art teacher was an old-fashioned watercolourist with a passion for native flora. Marvene Ash was an artist living in a little wooden house with her tiny baby and huge, emotional pastel drawings of everyday things like couches, shoes and cakes. I went to Marvene’s house every Wednesday after school and learned how to draw what I could see.

So many chance meetings along the way: I was always hopeful of finding people who were inspiring to me and when I saw them I tried to meet them. While I was doggedly following this obscure solitary path, my peers helped me by giving me the tools I needed to keep going.

There were no huge events that shaped my career, but rather a series of small but powerful influences that continue to carve my path like the action of water on stone, making channels, carving river valleys changing my course. It seems that I have to continually ask myself, ‘Do I want to be an artist?’ and then choose, once again, to go forward and be one. n shannongarsonporcelain.com.au