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Speaker 1: This is an R Media podcast.
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Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you in partnership with a brand I truly love and live with, Caboodle Kitchen.
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Speaker 1: We had elephants coming through our yard. At home? At home, yes, in Kariva. And we lived on the lake. And so during the day, crocodiles would be sunning themselves on our lawn. And at night we weren't allowed to go outside and play in the yard because hippos were eating our grass.
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Speaker 2: I'm Elle Lovelock, editor-in-chief of Home Beautiful. Welcome to The Edit, where we bring you into beautiful homes with the people who create them. Today, I'm sitting down with Carla Grace, a wildlife artist who has just landed back from New York after having a piece go under the hammer at Sotheby's. Born in South Africa and raised in Zimbabwe, Carla grew up surrounded by the wildlife that now defines her work. After moving to Australia 12 years ago, she built an art business from the ground up and now paints from her home studio on 15 acres in South Australia. In this chat, Carla takes us through her studio build and having rhinos walk through her garden, why she prefers the term rustic to imperfect when it comes to the home. Carla, welcome to the edit. We have been having a right giggle already, so I feel like... We just couldn't get the cameras going quick enough.
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Speaker 1: This is good.
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Speaker 2: But it's so nice to meet you.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. An absolute pleasure. And you flew in this morning from Adelaide. I was a bit confused.
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Speaker 2: I thought you had flown in from New York. You look very fresh.
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Speaker 1: But that was a month ago. Yes, New York was last month. And I know why you were there.
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Speaker 2: But share for our listeners what took you to New York because New It's major.
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Speaker 1: Yes. New York was a very big event for me. It started, I'd have to say, three years ago. I flew to South Africa for a collaboration with the Kevin Richardson Foundation to work on a significant legacy painting of his iconic lions. So he does a lot of conservation work, educational program for the canned lion industry and wildlife conservation as a whole in Africa. And he's a pretty iconic figure in wildlife conservation. So I teamed up with him and spent three months creating this painting and then proceeded to spend the next two years trying to get it into basically the world stage to not only for my branding, but for his message and for what we were achieving as a collaborative force. How do you do that? A lot of entering it into competitions, meeting, networking, promoting it. A lot of it is just getting it out there. So really making my media reach the audiences that connected with the painting. And I entered this painting into a competition with the ARC, which is an organization that that is driven to bring skill-based, realistic artwork back onto modern art stage. So making the skills and the aesthetic quality, the message behind the artwork, something that is significant again in modern art. And so my painting won an award, and the award winners from this competition were exhibiting at Sotheby's in New York. So that is how I got the painting into New York, being on the world stage there. And then it sold at auction. And the proceeds were donated to the Kevin Richardson Foundation. A grand total of $ 40, 000 Australian dollars was raised by the sale of this painting, which was amazing.
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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that is incredible. How would you explain to people what Sotheby's is?
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Speaker 1: Imagine the highest... platform for an artist to get their artwork into like an establishment. So I think Christie's and Sotheby's is a auction house for art that sells and operates at the highest level for artists. So typically there's about 500 artists that maintain the highest level of prestige in the world.
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Speaker 2: Really?
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Speaker 1: At any one point in time. This is not talking like the history of art. This is like current body of artists. Wow, I had no idea. It's very, very small amount of artists compared to how many artists are practicing right now. And so, I mean, you're talking the thinnest sliver of the 1% of artists get into this level of the platform.
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Speaker 2: God.
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Speaker 1: So for the ARC to get these artworks into Sotheby's is huge for every artist that was part of the exhibit.
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Speaker 2: The subject of this artwork, you have connections to this part of the world, don't you? So why don't you tell us about that?
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Speaker 1: Well, that's my history. So I was born in South Africa and then spent the 90s in Zimbabwe, in Kariba. Okay. That was a particularly significant part of my life because wildlife was just, it was everywhere. We had elephants coming through our yard. At home? At home, yes, in Kariva. And we lived on the lake. And so during the day, crocodiles would be sunning themselves on our lawn. And at night, we weren't allowed to go outside and play in the yard because hippos were eating our grass. And hippos are among the most dangerous animals. wildlife in Africa and I remember we didn't listen obviously all the time and we were playing hide and seek tag in the dark and I remember running out of the light from the patio into where it's all pitch black because you're in the middle of Africa there's no you don't have a lot of there's no real neighbors so it was just pitch black and I turned around and did a big loop and And I remember seeing this massive, I was like seven or eight at the time. It was this huge belly in front of me. And I remember skidding like down and just like doing one of those classic flip over and like running back to the house. I was like, there was a hippo right there. And it just, it didn't see me. It was like. But that's why. That is why. And never again did we play nighttime tag. And go outside at night again. And, I mean, that's just, like, one of many stories. We had to leave overnight in early 2000. Yeah. And we moved to New Zealand because we had some family there. And we got in, like– just the smallest window where they were accepting expats from Zimbabwe. And we stayed in New Zealand for six years. And my dad or my mom and dad are just African, just to their course. They always wanted to go back. So when I was 14, we went to Zambia, moved to Zambia. I finished high school in Zambia. And this is where I sort of started painting and drawing more seriously. Like I won a competition in New Zealand, but I was more interested in friends and cell phones were coming out like we could get cell phones and I decided to focus on art because we moved into the middle of nowhere we didn't have power didn't have like no hot water that kind of thing so all I had was pencil and paper and I started drawing birds out of the bird book whatever I could see on the farm I would draw And it just sort of grew from there. I started drawing people's pets, people's kids. People started paying me to draw their kids. And then their friends started paying me to draw their kids. And then it just sort of started growing. And by the age of 16, I was doing portrait commissions for strangers. And so I finished high school, moved back to New Zealand because you just went to university out of high school. I said, I don't want to go to university, but I went to university. And then I dropped out. My parents were like, you tried. and moved to Australia, and that's where I started my art business.
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Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh.
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Speaker 1: And that was 12 years ago.
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Speaker 2: Is there one childhood home in particular that has stuck with you? If you were to take us through the home and tell us what it was like, which one do.
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Speaker 1: You think of? The most, I think, it gives me, like, goosebumps thinking about it, our home in Kariba in Zimbabwe.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: It was an old fishing warehouse. Wow. And my dad, it was just, imagine bricks, just a brick warehouse. And there were like some storerooms up the top. And my dad built every piece of furniture for our house, including the stairs that went to these bedrooms that he put flooring in to be our bedrooms, obviously. And my mom, very creative school teacher, she would make all the curtains. My dad built this huge, I mean, it was huge to me. It was probably just, you know, normal size. And beautiful round wooden table. Like everything my dad did was just carpentry level, beautiful. He made my mum her beautiful dresser, like with the three mirrors, with the little drawers and all of that. But we had to leave all of that when we left. We took our photo albums and some clothes. That's all we could do. So I've packed my life down into 30 kilos numerous times. So my attachment to things... isn't probably as significant as what most people would have when you've grown up in a home and you've got all these beautiful keepsakes. um now I'm more now I'm starting that for my children now I'm building the furniture now I'm building the studio and painting the walls and you know holding on to things that I love which is a really cool thing to do as an adult.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah and what do you hope to teach your children? You have a five year old and a seven year old. What do you hope to teach them about things?
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Speaker 1: You don't need to be good at everything, but just be willing to be able to do things. You'll be able to accomplish so much because you don't have to buy everything new in order to have everything that you need. After the break, Carla takes us through her art studio build, including the kitchen pantry she's fashioned into a sewing cupboard. Where do you create? I work in my studio. So I have a studio at home. It's one that I have built myself. Of course. My husband and I, we saved up to build the studio for 10 years. And we live on a rural property in South Australia. We've got 15 acres. It's all gum tree. It's been part of my husband's family for the past 25 years. When he was a teenager, they planted 3,000 gum trees on this property. So now that we own this place, we have all these mature gum trees, which is just stunning. So it's a beautiful spot. We have mobs of kangaroos that live in our forest. No hippos. No hippos. Nothing that's going to trample me or eat me. Or impale me, which is great. You can just relax. It's great. We hear a fox every now and again, but that's about it. So it's a beautiful, restful place, and we've built a studio, which is 9 by 12, and then it's got a little additional lean-to, which is the workshop bathroom. And we have designed this studio around the functionalities of what it is to actually run an artist's practice. So what does that mean? There are many different facets to being an artist, especially what I do. So I'm not only just painting, which is just your easel and you've got your nice table, whatever you work from. I film tutorials. I package my artwork myself. I do my framing myself. I do all the building of the spaces and I use it for workshops. I use it for presentations. I use it for Wow, this is a really multi... It is a multi-purpose. Yeah. Yes. So we designed the functionality and then made it beautiful. So we created a space that served multiple purposes and could be transitional. So we could move things around and.
