(10/2001) Following are the article of Geoff Todd, an Australian artist who just become ACAA member. Grown with a very deep commitment to art, at age of sixteen he complited a large painting that was Christ on the Cross.

Many of us believe the meaning of life is life itself, that we were put on this earth to procreate, to make more people and this can be a very valid argument. After all, in this world, same sex couples now are trying to find legal means as well as physical ways of having children and reproducing with their own essence.

It of course must be argued that every living thing is put on this earth for the same reason as us-to reproduce itself in some form. What I find fascinating is two other elements that separate us from the rest of the living kingdom, Religion and Art. If one is not a believer in these phenomena, it is hard to work out how come religion and art have been such a powerful presence in humankind in different developments and identities since we have knowledge of our own existence.

While not deeply involved with religion, I am deeply involved with the conviction that we must be different from other animals because we have religion, religion in many different forms around the world but nevertheless, there it is.

Christianity is the religion that I've grown up with and I've come to understand aspects of this in more than just a superficial way. I've also grown with a very deep commitment to art. I enjoy immensely the fact that religion provides a huge stage and resource for the artist who is aware. To me there are times when art becomes religion and religion becomes art.

The exciting part for me is that when I am working on a painting that is stimulated by a religious story. I seem to be punctuating my artistic output by regularly returning to religious themes. My first major exhibition of solely religious art was called "Biblical Stories" and was in Australia in 1995. But, I do remember when I was first studying art formally at the age of sixteen years I completed a large painting that was Christ on the Cross, I remember being inspired by Dali's painting "The Christ of St. John on the Cross" where he used extreme perspective to show the form of St. John on the cross in high drama yet without displaying any of the conventional imagery associated with the suffering one expects from a crucifixion. As part of my classwork, I was obliged to demonstrate my understanding of perspective and to do this way back in 1967 I chose to display my understanding through a fairly complex and painterly work of Christ on the cross viewed from below in an exaggerated perspective like Dali, but less sophisticated than Dali, was the rendering of the wounded and bleeding feet thrust at the viewer in a most unsubtle way.

So from sixteen years to this period of recent work in my fiftieth year I am still returning to these religious themes. My desire to collect art books meant a large amount of exposure for me to religious art among other art, historical and contemporary, so always there was a simmering consciousness of visual possibilities for me. The exhibition in 1995 was well received by many people and the works have found their way around the world over the last five years. I think any artist enjoys causing others to be interested in his work and to interest others in the subject as well as the aesthetics is always rewarding.

After spending quite long periods of time in Indonesia, from Bali with Hinduism and Buddhism to Java with a predominant Islamic faith, I became increasingly conscious of the differing religions yet with their similarities and after discovering the large Christian population in Indonesia I was inspired to make some works relating to the Christian Story and embracing the Indonesion People as well. So I found myself using Javanese subjects in my work. I did this, I believe, because I would meet people devout in their worship of the Christian Faith and their concerns were far above those of individual identities within the religion. A question of racial identity was non existant, yet all knew the personalities and their actions intimately. The people are worshipping "Christianity" rather than "Heroes" so I felt I had the freedom to take some artistic licence and involve them in their own faith.

My artistic licence is being stretched further when it comes to imagery. An example is perhaps my study of Magdalene washing Christ's feet with her hair. This painting in a recent exhibition drew comment because this of course happened before the crucifixion, yet my painting reveals wounds in the feet. My work was such that I did not wish to personalize the figures, Magdalene's face is hidden by her hair, and only Christ's: legs are visible.
The two are anonymous people, until one identifies the wounds and blood on
the feet. Immediately both figures are identified, the story told and the aesthetics of the painting heightened. This rearrangement of events is not an attempt to rewrite the story, instead it is an attempt to create the excitement and drama within the painting, using accepted symbolism, that the story deserves.

My devotion to aesthetics is continually intruding on my storytelling, another example is my design for the "Stations of the Cross''. What I hoped to achieve with these for the "informed", was a very abstract set of small works but each refined to such an extent that the image would reveal through a minimum of clutter each of the Stations story. For those who know nothing of the Stations of the Cross, they can warm to the works from an artistic point of view and perhaps be inspired to seek the literal translations. I relied on colour, gold and silver metal leafs and the dynamics of the story to produce this result. These works are now in Austria, having been exhibited in Australia twice, Indonesia twice and in Austria.

The concept provided an extreme variation on the normal visual theme and it
seems to have stimulated interest among many people (others as well as Catholic Christians) in the traditional Stations of the Cross as they make comparisons with my interpretations. It was a lovely discovery for me to recently find the Stations of the Cross at the church in Ganjuran where the figures, carved in Indonesian stone are Indonesian characters with what appearred to be a style influenced by Hindu art. It was also interesting to discover fifteen "Stations" at this church rather than the normal fourteen.

Over the years, because of my consideration between us and other living
creatures and my realisation of the importance of religion and art in the community, I've come to change my ideas of what actually constitutes art.
As a younger person in a contemporary art world where amazing developments
were happening at great speed, I might have said that anything can be art, if the "artist" says so. Now I expect more from the artist.
Once again I refer to the idea that the meaning of life is "life" and this relates to everything else living, as well as humans and now I have come to discover that there are animals which actually create decoration. They make marks, do arrangements and assemblages.

A great example is the Bower Bird that decorates it's bower to attract it's mate. My thinking has turned to what is the difference between decoration and art? The "art" side separates us from the decorating animals. So what is art? Art is the work that is done by humans that in even todays abstract appreciation of art, must still reveal human existence, with the inspiration for the work to stem from human kind even if recognisable figurative elements have been worked out of the picture altogether.

Some will say, "what about landscape?" and this brings into focus the idea of viewpoint. The successful landscape painter makes us feel we are there as the viewer, or atleast, the artist has been there and was involved and was part of it at a time even if his image is not there. What I'm saying is that any thing made by humans as a result of human existence, as art pieces, succeeds as art. I wonder if some modem art that is completely and deliberately nonfigurative (as opposed to abstract) might be sliding across into the realms of decoration. Elephants and cats have applied paint to surfaces that people have exhibited as art. The problem I see here's that these works might be paintings, but this doesn't mean that they are art.

My conviction is that this quality that makes art in society also makes religion.

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