Interview with Bobby Clark
For those who are new to the genius that is Bobby Clark, can you share a little about your journey - how you came from Scotland to Melbourne, and how art has always been woven into your life?
I grew up in a pretty artistic family. My grandpa Peter was in the arts. He was offered a full scholarship to Glasgow School of Art but his father didn’t let him go so he spent his life painting in his little green shed, performing in the local theatres and living out his life as a painter and decorator. My gran and his daughter (my mum and aunt) loved art so I grew up drawing and painting and talking about art. Art and English were my favourite subjects at school and I went on to study textiles and fashion in Glasgow where I met my husband, sculptor and designer Steven aka denHolm 19 years ago. We went onto study at Manchester Art School before completing our Bachelor of Arts and moving here on a whim where we have stayed for 15 years this October 29th.
Your practice is so multidisciplinary - painting, photography, creative direction, even rug design. What does being an artist mean to you today, beyond the canvas?
It’s changed since becoming a mother. I don’t currently know what defines me, maybe I can’t verbalise it and it changes constantly with my state of being. I just know it's the only thing I am really good at. The medium doesn’t matter. Being the mother I want to be to my two boys means my time is mostly for them and I try to find time to keep art alive with projects that are done in the dark hours or during naps. Being naturally inquisitive, I will try anything. I love being forced out of my comfort zone and challenged with my capabilities. I always start a new project with a huge sense of imposter syndrome but quickly it turns to something new and exciting. I am never scared to make a mistake and love learning new things. If I really think about what being an artist has meant to me it’s probably creating something that conveys my deepest, most inner emotions and experiences without having to say them out loud. Sometimes a circle is seen as just a circle but really it’s much more and when you layer it with the mathematics in its scale and position alongside the choice and the depth of the colour it can say a thousand words within it.
Many of your works carry this sense of balance and quiet strength. Do you see your art as part of your own healing or wellness practice?
Without a doubt. We are all just little broken birds in one way or another. My art has been so much more than just painting. Sometimes I need to paint so badly I’ll just re-paint a room in my house because the physical action of painting gives me more than any therapist could. For a long time it was the only time I found real peace and quiet in my own mind and body.
Wellness looks different for everyone. What practices or things help you feel most nourished, grounded, and at ease in your body and mind? I've seen you post about supplements you use, and the salt, please share!
Well recently that’s all gone out the window - that's my usual process. I fight routine so deeply it’s the one thing I would change about myself. Doing this now has fallen at the perfect time and I need to get some of my little rituals back into my routine.
Firstly I need water. I would have a bath every day if I could. I have always needed water. We have just moved into a house that doesn’t have a bath so I am currently hunting for a free standing bath on marketplace so we can have one in the garden.
I am so aware of all the hidden shit in our food so the best way to nourish myself and my family is to buy market fruit and veg as much as possible and avoid all the packaged snacks. I have been baking a lot at home. We used to eat out a lot but now we only eat out once or twice on the weekend. I buy all my meat from the butcher and have started a veggie patch at home. I have massively simplified my life in terms of what I put in and on my body.
Postpartum and in the thick of the never ending No Sleep Club my favourite additions to diet to help replenish my reserves are The Tenth (everything you need), a really good creatine, deep wave magnesium before bed (GAME CHANGER), castor oil packs, castor oil on my eyes every morning, LED light therapy and most of all my healer (a lady who has changed my life). Also celtic salt in water. Those things are my survival pack, plus my coffee machine - it’s no joke better than any coffee from a cafe.
What role does Melbourne play in shaping your lifestyle, your art, and your family life?
We love Melbourne so so much, we fell in love 15 years ago (on the 29th of October) and we just haven’t felt the urge to leave. Melbourne has this magic about it. There is just so much to see and do. The art galleries, the gardens, the people. I miss home every day but I am not done here yet. I’m not even ready to move out yet with two kids. The only downfall is there isn’t any good beaches close. We love Mount Martha but it’s a decent trek with two kids. Melbourne has such an amazing hub for artists and designers. It’s VERY small in comparison to home and its proximity to Europe but it was the perfect place for us to establish both our practices as the industry isn’t over saturated, it seems big but I find Melbourne extremely small industry wise. Our family life here is a dream. I feel this often. We’ll be at the workshop with the kids and I’ll just suddenly realise we are living the real life dream we wished for. Just need more holidays and we’re there.
I love Melbourne but there are so many places to go and things to do, I never know where to start - for a first time visitor, where would you send them for inspiration, beauty, and nourishment?
There really is so much to do here. I love doing lists for people who are visiting.
Inspiration: Art Galleries - NGV, Heide MOMA, ACCA, Ian Potter Fed Square and Ian Potter Museum. I go to The Heide a lot. It never gets boring. I love walking through the gardens and looking at the sculptures. You don’t even need to go inside the galleries.