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Speaker 1: That became sort of like the key identifying factor to my space is that every time I show footage of it, it's in a different spot or like things have moved around. There's a corner now that I've set up for filming and the backdrop is a particular desk situation. And as you walk into the studio, you see the easel with the painting, but then I've got a wall easel behind that where I hang artworks that are drying. And then off to the side, I have this massive island cabinet bench that that I've put on castor wheels. I was wondering, are these on wheels? Everything's on wheels, yes. How are you moving it around? My kids love it. They're like pushing these things. And so this moves around the studio depending on how I need it. So together it's like a two by 1.2 size island bench and it can be separated in half and they can be all moved aside and around. It's a great space.
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Speaker 2: How do you even go about building a space like this it's I mean to build an island bench are you you know lugging timber in how do you do that.
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Speaker 1: I so this is probably the coolest part I've used kitchen cabinets the caboodle kitchen cabinets and we I've created a structural frame yeah as a base that holds the two groups of 900 um cabinet drawers yeah together and they each have the backing to it and the sides so like they're a complete kitchen island that I've added extra support on underneath yeah extra support to hold them together yeah and then I've gotten heavy duty caster wheels underneath and it's got like three mil clearance so it's flush with the floor and it glides so it looks beautiful it's beautiful What colors, finishes, worktops? I went for very neutral. So the colors, the materials, everything that is used in my studio is intentionally designed to create a neutral palette because light reflects color and color influences the appearance of paint on the canvas. Even the reflection of grass, the amount of green light that comes in from grass outside is once you notice it, it's like, oh, my painting looks green. So I control, everything in my studio is very controlled, lighting, color, intensity, and the neutral color palette, okay, so I've got gray, like a soft gray blue, very similar to the background here, just a bit lighter.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: And with white board and batten at the bottom so we've got viscous clay and that means there's a lot of movement so using plasterboard was never going to work there's a lot of movement in the shed so everything has a gap in it so which is why i chose board and batten because you can cover the gaps which is great vj panels up the top so it's split into two textures so having that broken textures in the backdrop yeah of footage and things like that creates a lot of like more interesting yeah because I used to do a lot of drapery yeah in my footage and I just couldn't do the drapery anymore it's just I just need a change I just needed the change and the the two different textures in the walls was a really nice way to break that up especially because everything's so neutral like the first comment I got was where's the color and I was like It's the paintings, actually, are the color. In the artworks. So timber flooring and stone back splashes around the cabinetry that I've got around the walls. Yeah. And I've got the timber look cabinet tops from Caboodle because the paint doesn't stick to them. They flake off. Yes. And they're very durable. Wow. And I do a lot of construction, framing, building on top of these beautiful counters. They serve a very, very specific function and they look great while doing it.
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Speaker 2: What do you keep inside them? Is it all art supplies or have you got overflow from the house?
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Speaker 1: It's all art related. It's amazingly all art related. There's a surprisingly huge amount of it. Because we host functions, I have obviously a wine. section where I've got champagne. And then I have all my art supplies, framing supplies, paints, pigments. And because I host international workshops, which I supply all the materials for because I want everyone to use the best of the same across the board. I have all of those. So I have just this abundance of stuff. And I converted because I also sew dust bags for each painting that goes out to my collectors. Oh, you really are end to end. So I have a pantry unit, a caboodle pantry unit that I turned into a sewing, like an unfolding sewing cabinet. So I put in a, using the soft close drawer sliders, I created a bench top for that, which slides in and out of the cabinet. cabinet I'm so gonna do this and it's great and I obviously put a hole in the back so you can plug it into the wall yeah and so everything you just push the sewing machine away and it's all it's all there the pantry unit is great so steady and so it rolls out and my dad came over he's like I have to help with something yeah so he came over from Zambia hadn't seen him in four years and he helped me build this sewing adaptation thing and he was just like I'm so proud of you oh my darling I'm so So proud, so cool. What do they.
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Speaker 2: Think of your career now, given your parents really wanted you to go to university?
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Speaker 1: You tried it. Yeah. How do they feel now? They're so proud of me. They said, we didn't think it would last this long. But we are so proud of you. They are my biggest supporters. Mom said if they could, they would buy every single painting. Oh. That I make. We just can't afford you anymore. It's like you've got all my freebies, like my art and like the high school stuff they've got. They've got like this timeline of my work in their home, which is really cool. Do your kids know what you do for a living? Yeah, they do. They so take it for granted. Of course. My daughter, they do show and share every week. And my daughter was like, I want to show them your artwork. And so I gave her my folder that I keep all my tutorial paintings in. So every month I release a new tutorial about how to paint the portrait of a bear, portrait of a black cockatoo, in realism, realistic, detailed. It's a beautiful portrait. I do them in a day. And so I have this folder of all these portraits of animals. And so I gave her this folder. It's worth like $ 50, 000. And she just takes it to school and she's like handing these paintings out. And they're all, she's like, I'm going to be an artist like my mom. So casual about it. It's just going to happen. It makes, but it's so great because you're creating a possibility where most people, like I get so many people messaging me. Being like, my family would never let me paint. They would never let me pursue art as a career. And they're like, you're doing it. You're giving me so much inspiration to pursue my passion. How do you do it? I've got kids. How do you manage your time? Like, how do you do everything that you do? And because I do everything. My husband and I, we do everything together. So we both do the house. We both work on the business. We both do the kids. And it's a lot to juggle, but it's, yeah, there's... So much possibility.
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Speaker 2: What is it, do you think, that has meant you are a successful or what is considered today a very successful artist?
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Speaker 1: I think success is a very tricky label to give something like, well, anything really, an art practice, a home practice, anything. I think success would be more a mindset. Yeah. Yeah. and the ability to adapt because the last 12 years in the art industry has changed so significantly. COVID and AI and you've got, there's the world is changing obviously around art and specifically the design industry. And so being able to adapt according to how the world is just like slamming you is, more successful than I would say a dollar figure in your bank account. And the ability to just roll with the punches and change what's not working, having the willingness to change, I think is one of the most important things. I couldn't agree more. Because you want to stick with what's been working because, God, it took so long to get to something that's working. And then suddenly it's not working anymore. So how do you change that? You go back to square one and you reassess and you reanalyze. And I found that not knowing how to do something is not an excuse anymore because you've got so much information at your fingertips. You can even now jump on and be like, what do I need to know about the art industry currently? Even our marketing strategies have changed with social media. You don't need your brick and mortar gallery anymore. You don't need an agent. But you also need to be able to create content online. And so like, that's why I do the filming because yes, I'm an artist, but I'm actually a content curator or creator that is an artist. So it's like a double barreled kind of approach to being an artist, being prepared to use what you do as a way to market to your audience.
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Speaker 2: I think it's amazing how you blend the creative and the passion with the business.
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Speaker 1: It has to be. Yeah. Cause I mean, I get, I get maybe five or six emails a day from people being like, I can sell your art for you and it'll just cost you this amount and they make it sound so appealing. It would be nice to just offload that. But at the end of the day, they don't actually care if they're selling your art. No. They're just getting your– anyway, so– being able to do it. And I've explained to my daughter, she's like, you're so good at, I said, it's not being good at something. It's just being able to do something. I said, I'm, I'm really good at art. Like I'm really good at art. That's, that's obviously my thing, but I am able to do so many other things because I don't want to ever get caught in a situation where I'm not able to make progress because I didn't know how to do that. Let's talk more about your home. Yes. What is your home?
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Speaker 2: So if we do a home tour and I come over and I'm at the front door, take me through what's the first thing we see?
