Navigating impostor syndrome with artist Holly Ahern

Holly Ahern is an emerging artist living and creating on Bundjalung Country. Working across numerous artistic disciplines, her ideas are currently manifesting as brightly coloured textile sculptures, screenprints, and contemporary paintings. Her work seeks to create loud and disruptive interventions in existing environments.

Having graduated with a collaborative honours degree in the tail end of COVID-19, she is currently navigating the arts industry with no certainty of what the future may hold.

Why and when did you start your creative journey?

I grew up feeling suffocated by the city around me, I felt so disconnected from the world, and completely out of place. I really pushed against my creativity when I was younger, as I had all these big emotions and experiences that I didn’t know how to express with the people around me. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I experienced terrifying sleep paralysis and always hated bedtime. I would find myself running around the corners of my room, trying to find the light switch, but when I would flick it on and off the light would never turn on. My parents would usually run into my room because I would be screaming at the top of my lungs, terrified and unable to wake up from my nightmares. I would spend my nights drawing the things that I was afraid of, in the hopes that it would give me some sort of courage to fall asleep. I painted my first “mural” when I was 14. The only colour I used was black, and it was this monstrous, looming figure that wrapped around the corners of my bedroom walls. I terrified my parents by doing this, as they had no idea how to react to or support what I was going through. They did their best to try and understand who I was and how I related to the world, and the older I got the more they could see that expressing myself creatively was so ingrained in my life. They are my biggest support and making them proud is what pushes me to keep navigating my way through the arts industry.

I moved to the Northern Rivers nine years ago, on the search to find the space and time for myself outside of the speed of city life. Withdrawing from Graphic Design and starting a Bachelor of Art and Design was the turning point of taking my art practice seriously. While I feel like art school can be hostile and exclusive, the time I spent was focused on developing a set of skills that can be adapted into any role.

Can you describe the emotion of your art?

There is a fine line between my inability to create, the sweet spot of pure chaos, and pushing too far into oblivion. After creating full-time for the past eight years, I still struggle with the absolute void that is imposter syndrome. It stops me in my tracks and makes me recoil into bed until I feel brave enough to go back to creating again. If I’m ever feeling low, I have this army of beautiful friends and real-life angels around to support me, and I feel so honoured to be able to do the same for them too.

Art provided a platform for me to express all the big emotions in ways that I couldn’t verbally. I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with creativity my whole life. A little part of me was always this incredibly sensitive, creative being, but I couldn’t find the confidence to embrace it. It was something I actively pushed against because I didn’t want people to look at me, which is something I still feel so deeply today. When I exhibit works and get praise from strangers it makes me feel raw and vulnerable. It’s hard when the opportunities I’ve dreamt of for years are coming true, and I can’t actively enjoy the process, but continuing to push myself to do the things that make me feel uncomfortable is making me stronger as an artist.

How has creative expression allowed you to survive/thrive?

I’m still shaking off that conceptually shit academic language that was so necessary to survive university. The curriculum for arts research is based on Social Sciences, so you’re pretty hard-pressed to mould the language into something that reflects the chaotic artistic practice into standardised professional and academic papers. The sheer experimentation of creative expression that occurs before, during, and after the actual practice has helped me put myself first and survive when things have been goddamn traumatising and awful.

How do you get into your creative workflow?

I have an insatiable curiosity towards opposing disciplines. Every time I am painting, all I can think about is sewing, when I am sewing, all I want to do is screen print. It’s very cyclical, so my practice revolves around experimenting with the different materials and mediums to form coherent pieces.

For the past two years, my studio has also been my living room, my deck, my kitchen, and any other surface that I have been able to occupy in my house. A lot of my days look like setting up to do something and then turning around to do something else. It feels quite chaotic and unproductive, but in a way, I am setting myself up for the next thing, while getting back to something that I’ve taken a break from. It started as a blessing, to be able to roll out of bed and jump straight into my work, but I’ve oozed into most rooms of the house that I live in. It’s hard to stay focused on the work at hand when all you can think about is that pile of laundry, the dishes in the kitchen sink, or how comfy my bed looks some days.

I’m so grateful to have been offered a studio space at Elevator ARI in Lismore, where I will be moving into in the next few weeks. I think being able to separate my home life from my art will help me to develop healthier routines around my practice. I look forward to seeing what the next few months will bring in a space that is for my art, and nothing else.

Is there anything that stunts/enhances your creative inspiration?

I’ve spent the past 12 years of my life navigating chronic back pain, I don’t really talk about it openly because I’ve never wanted people to think that I can’t achieve what someone without pain can. I was incredibly passionate about circus training when I was a teenager, but when I fell off a 3m high trapeze it changed my life forever. I devote so much money and energy on medical help to understand what has happened, that sometimes it overwhelms the desire to create, both emotionally and physically. When I am stressed or have overexerted myself, my pelvis starts to shift in ways that stop me from being able to move freely. I usually alternate between bed and the bathtub until it passes, so when I am feeling okay, I know that it is the time to ferociously create until I can’t again.

What do you hope the observer/ listener absorbs from your art?

The works are a result of personal experience but seem oddly inconsequential once it is up for everyone to see. So instead, I hope that my audience can find something relatable within my works. After a year of COVID lockdowns, I focused on moments that are fleeting and random but still alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone. I love being able to pair brightly coloured works with huge, frowning faces to express a whimsical sadness, a reminder that these emotions don’t always end in gloom.

Navigating impostor syndrome with artist Holly Ahern