Nature: Black Spur drive, Dandegnong Ranges, Yarra Ranges, Merry Creek, Botanical Gardens.
For R&R: Little Company facials are another level and LED sessions are only 20 minutes with a custom meditation, Sauna’s followed by a cold plunge at Nimbus (I love the Nicholson St one), Massage at Little Company with Still Beauty (try see Kira). If you fancy a drive About Time bathhouse.
What inspires you most right now - is it colour, architecture, nature, the everyday moments of family life or something else?
I feel inspired by everything. Right now because my littlest son Jonty has only just turned one I am in the gathering stage. I have researched and read so much and been sorting away notes and ideas for a whole year. Now all I need is time. I mostly turn to books. With so much of our lives online sometimes art and designing becomes an echo chamber and I want to try to keep the processes that were instilled in art school. The analogue cataloging of ideas and research in books and libraries, in clipping and magazines. I feel like seeking inspiration online all the time make the whole process feel rushed and finished before it even starts. Things feel so rushed so I am quietly waiting for my time to click to start painting and creating art again on my own.
 |
 |
Postpartum can feel both magical and deeply lonely at the same time. What was most surprising to you about your own postpartum experience this time around with your second child?
How much I forgot and really how different each pregnancy, birth and babies are. I guess we don’t remember for a reason. I struggle most with the loneliness. It’s such a funny time. I love being pregnant because you never feel alone because you have two hearts with you at all times. I love carrying my babies, there’s always someone to talk to or feel in every moment of the day, but strangely when the baby is on the outside I crave that connection and human touch so much more. I do feel like it’s a becoming though. I feel like we have to experience that deep loneliness to make us love ourselves and move into our new selves as mothers. Becoming a mother has to make you so strong in yourself.
You’ve also been open about your journey with secondary infertility and thankfully have an absolutely beautiful baby boy now. What has this chapter revealed to you and how did you grapple with that experience?
I am so open with fertility, I think it’s so important to make other women with similar stories feel seen - as women we’ve been kept in the dark with our bodies and losses for far too long. I don’t remember ever hearing my mother talk about fertility or loss and one day if I have a daughter I want her to be able to come to me.
Before James we lost a baby. I had an ectopic pregnancy and didn’t find out until my dating scan. It hit me like a ton of bricks and the grief took probably a whole year to process. In a matter of minutes I went from being pregnant to being told I might have to have my uterus removed and had to make a lot of emergency decisions I had no experience or knowledge about. I was given the choice of taking a drug used for chemotherapy or urgent surgery. Initially I decided to have the drug which would leave my body toxic for 3 months thinking I would ‘save my fallopian tube’. I sent Steve home for rest and thankfully a female surgeon came to my bed and begged me to opt for surgery. She told me my remaining tube would be so damaged that it would most likely cause a subsequent ectopic pregnancy. She told me that despite what most women think and are taught at school - our fallopian tubes are not fixed and float inside like little arms with hands that grab the egg from either side. That by having a tube removed my fertility wouldn’t be reduced by 50% but much much less because my remaining tube would dance across to each ovary. Even friends who had studied Biology didn’t know this (HOWWW!).
After a year of recovery mentally we started trying again for James, who was conceived on the first try. Jonty took 18 long months with a failed pregnancy in between. We had a chemical pregnancy which I didn’t even know what it was. When you have been trying for so long, month after month and finally get a positive pregnancy test, it was so disappointing.
Jonty was conceived in Miami, when we had just decided to stop trying for a while, to have fun and drink a few margaritas by the beach and just really enjoy life. Before we left for holiday I started getting tests to figure out what was wrong and begin the process of IVF. We had an appointment booked in for our return from Miami, but we didn’t need it because Jonty was already in there. We still don’t know why it took so long with Jonty. I believe it was stress. I had glandular fever for around a year which was misdiagnosed as Hashimoto’s which took a huge toll on my body.
Were there any rituals or self care practices that helped you get through those tough times?
Not really. Nothing took away the pain and longing for my baby. It’s really consuming. You feel like the world is pregnant and it is so hard. Keeping faith and really trying to connect to my body was the thing I guess that eased it. It’s something I reminded myself, in those crazy blurry new first weeks with a newborn. Even in birth. I kept telling my baby and myself ‘I am meant to do this, we are meant to do this.’ Same with breastfeeding. I had a really hard time with feeding James but fought so hard to do it. The first few days with Jonty were really hard and I made a decision to listen to my body. I spent the entire day in bed with him, skin on skin, saying on repeat ‘I am meant to do this, we are meant to do this’ and I let us both find our way. It took about 4 hours but we got there. There was no way my body was not meant to feed my baby. No way my nipples weren’t created to not feed him, his mouth grew inside my body. We just had to trust our bodies and find the way.
Do you have any words of encouragement to share with other women navigating postpartum or fertility struggles? The two being very different obviously but often both can be very lonely experiences when in the thick of it.