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Speaker 1: Well, when you come in through the front door, you wouldn't get very far because that's where my husband's office is. So we live in a 80s home that was built by a builder who used offcuts, leftovers from his building projects. Yeah. So our home is this beautiful work in progress that has this amazing potential. It is very durable. So we live on a farm and we don't use the front door anymore because the coastal air has sealed it shut. It's an old timber door, which I would love to redo because it's solid timber and it's got the beautiful stained glass window at the top. Yes. So... We direct our visitors to our back door, which now I dug out a whole heap of grass and laid some pavers down. And you come in through this beautiful, big timber, chunky fence and you're greeted by our dogs, which gives you lots of love. And you come in through this big sliding door into our home. And we've got this open plan kitchen, which has timber 80s cabinetry and The home was tenanted for 15 years, so it needs a lot of love, like a rip-out kind of new. But we love that we don't have to treasure it so much with the stage of where our kids are. You can live hard. We are living hard, believe me. But we've started redoing the home room by room, and I've started with our room. So I love warmth and cozy farmhouse feel. My husband and I call it rustic, which means– not perfect yes there are there is room for me like yeah there's a gap there don't worry about that it's rustic yeah it's rustic farmhouse rustic so we are slowly I just built this window bench because we've got old bay windows and apparently the dogs think I built it for them because it gets the afternoon sun my husband's like don't put cushions on there like it's gonna I was like no no wait watch this and I just got our outdoor seating and I covered our outdoor cushions with like this blanket and straight away. Three dogs knocked out on the bench all afternoon. It's their spot. They're there all the time because they get up there and they watch the kangaroos and the sheep and it's just... So apparently I spent two weeks building a seat for the dogs and we've done board and batten again in the house because I love having the two textures on the walls or having something on the wall that Breaks up all that space. And so now I've just finished doing the kids' rooms where we've done their wardrobes and board and batten. And I've repurposed an old desk's top to build like a bench for my son. Anyway, repurposing old furniture. I love that. Give them a new thing. It's just I love doing that as well.
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Speaker 2: Do your kids have a say in their bedrooms? Are they interested?
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they are. Mostly they want unicorns and dinosaurs. And how do you feel about that? I guide their decision-making process very enthusiastically and drawing up the design so they can visually see it. They're more interested in the toys that fill the space as opposed to what happens on the walls.
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Speaker 2: In a moment, Carla brings out her mystery draw items and they are absolutely stunning. So do you have any house rules where you live with the kids and with, you know, being an artist or perhaps here we go. I'll ask you some questions and you can tell me. So shoes on or off in your house?
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Speaker 1: It depends on if it's been raining or not. Um, we've got very hard, hard wearing tiles. You can wear shoes.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I wear shoes because I don't like feeling the grit because we've got dogs that go in and out. It's not a great feeling. Shoes off on the furniture, for sure. Yeah, fair. Yeah. When we get new carpets and new flooring eventually, those rules will change. Currently, the shoes can be on or off. It depends on the day. And the grit. Yes.
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Speaker 2: So how about tidiness and organization?
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Speaker 1: Are you.
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Speaker 2: really organized and everything has a place or do you have piles of stuff all over the shop but you know where stuff is?
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Speaker 1: My husband and I are very efficient people. We are very organized. And part of maintaining a home that is organized, functional, doesn't have that sense of chaos is really important to us. It's not so important to a five-year-old. So we are teaching them. This is the place for your shoes. When you get home, you take your lunchbox out, you put your bag away. So there are little habits that are stepping in. But I mean, my husband and I, we find it quite therapeutic to clean the house and we enjoy doing it together. And it's just part of our everyday life. It's not like a chore. What does your home sound like? Oh, it's happy. Yeah. There's a lot of joy in the home. Whether the dogs are playing, you know, they do the playing zoomies in and out. If the kids, it usually depends on how the kids are, obviously. Yeah. It's just an open home that is inviting. I feel invited by it anyway.
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Speaker 2: What about scent? Do you scent your home? Does it have smells?
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Speaker 1: Oh, candles. So you're a candle girl. I love candles. Are they on all the time or just for guests? I leave them open a lot, which I know you're not really meant to do. Oh, I do it too. So nice. My studio, I have a diffuser. I love the delicious smells. Like what? What do you typically go for? I love lime and coconut is one of my favorites. Yeah. I used to really go for like the vanilla French pear, but that as I'm growing older, it's a bit sweet. It's quite a sweet smell. So I'm looking for more like the fresh citrusy, delicious, like smell like you want to eat something. Like it's just that smell that makes you think, oh, that smells yummy.
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Speaker 2: What about something you have in your home that is always fresh?
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Speaker 1: Air. Fresh air. That is the perfect answer. That's what you want. Fresh air. I cannot tell you. Opening the windows and getting that sea breeze coming through because we don't have a lot of really close neighbours and we're about 1.8 kilometres from the beach. So it's not like that fishy sea breeze smell. It's like fresh, just that fresh breeze smell. And that to me is... A really important feature.
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Speaker 2: Do you have a ritual about opening the windows each day or is it just see a window, open it?
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Speaker 1: Usually that. Yeah. My husband's always closing windows and doors behind me. And so it's, I don't know, it's a really basic thing. It's very simple. Yeah. But like in winter, airing your house out in winter. It's important. A lot of people don't do it. Yeah. It helps. Fresh air helps. Yeah. I am the worst gardener. I am going to put this out there. I do not know anything about gardening and I have tried so hard. I cannot keep an orchid alive. And so I get fresh plants on rotation. If they survive past the six months, Good on them. I'm very, very proud of them. I give them to my mother-in-law to continue on with their life. Okay. So I try very hard with the gardening and I just, I don't know what it is. I just, I'll build stuff. I can build almost anything. I can paint anything. Plants? Can't do. I know. But they are so important and I love them so much. It's just I can't. Oh, this stuff. We can't be good at everything. We really can't. We can't. Singing and plants. I won't adjust to her. I would love to hear and see your... Mystery draw item today. What have you brought in? So this one is a little bit, it's linked between art and wildlife. What I have here are three little, they look like prints. They are original rhino hide prints. It's just a fancy way of saying these are a little artwork that I bought from an exhibit at a zoo where they took the print of rhino skin from a live rhino. Wow. While he was getting a lovely pat, they popped a little bit of paint on his bum and there we have a little rhino print. That is amazing. They're really beautiful. They're actually really cool to look at. He may have had paint on his bum for a couple of weeks after that.
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Speaker 2: Oh, right.
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Speaker 1: But the zoo is part of the Sala art thing that Adelaide does. Yeah. And the zoo decided to let the animals do some art, like penguins walking across the paper with paint on their feet, stuff like that. Non-toxic, totally safe. And they decided to do some abstracts with the rhinos and, yeah, capture the texture of the rhino skin using just little prints. This is beautiful.
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Speaker 2: So for anyone listening who can't see, there are three circles about the size of a coaster.
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Speaker 1: Like a coaster, yeah.
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Speaker 2: With just this gorgeous black inky print on.
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Speaker 1: It looks like a neutral, creamy background. What I would say, you know when you look through an airplane window down at mountain ranges? Yes. Especially like snow-capped mountain ranges. Yeah. And they've got that broken sort of rocky texture to the look of them.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: They look like that. Like you're looking down at this geographical two-dimensional print. Yeah. Yeah. They're absolutely beautiful. They are so interesting to look at. How do you display these at home? They're just at the moment stuck in my studio just above where my desk is because I find them so nice to look at. You know those ink blots where you look at them, they're folded in half and it's the raw shot and you see something different every time. They're like that to me. So I'll have often mental overload with all the different projects that I've got going on because I run international workshops and I do exhibits and the tutorials and there's all these other background things happening with– family life and the property and things like that. And every now and again my brain just does this, like, short circuit. And I look at these prints and I just find just, like, there's just some zen about it. And I just liked it. And so that's my little special thing that I keep in the studio for myself.
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Speaker 2: So we have had quite a few guests on the edit now who have spoken about different ways ways to display art or buy art or collect art. But I would love to know from an actual artist, how do you hope people display art? Whether it's yours or whether they're buying something else, what does an artist feel when they see a work go home to someone else's place?
