DEL GOSPER

artist DEL GOSPER

Del Gosper is standing in her living room, surrounded by books, piles of old The World of Interiors magazines and art. She tells me not to bother sitting on the deep, dark pink sofa, because it is not at all comfortable. The kettle is on. Del’s pulled out a stack of her favourite books and she flicks open a biography of Henri Matisse’s wife.

Words Annabelle Hickson Photographs xxxxxxxxxxWords and photographs Annabelle Hickson

‘It’s like he just sucked the energy out of her completely,’ says Del, pointing to the photo of a 60-year-old Amélie Matisse being carried out of her house on a stretcher. ‘Everything was focused on Henri.’

According to the book, soon after Matisse met Amélie he said, ‘I love you dearly, mademoiselle, but I shall always love painting more.’ For (almost) the rest of their married life, Amelie was happy to be his wife and manager, devoting herself to Matisse and his work. In the end he sacked her from his studio. She divorced him. He died.

‘Amélie became more and more unwell over time. She couldn’t walk,’ says Del, waving the book in her hand. ‘But when Henri dies, she gets up with a new energy and starts collating all of his work.’

How much to give and how much to take is a topic on my mind. I’ve just left my husband at home with our children to do this interview. He is busy pruning the trees that provide the bulk of our income. I am busy too, I say. The children don’t seem to mind and they are good at making toasted sandwiches. So I drive off and that not unfamiliar worry of am-Itaking-too-much pecks at me from its perch in my chest. Ed prunes and I wonder if his chest hurts too. And then I wonder if my chest should be hurting more, because after five minutes on the road it’s not really hurting at all.

‘Perfectionism, good-ism, being the good, helpful person,’ says Del. ‘It can really stop you from doing the things you want to do.’

Now in her seventies, Del spends most of her time painting on the north-facing verandah of her small brick cottage in the New South Wales town of Tenterfield. Her three sons are grown men, she has retired and, after selling her family farm in the Bangalow hinterland, has lived in this sweet onebedroom cottage with the bathroom on the verandah for the past seven years. She fills her days with what makes her feel good: her books and her painting and her cooking.

‘If I get too bogged down in other things, I get a really sore back.

‘That has helped me to decide to stay here and just paint. That’s what I like to do, that’s what makes me feel happy and that’s what helps my back.’

When her boys were young, Del chose to push many of her personal interests to the side. She always put her family first. Her former husband worked a lot and so she kept the home fires burning; for a while, quite literally, with a large wood-fired kiln. She’d make ceramics between her other commitments, but that became too hard and she stopped.

A bit later when the boys were in their teens, she began making patchwork quilts. ‘I used to cut up bits of material and sew them back together,’ she says matter-of-factly, adding that for someone like her— the youngest of five girls—there was a lot of male energy in this part of her life. ‘It was a way of remaking my world somehow.’ Later she started painting, taking classes here and there, while continuing to be the backbone of her family as a mother and a grandmother.

I don’t think Del regrets any of the time spent nurturing her family. She doesn’t give that impression at all. What she does make clear is that she values the time, space and freedom that comes with living by herself in this stage of her life.

‘I often have a roast dinner at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, a glass of wine or two and then not much at night. This freedom to listen to my body and do things at my own pace, it’s so precious. I am very grateful.’

Del discovered the Tenterfield area through her late partner Jim, a ‘beautiful soul’ whom she started seeing in 1995. ‘We never lived together because he worked throughout New South Wales. But whenever we got together, we’d get in the car and head west. He showed me this lovely New England area.

‘Our travels made me realise I didn’t love the coast so much. So when I sold the farm, I thought, well, >

‘WE’VE ALWAYS BEEN TOLD IT’S GOOD TO SOCIALISE, THAT YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE SOCIAL INTERACTION.’

I think I’ll go to Tenterfield. Everyone said, “what do you want to go there for?” For me, it was the old buildings, this sense of history, the landscape and the seasons.’ Jim had already bought a house around the corner. He never lived there: they had talked about moving in together, but that’s not how it worked out. Jim died this year.

Del says they had a wonderful time together and that, along with many other things, Jim had taught her to not take herself so seriously. ‘I always thought I would go first,’ she adds and then laughs, as if following Jim’s advice.

Del has also formed close friendships with a handful of women around her age in Tenterfield. Some came from the coast as she did, and most of them are single. Her family lives within a few hours’ drive from her cottage, and one of her sons lives, on and off, in the shed in the garden. This network—as well as the visual inspiration she gets from following artists on Instagram (she just looks rather than comments: ‘I wouldn’t really know what to say’)—is all Del needs. That, and her books and paints and cooking pots.

Since moving to Tenterfield, Del has discovered how much joy she gets from spending time alone. She said the move, as well as the book Quiet by Susan Cain, gave her permission to not feel as though she should be socialising all the time.

‘We’ve always been told it’s good to socialise, that you’ve got to have social interaction,’ but Del points out that for introverts, time alone is important, too, and there is nothing wrong with choosing it.

‘Back in the seventies, they changed the classroom configuration and instead of having the kids lined up facing the teacher, they were in little groups facing each other. There was no recognition with all this stuff that not all people want to socialise.’

I can’t help but think of my time in an open-plan office, crouching under my desk to find the privacy I needed to be able to concentrate. Or last weekend when Ed said, ‘Let’s take the kids for a walk to the waterfall’ and I made up some reason why I had to stay at home so I could lie in the bath in silence until it went cold.

Del puts down the Matisse book and makes a pot of tea. We sit on the sunny verandah where she paints still life images of persimmons and bunches of flowers from friends and ceramic pieces that catch her eye. She likes painting these everyday things. The challenge to paint the shapes in front of her, without her brain reminding her that it’s a persimmon or a rose, motivates her to keep on painting. She doesn’t have exhibitions and she’s not interested in making her art a business. Occasionally she posts photos of her paintings on Instagram, but only when she ‘finds the courage’.

To me it looks like Del has courage in spades. She seems to have found a balance—one that works for her—between how much to give to others and how much to take for herself. She has figured out how to avoid the stretcher and instead stride into this new stage of life where her days are about space and freedom and colour and shape.

‘What do you do if you don’t do this stuff?’ says Del. ‘I mean, what else do you do, when you’re an old woman?’

I have no idea what any of us are meant to be doing. How much is too much? How little is not enough? The balance of giving and taking shifts every day, and, at least in my experience, never seems to find a permanent equilibrium. I am a good mother and borderline neglectful, a loving wife and an absent partner, a solid friend and completely flaky. I don’t know if I’m getting any of it right. But I am trying.

And from where I’m sitting, watching Del, I can see that some things are worth striving for. We must erect some boundaries around our own hearts. Sometimes the walls will be too high, other times not high enough. But the striving alone might help keep the stretchers at bay. At least for another day. n