I genuinely don’t think there is anything you can say to ease the pain of longing for your baby. Everyone that told me ‘you just need a holiday’ in the thick of it wasn’t helpful but the one thing I really reminded myself in those moments was that no matter what anyone said, no matter how it landed, people are only saying what they can to try and comfort you. We were raised to not talk openly about infertility and loss so we are all still trying to find our words and through those uncomfortable moments and those words that sometimes come out wrong, at the end of it all is love and kindness and we are all trying our best. We all want the village, we’ve just forgotten how to let it in.
I think the one thing I could say is to always act with kindness. We never know what someone is going through and more often than not if someone is rude or short with us in a cafe or in the street, they are the ones who need an extra bit of kindness that day.
 |
 |
I often talk about the fact that no one shares how GOOD it is to get to parent, people so often stick to the negatives but you really do share how much you love being a mother and take your children along on the journey which is beautiful to see, can you speak to this as I can tell it is deliberate?
There is no denying being a parent is hard. It’s selfless and relentless and fucking mental at times but I feel immense gratitude daily for every part of it. I never understand when people can’t wait to be apart from their kids, I am obsessed with mine. I love being with them and I love being a family. Yes Steve and I have ZERO time together but in our lifetime it is for such a short chapter. We had 13 years of fun together and now it’s time for them. Time moves so quickly I want to enjoy every new phase with them and I don’t want to miss a thing. I am so grateful that I can adapt my work around my children. As a person I always find the beauty in life and people and I really love a bit of chaos, I’m comfortable in it.
Being a parent is the most crazy beautiful experience. You have to lean in.
The thing that’s hard for us is that we don’t have any family here. Well my brother is but he’s young and enjoying his life. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have their grandparents part of their everyday life and am so envious of my friends who have their parents here who take the kids overnight and through the week.
Motherhood changes so much about who we are. How has becoming a mother influenced your perspective as an artist and as a woman?
More than words. Steve looked at me the other week with a sad look on his face and said ‘you’re a woman now, the last of the girl in you has gone’. I felt it too. A year postpartum and 38 I feel like I have moved into the next phase of womanhood. I loved being pregnant with James so much. Carrying both my boys gave me respect for my body. Giving birth made me feel like the strongest, most powerful person and the respect I felt for every mother is still with me. When I see another mother there’s just this unspoken energy of respect I carry. I see her.
It broke apart old wounds within me with my own mother and slowly helped me work through them to a place of understanding and forgiveness. We are all just doing our best.
Becoming a mother was coming home to myself. To realising I needed to love myself to love them in the way I wanted. I’m not as scared of my work. I don’t feel this immense urgency to get back there. It will come when it comes. My cup is full of babies and as they grow my space for my work will slowly widen.
If you could advise a friend to eliminate just one thing from their life to support their wellbeing, what would it be?
Phones. Phones are fucking killing us but we’re all in too deep.
If you could advise them to add just one thing, what would it be?
Get the fuck outside. Plant a flower. Talk to the birds. Catch a cloud. Pick up a paint brush, even if someone told you you were shit at art.
You’ve said before that colour holds emotional weight. Is there a colour or palette that feels like it defines this chapter of your life?
I am waiting on that colour. Right now its shapes. Grids. Repetition and pattern. I’ve yet to look into what it means. Reason pending.
Many of us struggle with the tension between productivity and rest. How do you personally give yourself permission to pause without guilt, or do you?
I never do. Steve is my nudge. He forces me to take time for myself. I will do everything else first but he says I need to look after myself. He books me in at a new wellness centre in Thornbury which has a no phone policy. He kicks me out the house with my swim suit and a book even when my to-do list is unbearable, he doesn’t care and I never come back resentful. He knows me better than I know myself, he always has.
Creativity can sometimes feel like a very solitary practice, Where do you find community, and how important is that to your wellbeing?
It’s so funny that I have chosen a practice that involves such solitude, when I hate being alone. I always have to schedule in time with people or I will go insane. I catch up with my girls and our kids every Wednesday and we have done since meeting when our babies were one. There are six of us with 14 kids between us. They are my lifeline. I have built a network of the most beautiful friends that I have for all aspects of my life that fulfil it in different ways. When you have babies friendships change, I believe the friendships that last through this big change will be the ones that last forever and the new people you meet that become entwined with your children are so deep so fast because you connect in these ways that don’t need words or explanation. I love pretty intensely so If you are my friend you're in my life in a big way. I just don’t have the time for anything less.
What do you think your younger self would say if she could see your life today?
God what I would give to sit with her. I would tell her to love herself and not be scared. That feeling 'other' was her power and that one day she would live the life she dreamt of. I think she would be so happy so see where she ended up. I would tell her to not be so angry. So proud to see her babies and Steve. Probably slightly confused that she lived in Australia. I know she wouldn’t say much, she would want to know it was all going to be ok.
 |
 |