00:36:19
Speaker 1: The world of collectors versus the world of artists, there is a tiny overlap where the collectors really value the artist, the career of the artist. They factor that into the artwork that they collect. So especially with social media, collectors are buying the work of artists that they like as opposed to just going into a gallery, seeing a painting that they like, not knowing anything about the artist and then just choosing that for their home. Mm-hmm. The response or what I would love people that are looking at collecting art, whether it's just decor or if it's a collectible value item to not worry about whether or not they understand the art. Like there's a lot of like, you don't have to understand an art, an art piece in order for it to connect with you emotionally because it's Each home, as has been mentioned before, is like a biography of someone's life. It tells a story about who you are. And it doesn't matter if it's a $ 10 little trinket versus a family heirloom or something you found at a little store in Bali or whether you really took a lot of time to find the significant piece. If it connects with you emotionally, That's all you need in order to justify being able to bring it into your home. And then once it's in your home, I've had, because I used to work as a gallery framer 12 years ago, a lot of people would often destroy the artwork by picking a frame that matched the cabinetry hardware or the throw cushions. And it didn't match the painting. And so the biggest thing that as an artist I'm hoping when people take these paintings. So I send my paintings framed. They're framed, ready to hang out of the box. But not a lot of artists are able to do that. And so what I hope that collectors or enthusiasts, art lovers, people that are just trying to bring something beautiful and meaningful into their homes. Yeah. What they do is they choose the cushions based on the art as opposed to the opposite way around. So being intentional about creating a room that reflects the art as opposed to fitting an art into a room, an art piece into a room. So you can change obviously the frame to match the artwork and there's many different frames that will work for an artwork, whether it's something more decorative, more modern, more minimalist, but choosing a frame to match the hardware of the painting doesn't always work for the painting. And there's a lot of effort that goes into the creation of an artwork that can be almost detracted from by a frame that doesn't match. Because if you see the frame first, then the whole point is lost for the painting. And choosing a painting that fits a specific sized wall is can often be a little bit deterring for people as well because the weight or the visual weight of a painting doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the size. It's the actual image itself has weight in a room. The size has a significant influence in this as well. But for example, a really intense, detailed painting high contrast, beautiful color with a lot of content, something that tells a really big story. If it's like a standard size painting, like maybe a meter square, it doesn't really compete with a huge, plain, neutral, abstract painting because the weight of that image is heavier, like visually heavier than... a huge piece that would fill a space like dimensionally better, but the visual weight of a painting can actually contribute quite a lot to a room that you can add to by adding like a wall decoration around it, like an extra beveled edge trim onto the wall around that you can, you can do so much more with the space. So I hope that people don't get caught up on the size of the painting. For the room, if they see, oh, I love this painting, but it's not the perfect dimension for the wall. I love a small painting on a big wall. Small paintings are great.
00:40:48
Speaker 2: Because I think it draws you when you think, what is that?
00:40:50
Speaker 1: And it makes people come up close to have a look. So it's like, why is that getting such a big wall? What makes it like that? Yeah. No, art is such an individual pursuit as well. And, you know, I didn't realize that there is an academy for collectors in New York. Is there? There is a school for collectors where people can go and learn to be a collector. Really?
00:41:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:41:16
Speaker 1: It was amazing.
00:41:17
Speaker 2: I wonder what that curriculum looks like.
00:41:20
Speaker 1: Have you done any research? I met a collector that was in New York. So she came into Sotheby's to look at the art at my exhibit that I was part of. And I asked her a bit more of what she was doing in New York. She's like, I'm at the Academy for Collectors in New York. And I was like, wow. Wow. That is cool. So it is apparently, it is a really big, there is so much involved.
00:41:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:41:45
Speaker 1: Who knew? Yes. There you go.
00:41:47
Speaker 2: Carla, we have a listener dilemma.
00:41:50
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:41:51
Speaker 2: And I think you're just the person to workshop this one with me. So let's find out. Jess in Bendigo, she has a.
00:42:04
Speaker 1: Sinking feeling.
00:42:09
Speaker 2: So Jess writes in, I do a lot of cooking and prep and my current sink is basically useless for it. I have no bench space, nowhere for a chopping board. The sink is too big. I want a new sink. in my new kitchen that actually works for how I cook. I don't want it to just look nice. Where do I start?
00:42:33
Speaker 1: So, okay, she's designing a new kitchen. She's open to getting a new sink.
00:42:38
Speaker 2: And she wants a new sink. I understand this. When I was designing my kitchen, my husband and I had discussions about the sink.
00:42:46
Speaker 1: How big do you go?
00:42:48
Speaker 2: Because the bigger the sink, the less bench space. Do you do a double sink? Do you have one big one?
00:42:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. The farmhouse style, the inset. Yeah. What would you do? When you don't have a lot of counter space, but you want the sink because a lot of stuff goes into the sink.
00:43:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:43:07
Speaker 1: I've let my kids bath in the sink when they were babies. Same. The sink is multi-purpose. So having something that you can use for multi-purposes is really cool for a kitchen. And because she's open to getting a new sink, I mean, Caboodle has this farmhouse sink that you actually can add attachments to. So you still get that big sink. And then, for example, you can have a board. You can insert this board and they've got all these different attachments that make the sink multi-purpose. So you can have it as your kid's bath or you can use it as like this extra bit of counter space, chopping board, and then the veggie washer. little tray thing off to the side as well. So there are solutions out there.
00:43:53
Speaker 2: I agree with you. So we would say we're going for the big sink.
00:43:57
Speaker 1: Go as big as you can. If you like a big sink, go for a big sink. You don't have to compromise on the big sink. You need to buy a big sink with a board. So it's all about the inserts, really. I think it's about what you can do with the sink more than just the look alone. of the sink, I'm very, very passionate about a space that works with function as opposed to just a pretty space. That's probably like the key route to every design that I make is how am I actually going to use this in real life? If you don't have the counter space, A big sink's really important. Yes. Like having one of those little ones, they are really hard to wash big pots in. Oh, it drives me nuts. I mean, that said, not that I do the dishes, my husband does. Oh, that's so good. So I'll say it drives him nuts. Am I a problem?
00:44:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:44:48
Speaker 1: I'm the cook. Yes. Oh, that's so good. Yeah. Small sinks can be really hard if you're trying to get that counter space. But honestly, you still won't have enough counter space. Yeah. in a small kitchen. So having something that you can just completely change and use in multiple different ways, tick. Carla, I have one more question that I have to ask. I ask everyone. To you, what makes a home beautiful? I think it's personality. Yes. Allowing yourself to make a home yours, regardless of what trends are, what other people's opinions might be. And this is something I'm very... I'm finding very hard to do myself because my husband and I have very different tastes. How do you blend? How are you navigating this? There's no blending. He's away for two weeks, so I'm doing the bedrooms. I like your tactics. But it's very important to allow yourself to express who you are in your home, whether it's choosing the art you like Choosing the paint. If you want to color drench your room, color drench your room. Yes. It's going to be a pain to paint it if you change your mind. But if you love it. Go for it. Go for it. Things like that. Like if you love pretty cornices, if you love old vintage furniture and it's not the sleek modern stuff that your in-laws like, doesn't matter. That's okay. You have the freedom to. and the power to make those decisions yourself. And you're the one that looks at it every day. So choose something that really resonates with who you are. And if you love those silly little iconic things from your travels, then get those and put it on display. Like New York snow globe. I want one of those on my little mantle. I love it. It tells the story of who you are. People will make assumptions about you based on your home. And so... your home is going to be true to who you are, then let it. I think not holding back based on other people's opinions is really important. That's so true. And Carla, thank you for sharing a bit more about who you are. Thank you.
00:46:58
Speaker 2: It's been so nice getting to know you and I can't wait to follow your artistic journey worldwide.
00:47:07
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was lovely to talk to you.
00:47:10
Speaker 2: Pleasure. Thank you. I can't believe you can now study to be an art collector. And for the rest of us, Carla's advice is just perfect. Buy what resonates emotionally and whatever you do, choose the frame to suit the.
00:47:28
Speaker 1: Artwork, not your decor.
00:47:31
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to The Edit. If you loved this episode, follow The Edit wherever you.
00:47:35
Speaker 1: Listen to your podcasts and subscribe on YouTube. I'm Elle Lovelock. See you next time.
00:47:45
Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you in partnership with a brand I truly love and live with, Caboodle Kitchen.
00:47:56
Speaker 1: This is an R Media podcast.
Speaker 1: This is an R Media podcast.
00:00:10
Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you in partnership with a brand I truly love and live with, Caboodle Kitchen.
00:00:17
Speaker 1: We had elephants coming through our yard. At home? At home, yes, in Kariva. And we lived on the lake. And so during the day, crocodiles would be sunning themselves on our lawn. And at night we weren't allowed to go outside and play in the yard because hippos were eating our grass.
00:00:40
Speaker 2: I'm Elle Lovelock, editor-in-chief of Home Beautiful. Welcome to The Edit, where we bring you into beautiful homes with the people who create them. Today, I'm sitting down with Carla Grace, a wildlife artist who has just landed back from New York after having a piece go under the hammer at Sotheby's. Born in South Africa and raised in Zimbabwe, Carla grew up surrounded by the wildlife that now defines her work. After moving to Australia 12 years ago, she built an art business from the ground up and now paints from her home studio on 15 acres in South Australia. In this chat, Carla takes us through her studio build and having rhinos walk through her garden, why she prefers the term rustic to imperfect when it comes to the home. Carla, welcome to the edit. We have been having a right giggle already, so I feel like... We just couldn't get the cameras going quick enough.
00:01:38
Speaker 1: This is good.
00:01:40
Speaker 2: But it's so nice to meet you.
00:01:42
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. An absolute pleasure. And you flew in this morning from Adelaide. I was a bit confused.
00:01:48
Speaker 2: I thought you had flown in from New York. You look very fresh.
00:01:53
Speaker 1: But that was a month ago. Yes, New York was last month. And I know why you were there.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: But share for our listeners what took you to New York because New It's major.
00:02:06
Speaker 1: Yes. New York was a very big event for me. It started, I'd have to say, three years ago. I flew to South Africa for a collaboration with the Kevin Richardson Foundation to work on a significant legacy painting of his iconic lions. So he does a lot of conservation work, educational program for the canned lion industry and wildlife conservation as a whole in Africa. And he's a pretty iconic figure in wildlife conservation. So I teamed up with him and spent three months creating this painting and then proceeded to spend the next two years trying to get it into basically the world stage to not only for my branding, but for his message and for what we were achieving as a collaborative force. How do you do that? A lot of entering it into competitions, meeting, networking, promoting it. A lot of it is just getting it out there. So really making my media reach the audiences that connected with the painting. And I entered this painting into a competition with the ARC, which is an organization that that is driven to bring skill-based, realistic artwork back onto modern art stage. So making the skills and the aesthetic quality, the message behind the artwork, something that is significant again in modern art. And so my painting won an award, and the award winners from this competition were exhibiting at Sotheby's in New York. So that is how I got the painting into New York, being on the world stage there. And then it sold at auction. And the proceeds were donated to the Kevin Richardson Foundation. A grand total of $ 40, 000 Australian dollars was raised by the sale of this painting, which was amazing.
00:04:06
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that is incredible. How would you explain to people what Sotheby's is?
00:04:13
Speaker 1: Imagine the highest... platform for an artist to get their artwork into like an establishment. So I think Christie's and Sotheby's is a auction house for art that sells and operates at the highest level for artists. So typically there's about 500 artists that maintain the highest level of prestige in the world.
00:04:44
Speaker 2: Really?
00:04:45
Speaker 1: At any one point in time. This is not talking like the history of art. This is like current body of artists. Wow, I had no idea. It's very, very small amount of artists compared to how many artists are practicing right now. And so, I mean, you're talking the thinnest sliver of the 1% of artists get into this level of the platform.
00:05:05
Speaker 2: God.
00:05:05
Speaker 1: So for the ARC to get these artworks into Sotheby's is huge for every artist that was part of the exhibit.
00:05:12
Speaker 2: The subject of this artwork, you have connections to this part of the world, don't you? So why don't you tell us about that?
00:05:21
Speaker 1: Well, that's my history. So I was born in South Africa and then spent the 90s in Zimbabwe, in Kariba. Okay. That was a particularly significant part of my life because wildlife was just, it was everywhere. We had elephants coming through our yard. At home? At home, yes, in Kariva. And we lived on the lake. And so during the day, crocodiles would be sunning themselves on our lawn. And at night, we weren't allowed to go outside and play in the yard because hippos were eating our grass. And hippos are among the most dangerous animals. wildlife in Africa and I remember we didn't listen obviously all the time and we were playing hide and seek tag in the dark and I remember running out of the light from the patio into where it's all pitch black because you're in the middle of Africa there's no you don't have a lot of there's no real neighbors so it was just pitch black and I turned around and did a big loop and And I remember seeing this massive, I was like seven or eight at the time. It was this huge belly in front of me. And I remember skidding like down and just like doing one of those classic flip over and like running back to the house. I was like, there was a hippo right there. And it just, it didn't see me. It was like. But that's why. That is why. And never again did we play nighttime tag. And go outside at night again. And, I mean, that's just, like, one of many stories. We had to leave overnight in early 2000. Yeah. And we moved to New Zealand because we had some family there. And we got in, like– just the smallest window where they were accepting expats from Zimbabwe. And we stayed in New Zealand for six years. And my dad or my mom and dad are just African, just to their course. They always wanted to go back. So when I was 14, we went to Zambia, moved to Zambia. I finished high school in Zambia. And this is where I sort of started painting and drawing more seriously. Like I won a competition in New Zealand, but I was more interested in friends and cell phones were coming out like we could get cell phones and I decided to focus on art because we moved into the middle of nowhere we didn't have power didn't have like no hot water that kind of thing so all I had was pencil and paper and I started drawing birds out of the bird book whatever I could see on the farm I would draw And it just sort of grew from there. I started drawing people's pets, people's kids. People started paying me to draw their kids. And then their friends started paying me to draw their kids. And then it just sort of started growing. And by the age of 16, I was doing portrait commissions for strangers. And so I finished high school, moved back to New Zealand because you just went to university out of high school. I said, I don't want to go to university, but I went to university. And then I dropped out. My parents were like, you tried. and moved to Australia, and that's where I started my art business.
00:08:29
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: And that was 12 years ago.
00:08:31
Speaker 2: Is there one childhood home in particular that has stuck with you? If you were to take us through the home and tell us what it was like, which one do.
00:08:41
Speaker 1: You think of? The most, I think, it gives me, like, goosebumps thinking about it, our home in Kariba in Zimbabwe.
00:08:47
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:08:48
Speaker 1: It was an old fishing warehouse. Wow. And my dad, it was just, imagine bricks, just a brick warehouse. And there were like some storerooms up the top. And my dad built every piece of furniture for our house, including the stairs that went to these bedrooms that he put flooring in to be our bedrooms, obviously. And my mom, very creative school teacher, she would make all the curtains. My dad built this huge, I mean, it was huge to me. It was probably just, you know, normal size. And beautiful round wooden table. Like everything my dad did was just carpentry level, beautiful. He made my mum her beautiful dresser, like with the three mirrors, with the little drawers and all of that. But we had to leave all of that when we left. We took our photo albums and some clothes. That's all we could do. So I've packed my life down into 30 kilos numerous times. So my attachment to things... isn't probably as significant as what most people would have when you've grown up in a home and you've got all these beautiful keepsakes. um now I'm more now I'm starting that for my children now I'm building the furniture now I'm building the studio and painting the walls and you know holding on to things that I love which is a really cool thing to do as an adult.
00:10:12
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah and what do you hope to teach your children? You have a five year old and a seven year old. What do you hope to teach them about things?
00:10:22
Speaker 1: You don't need to be good at everything, but just be willing to be able to do things. You'll be able to accomplish so much because you don't have to buy everything new in order to have everything that you need. After the break, Carla takes us through her art studio build, including the kitchen pantry she's fashioned into a sewing cupboard. Where do you create? I work in my studio. So I have a studio at home. It's one that I have built myself. Of course. My husband and I, we saved up to build the studio for 10 years. And we live on a rural property in South Australia. We've got 15 acres. It's all gum tree. It's been part of my husband's family for the past 25 years. When he was a teenager, they planted 3,000 gum trees on this property. So now that we own this place, we have all these mature gum trees, which is just stunning. So it's a beautiful spot. We have mobs of kangaroos that live in our forest. No hippos. No hippos. Nothing that's going to trample me or eat me. Or impale me, which is great. You can just relax. It's great. We hear a fox every now and again, but that's about it. So it's a beautiful, restful place, and we've built a studio, which is 9 by 12, and then it's got a little additional lean-to, which is the workshop bathroom. And we have designed this studio around the functionalities of what it is to actually run an artist's practice. So what does that mean? There are many different facets to being an artist, especially what I do. So I'm not only just painting, which is just your easel and you've got your nice table, whatever you work from. I film tutorials. I package my artwork myself. I do my framing myself. I do all the building of the spaces and I use it for workshops. I use it for presentations. I use it for Wow, this is a really multi... It is a multi-purpose. Yeah. Yes. So we designed the functionality and then made it beautiful. So we created a space that served multiple purposes and could be transitional. So we could move things around and.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: That became sort of like the key identifying factor to my space is that every time I show footage of it, it's in a different spot or like things have moved around. There's a corner now that I've set up for filming and the backdrop is a particular desk situation. And as you walk into the studio, you see the easel with the painting, but then I've got a wall easel behind that where I hang artworks that are drying. And then off to the side, I have this massive island cabinet bench that that I've put on castor wheels. I was wondering, are these on wheels? Everything's on wheels, yes. How are you moving it around? My kids love it. They're like pushing these things. And so this moves around the studio depending on how I need it. So together it's like a two by 1.2 size island bench and it can be separated in half and they can be all moved aside and around. It's a great space.
00:13:57
Speaker 2: How do you even go about building a space like this it's I mean to build an island bench are you you know lugging timber in how do you do that.
00:14:08
Speaker 1: I so this is probably the coolest part I've used kitchen cabinets the caboodle kitchen cabinets and we I've created a structural frame yeah as a base that holds the two groups of 900 um cabinet drawers yeah together and they each have the backing to it and the sides so like they're a complete kitchen island that I've added extra support on underneath yeah extra support to hold them together yeah and then I've gotten heavy duty caster wheels underneath and it's got like three mil clearance so it's flush with the floor and it glides so it looks beautiful it's beautiful What colors, finishes, worktops? I went for very neutral. So the colors, the materials, everything that is used in my studio is intentionally designed to create a neutral palette because light reflects color and color influences the appearance of paint on the canvas. Even the reflection of grass, the amount of green light that comes in from grass outside is once you notice it, it's like, oh, my painting looks green. So I control, everything in my studio is very controlled, lighting, color, intensity, and the neutral color palette, okay, so I've got gray, like a soft gray blue, very similar to the background here, just a bit lighter.
00:15:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:15:40
Speaker 1: And with white board and batten at the bottom so we've got viscous clay and that means there's a lot of movement so using plasterboard was never going to work there's a lot of movement in the shed so everything has a gap in it so which is why i chose board and batten because you can cover the gaps which is great vj panels up the top so it's split into two textures so having that broken textures in the backdrop yeah of footage and things like that creates a lot of like more interesting yeah because I used to do a lot of drapery yeah in my footage and I just couldn't do the drapery anymore it's just I just need a change I just needed the change and the the two different textures in the walls was a really nice way to break that up especially because everything's so neutral like the first comment I got was where's the color and I was like It's the paintings, actually, are the color. In the artworks. So timber flooring and stone back splashes around the cabinetry that I've got around the walls. Yeah. And I've got the timber look cabinet tops from Caboodle because the paint doesn't stick to them. They flake off. Yes. And they're very durable. Wow. And I do a lot of construction, framing, building on top of these beautiful counters. They serve a very, very specific function and they look great while doing it.
00:17:11
Speaker 2: What do you keep inside them? Is it all art supplies or have you got overflow from the house?
00:17:18
Speaker 1: It's all art related. It's amazingly all art related. There's a surprisingly huge amount of it. Because we host functions, I have obviously a wine. section where I've got champagne. And then I have all my art supplies, framing supplies, paints, pigments. And because I host international workshops, which I supply all the materials for because I want everyone to use the best of the same across the board. I have all of those. So I have just this abundance of stuff. And I converted because I also sew dust bags for each painting that goes out to my collectors. Oh, you really are end to end. So I have a pantry unit, a caboodle pantry unit that I turned into a sewing, like an unfolding sewing cabinet. So I put in a, using the soft close drawer sliders, I created a bench top for that, which slides in and out of the cabinet. cabinet I'm so gonna do this and it's great and I obviously put a hole in the back so you can plug it into the wall yeah and so everything you just push the sewing machine away and it's all it's all there the pantry unit is great so steady and so it rolls out and my dad came over he's like I have to help with something yeah so he came over from Zambia hadn't seen him in four years and he helped me build this sewing adaptation thing and he was just like I'm so proud of you oh my darling I'm so So proud, so cool. What do they.
00:18:56
Speaker 2: Think of your career now, given your parents really wanted you to go to university?
00:19:01
Speaker 1: You tried it. Yeah. How do they feel now? They're so proud of me. They said, we didn't think it would last this long. But we are so proud of you. They are my biggest supporters. Mom said if they could, they would buy every single painting. Oh. That I make. We just can't afford you anymore. It's like you've got all my freebies, like my art and like the high school stuff they've got. They've got like this timeline of my work in their home, which is really cool. Do your kids know what you do for a living? Yeah, they do. They so take it for granted. Of course. My daughter, they do show and share every week. And my daughter was like, I want to show them your artwork. And so I gave her my folder that I keep all my tutorial paintings in. So every month I release a new tutorial about how to paint the portrait of a bear, portrait of a black cockatoo, in realism, realistic, detailed. It's a beautiful portrait. I do them in a day. And so I have this folder of all these portraits of animals. And so I gave her this folder. It's worth like $ 50, 000. And she just takes it to school and she's like handing these paintings out. And they're all, she's like, I'm going to be an artist like my mom. So casual about it. It's just going to happen. It makes, but it's so great because you're creating a possibility where most people, like I get so many people messaging me. Being like, my family would never let me paint. They would never let me pursue art as a career. And they're like, you're doing it. You're giving me so much inspiration to pursue my passion. How do you do it? I've got kids. How do you manage your time? Like, how do you do everything that you do? And because I do everything. My husband and I, we do everything together. So we both do the house. We both work on the business. We both do the kids. And it's a lot to juggle, but it's, yeah, there's... So much possibility.
00:21:03
Speaker 2: What is it, do you think, that has meant you are a successful or what is considered today a very successful artist?
00:21:12
Speaker 1: I think success is a very tricky label to give something like, well, anything really, an art practice, a home practice, anything. I think success would be more a mindset. Yeah. Yeah. and the ability to adapt because the last 12 years in the art industry has changed so significantly. COVID and AI and you've got, there's the world is changing obviously around art and specifically the design industry. And so being able to adapt according to how the world is just like slamming you is, more successful than I would say a dollar figure in your bank account. And the ability to just roll with the punches and change what's not working, having the willingness to change, I think is one of the most important things. I couldn't agree more. Because you want to stick with what's been working because, God, it took so long to get to something that's working. And then suddenly it's not working anymore. So how do you change that? You go back to square one and you reassess and you reanalyze. And I found that not knowing how to do something is not an excuse anymore because you've got so much information at your fingertips. You can even now jump on and be like, what do I need to know about the art industry currently? Even our marketing strategies have changed with social media. You don't need your brick and mortar gallery anymore. You don't need an agent. But you also need to be able to create content online. And so like, that's why I do the filming because yes, I'm an artist, but I'm actually a content curator or creator that is an artist. So it's like a double barreled kind of approach to being an artist, being prepared to use what you do as a way to market to your audience.
00:23:11
Speaker 2: I think it's amazing how you blend the creative and the passion with the business.
00:23:17
Speaker 1: It has to be. Yeah. Cause I mean, I get, I get maybe five or six emails a day from people being like, I can sell your art for you and it'll just cost you this amount and they make it sound so appealing. It would be nice to just offload that. But at the end of the day, they don't actually care if they're selling your art. No. They're just getting your– anyway, so– being able to do it. And I've explained to my daughter, she's like, you're so good at, I said, it's not being good at something. It's just being able to do something. I said, I'm, I'm really good at art. Like I'm really good at art. That's, that's obviously my thing, but I am able to do so many other things because I don't want to ever get caught in a situation where I'm not able to make progress because I didn't know how to do that. Let's talk more about your home. Yes. What is your home?
00:24:09
Speaker 2: So if we do a home tour and I come over and I'm at the front door, take me through what's the first thing we see?
00:24:16
Speaker 1: Well, when you come in through the front door, you wouldn't get very far because that's where my husband's office is. So we live in a 80s home that was built by a builder who used offcuts, leftovers from his building projects. Yeah. So our home is this beautiful work in progress that has this amazing potential. It is very durable. So we live on a farm and we don't use the front door anymore because the coastal air has sealed it shut. It's an old timber door, which I would love to redo because it's solid timber and it's got the beautiful stained glass window at the top. Yes. So... We direct our visitors to our back door, which now I dug out a whole heap of grass and laid some pavers down. And you come in through this beautiful, big timber, chunky fence and you're greeted by our dogs, which gives you lots of love. And you come in through this big sliding door into our home. And we've got this open plan kitchen, which has timber 80s cabinetry and The home was tenanted for 15 years, so it needs a lot of love, like a rip-out kind of new. But we love that we don't have to treasure it so much with the stage of where our kids are. You can live hard. We are living hard, believe me. But we've started redoing the home room by room, and I've started with our room. So I love warmth and cozy farmhouse feel. My husband and I call it rustic, which means– not perfect yes there are there is room for me like yeah there's a gap there don't worry about that it's rustic yeah it's rustic farmhouse rustic so we are slowly I just built this window bench because we've got old bay windows and apparently the dogs think I built it for them because it gets the afternoon sun my husband's like don't put cushions on there like it's gonna I was like no no wait watch this and I just got our outdoor seating and I covered our outdoor cushions with like this blanket and straight away. Three dogs knocked out on the bench all afternoon. It's their spot. They're there all the time because they get up there and they watch the kangaroos and the sheep and it's just... So apparently I spent two weeks building a seat for the dogs and we've done board and batten again in the house because I love having the two textures on the walls or having something on the wall that Breaks up all that space. And so now I've just finished doing the kids' rooms where we've done their wardrobes and board and batten. And I've repurposed an old desk's top to build like a bench for my son. Anyway, repurposing old furniture. I love that. Give them a new thing. It's just I love doing that as well.
00:27:24
Speaker 2: Do your kids have a say in their bedrooms? Are they interested?
00:27:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they are. Mostly they want unicorns and dinosaurs. And how do you feel about that? I guide their decision-making process very enthusiastically and drawing up the design so they can visually see it. They're more interested in the toys that fill the space as opposed to what happens on the walls.
00:27:52
Speaker 2: In a moment, Carla brings out her mystery draw items and they are absolutely stunning. So do you have any house rules where you live with the kids and with, you know, being an artist or perhaps here we go. I'll ask you some questions and you can tell me. So shoes on or off in your house?
00:28:18
Speaker 1: It depends on if it's been raining or not. Um, we've got very hard, hard wearing tiles. You can wear shoes.
00:28:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:28:26
Speaker 1: I wear shoes because I don't like feeling the grit because we've got dogs that go in and out. It's not a great feeling. Shoes off on the furniture, for sure. Yeah, fair. Yeah. When we get new carpets and new flooring eventually, those rules will change. Currently, the shoes can be on or off. It depends on the day. And the grit. Yes.
00:28:48
Speaker 2: So how about tidiness and organization?
00:28:52
Speaker 1: Are you.
00:28:53
Speaker 2: really organized and everything has a place or do you have piles of stuff all over the shop but you know where stuff is?
00:29:00
Speaker 1: My husband and I are very efficient people. We are very organized. And part of maintaining a home that is organized, functional, doesn't have that sense of chaos is really important to us. It's not so important to a five-year-old. So we are teaching them. This is the place for your shoes. When you get home, you take your lunchbox out, you put your bag away. So there are little habits that are stepping in. But I mean, my husband and I, we find it quite therapeutic to clean the house and we enjoy doing it together. And it's just part of our everyday life. It's not like a chore. What does your home sound like? Oh, it's happy. Yeah. There's a lot of joy in the home. Whether the dogs are playing, you know, they do the playing zoomies in and out. If the kids, it usually depends on how the kids are, obviously. Yeah. It's just an open home that is inviting. I feel invited by it anyway.
00:30:03
Speaker 2: What about scent? Do you scent your home? Does it have smells?
00:30:07
Speaker 1: Oh, candles. So you're a candle girl. I love candles. Are they on all the time or just for guests? I leave them open a lot, which I know you're not really meant to do. Oh, I do it too. So nice. My studio, I have a diffuser. I love the delicious smells. Like what? What do you typically go for? I love lime and coconut is one of my favorites. Yeah. I used to really go for like the vanilla French pear, but that as I'm growing older, it's a bit sweet. It's quite a sweet smell. So I'm looking for more like the fresh citrusy, delicious, like smell like you want to eat something. Like it's just that smell that makes you think, oh, that smells yummy.
00:30:46
Speaker 2: What about something you have in your home that is always fresh?
00:30:52
Speaker 1: Air. Fresh air. That is the perfect answer. That's what you want. Fresh air. I cannot tell you. Opening the windows and getting that sea breeze coming through because we don't have a lot of really close neighbours and we're about 1.8 kilometres from the beach. So it's not like that fishy sea breeze smell. It's like fresh, just that fresh breeze smell. And that to me is... A really important feature.
00:31:22
Speaker 2: Do you have a ritual about opening the windows each day or is it just see a window, open it?
00:31:29
Speaker 1: Usually that. Yeah. My husband's always closing windows and doors behind me. And so it's, I don't know, it's a really basic thing. It's very simple. Yeah. But like in winter, airing your house out in winter. It's important. A lot of people don't do it. Yeah. It helps. Fresh air helps. Yeah. I am the worst gardener. I am going to put this out there. I do not know anything about gardening and I have tried so hard. I cannot keep an orchid alive. And so I get fresh plants on rotation. If they survive past the six months, Good on them. I'm very, very proud of them. I give them to my mother-in-law to continue on with their life. Okay. So I try very hard with the gardening and I just, I don't know what it is. I just, I'll build stuff. I can build almost anything. I can paint anything. Plants? Can't do. I know. But they are so important and I love them so much. It's just I can't. Oh, this stuff. We can't be good at everything. We really can't. We can't. Singing and plants. I won't adjust to her. I would love to hear and see your... Mystery draw item today. What have you brought in? So this one is a little bit, it's linked between art and wildlife. What I have here are three little, they look like prints. They are original rhino hide prints. It's just a fancy way of saying these are a little artwork that I bought from an exhibit at a zoo where they took the print of rhino skin from a live rhino. Wow. While he was getting a lovely pat, they popped a little bit of paint on his bum and there we have a little rhino print. That is amazing. They're really beautiful. They're actually really cool to look at. He may have had paint on his bum for a couple of weeks after that.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: Oh, right.
00:33:47
Speaker 1: But the zoo is part of the Sala art thing that Adelaide does. Yeah. And the zoo decided to let the animals do some art, like penguins walking across the paper with paint on their feet, stuff like that. Non-toxic, totally safe. And they decided to do some abstracts with the rhinos and, yeah, capture the texture of the rhino skin using just little prints. This is beautiful.
00:34:16
Speaker 2: So for anyone listening who can't see, there are three circles about the size of a coaster.
00:34:22
Speaker 1: Like a coaster, yeah.
00:34:24
Speaker 2: With just this gorgeous black inky print on.
00:34:30
Speaker 1: It looks like a neutral, creamy background. What I would say, you know when you look through an airplane window down at mountain ranges? Yes. Especially like snow-capped mountain ranges. Yeah. And they've got that broken sort of rocky texture to the look of them.
00:34:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:34:45
Speaker 1: They look like that. Like you're looking down at this geographical two-dimensional print. Yeah. Yeah. They're absolutely beautiful. They are so interesting to look at. How do you display these at home? They're just at the moment stuck in my studio just above where my desk is because I find them so nice to look at. You know those ink blots where you look at them, they're folded in half and it's the raw shot and you see something different every time. They're like that to me. So I'll have often mental overload with all the different projects that I've got going on because I run international workshops and I do exhibits and the tutorials and there's all these other background things happening with– family life and the property and things like that. And every now and again my brain just does this, like, short circuit. And I look at these prints and I just find just, like, there's just some zen about it. And I just liked it. And so that's my little special thing that I keep in the studio for myself.
00:35:47
Speaker 2: So we have had quite a few guests on the edit now who have spoken about different ways ways to display art or buy art or collect art. But I would love to know from an actual artist, how do you hope people display art? Whether it's yours or whether they're buying something else, what does an artist feel when they see a work go home to someone else's place?
00:36:19
Speaker 1: The world of collectors versus the world of artists, there is a tiny overlap where the collectors really value the artist, the career of the artist. They factor that into the artwork that they collect. So especially with social media, collectors are buying the work of artists that they like as opposed to just going into a gallery, seeing a painting that they like, not knowing anything about the artist and then just choosing that for their home. Mm-hmm. The response or what I would love people that are looking at collecting art, whether it's just decor or if it's a collectible value item to not worry about whether or not they understand the art. Like there's a lot of like, you don't have to understand an art, an art piece in order for it to connect with you emotionally because it's Each home, as has been mentioned before, is like a biography of someone's life. It tells a story about who you are. And it doesn't matter if it's a $ 10 little trinket versus a family heirloom or something you found at a little store in Bali or whether you really took a lot of time to find the significant piece. If it connects with you emotionally, That's all you need in order to justify being able to bring it into your home. And then once it's in your home, I've had, because I used to work as a gallery framer 12 years ago, a lot of people would often destroy the artwork by picking a frame that matched the cabinetry hardware or the throw cushions. And it didn't match the painting. And so the biggest thing that as an artist I'm hoping when people take these paintings. So I send my paintings framed. They're framed, ready to hang out of the box. But not a lot of artists are able to do that. And so what I hope that collectors or enthusiasts, art lovers, people that are just trying to bring something beautiful and meaningful into their homes. Yeah. What they do is they choose the cushions based on the art as opposed to the opposite way around. So being intentional about creating a room that reflects the art as opposed to fitting an art into a room, an art piece into a room. So you can change obviously the frame to match the artwork and there's many different frames that will work for an artwork, whether it's something more decorative, more modern, more minimalist, but choosing a frame to match the hardware of the painting doesn't always work for the painting. And there's a lot of effort that goes into the creation of an artwork that can be almost detracted from by a frame that doesn't match. Because if you see the frame first, then the whole point is lost for the painting. And choosing a painting that fits a specific sized wall is can often be a little bit deterring for people as well because the weight or the visual weight of a painting doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the size. It's the actual image itself has weight in a room. The size has a significant influence in this as well. But for example, a really intense, detailed painting high contrast, beautiful color with a lot of content, something that tells a really big story. If it's like a standard size painting, like maybe a meter square, it doesn't really compete with a huge, plain, neutral, abstract painting because the weight of that image is heavier, like visually heavier than... a huge piece that would fill a space like dimensionally better, but the visual weight of a painting can actually contribute quite a lot to a room that you can add to by adding like a wall decoration around it, like an extra beveled edge trim onto the wall around that you can, you can do so much more with the space. So I hope that people don't get caught up on the size of the painting. For the room, if they see, oh, I love this painting, but it's not the perfect dimension for the wall. I love a small painting on a big wall. Small paintings are great.
00:40:48
Speaker 2: Because I think it draws you when you think, what is that?
00:40:50
Speaker 1: And it makes people come up close to have a look. So it's like, why is that getting such a big wall? What makes it like that? Yeah. No, art is such an individual pursuit as well. And, you know, I didn't realize that there is an academy for collectors in New York. Is there? There is a school for collectors where people can go and learn to be a collector. Really?
00:41:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:41:16
Speaker 1: It was amazing.
00:41:17
Speaker 2: I wonder what that curriculum looks like.
00:41:20
Speaker 1: Have you done any research? I met a collector that was in New York. So she came into Sotheby's to look at the art at my exhibit that I was part of. And I asked her a bit more of what she was doing in New York. She's like, I'm at the Academy for Collectors in New York. And I was like, wow. Wow. That is cool. So it is apparently, it is a really big, there is so much involved.
00:41:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:41:45
Speaker 1: Who knew? Yes. There you go.
00:41:47
Speaker 2: Carla, we have a listener dilemma.
00:41:50
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:41:51
Speaker 2: And I think you're just the person to workshop this one with me. So let's find out. Jess in Bendigo, she has a.
00:42:04
Speaker 1: Sinking feeling.
00:42:09
Speaker 2: So Jess writes in, I do a lot of cooking and prep and my current sink is basically useless for it. I have no bench space, nowhere for a chopping board. The sink is too big. I want a new sink. in my new kitchen that actually works for how I cook. I don't want it to just look nice. Where do I start?
00:42:33
Speaker 1: So, okay, she's designing a new kitchen. She's open to getting a new sink.
00:42:38
Speaker 2: And she wants a new sink. I understand this. When I was designing my kitchen, my husband and I had discussions about the sink.
00:42:46
Speaker 1: How big do you go?
00:42:48
Speaker 2: Because the bigger the sink, the less bench space. Do you do a double sink? Do you have one big one?
00:42:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. The farmhouse style, the inset. Yeah. What would you do? When you don't have a lot of counter space, but you want the sink because a lot of stuff goes into the sink.
00:43:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:43:07
Speaker 1: I've let my kids bath in the sink when they were babies. Same. The sink is multi-purpose. So having something that you can use for multi-purposes is really cool for a kitchen. And because she's open to getting a new sink, I mean, Caboodle has this farmhouse sink that you actually can add attachments to. So you still get that big sink. And then, for example, you can have a board. You can insert this board and they've got all these different attachments that make the sink multi-purpose. So you can have it as your kid's bath or you can use it as like this extra bit of counter space, chopping board, and then the veggie washer. little tray thing off to the side as well. So there are solutions out there.
00:43:53
Speaker 2: I agree with you. So we would say we're going for the big sink.
00:43:57
Speaker 1: Go as big as you can. If you like a big sink, go for a big sink. You don't have to compromise on the big sink. You need to buy a big sink with a board. So it's all about the inserts, really. I think it's about what you can do with the sink more than just the look alone. of the sink, I'm very, very passionate about a space that works with function as opposed to just a pretty space. That's probably like the key route to every design that I make is how am I actually going to use this in real life? If you don't have the counter space, A big sink's really important. Yes. Like having one of those little ones, they are really hard to wash big pots in. Oh, it drives me nuts. I mean, that said, not that I do the dishes, my husband does. Oh, that's so good. So I'll say it drives him nuts. Am I a problem?
00:44:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:44:48
Speaker 1: I'm the cook. Yes. Oh, that's so good. Yeah. Small sinks can be really hard if you're trying to get that counter space. But honestly, you still won't have enough counter space. Yeah. in a small kitchen. So having something that you can just completely change and use in multiple different ways, tick. Carla, I have one more question that I have to ask. I ask everyone. To you, what makes a home beautiful? I think it's personality. Yes. Allowing yourself to make a home yours, regardless of what trends are, what other people's opinions might be. And this is something I'm very... I'm finding very hard to do myself because my husband and I have very different tastes. How do you blend? How are you navigating this? There's no blending. He's away for two weeks, so I'm doing the bedrooms. I like your tactics. But it's very important to allow yourself to express who you are in your home, whether it's choosing the art you like Choosing the paint. If you want to color drench your room, color drench your room. Yes. It's going to be a pain to paint it if you change your mind. But if you love it. Go for it. Go for it. Things like that. Like if you love pretty cornices, if you love old vintage furniture and it's not the sleek modern stuff that your in-laws like, doesn't matter. That's okay. You have the freedom to. and the power to make those decisions yourself. And you're the one that looks at it every day. So choose something that really resonates with who you are. And if you love those silly little iconic things from your travels, then get those and put it on display. Like New York snow globe. I want one of those on my little mantle. I love it. It tells the story of who you are. People will make assumptions about you based on your home. And so... your home is going to be true to who you are, then let it. I think not holding back based on other people's opinions is really important. That's so true. And Carla, thank you for sharing a bit more about who you are. Thank you.
00:46:58
Speaker 2: It's been so nice getting to know you and I can't wait to follow your artistic journey worldwide.
00:47:07
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was lovely to talk to you.
00:47:10
Speaker 2: Pleasure. Thank you. I can't believe you can now study to be an art collector. And for the rest of us, Carla's advice is just perfect. Buy what resonates emotionally and whatever you do, choose the frame to suit the.
00:47:28
Speaker 1: Artwork, not your decor.
00:47:31
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to The Edit. If you loved this episode, follow The Edit wherever you.
00:47:35
Speaker 1: Listen to your podcasts and subscribe on YouTube. I'm Elle Lovelock. See you next time.
00:47:45
Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you in partnership with a brand I truly love and live with, Caboodle Kitchen.
00:47:56
Speaker 1: This is an R Media podcast.
