Susan Steggall

Actually, my background was in the biosciences – B Pharmacy and M SCIENCE (pharmacology) in the 1960s. However, I have always been interested in the visual arts, kept up to date with frequent visits to Australian art galleries and museums, and have a modest collection of works by contemporary artists. It wasn’t until I and my family returned to Sydney from ten years in the French Alps that I began studying art history at a tertiary level – the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. This, of course, involved writing essays on a wide range of topics – non-fiction yes but which necessitated taking on the craft of writing. I also honed my creative writing skills by reviewing visual-art students’ exhibitions at COFA.

My PhD in Creative Writing (English Department, UNSW) was a biography of art historian, Joan Kerr. An art historian must be visually literate to understand an artwork, and verbally adept to communicate its meaning and significance to the reader, and I had to convey Joan’s considerable abilities to my readers. So, I see art history and creative writing as two facets of the same craft.

Although I have written memoir, biography and art-related non-fiction, I very much enjoy writing novels spiced with a pinch or two of art.

Ten years in the Alps of Haute-Savoie gave me a strong appreciation of living in someone else’s language and culture. I don’t think it has changed my perspective on art – although I was able to see and experience the great artistic traditions of France in person before I learnt about them at an academic level. Living in France gave me a better/wider perspective of the world beyond Australia’s shores. It also meant I had my heart in two places – as evoked in novels with both French and Australian characters.

In both those novels, as well as in The Heritage You Leave Behind, the long drawn-out and painful wreckage that war wreaks on individuals was an underlying theme. Forget Me Not came out of my maternal grandmother’s experience of losing a brother in WW I and her son in WW II and not having a grave at which to mourn. (The memorial statue in Chambéry (Savoie), nicknamed La Sasson, was the catalyst for that story). Service for Jim Blackwood in the Australian Army in WW II ultimately had tragic consequences (To Carve Idnetity).

I am ever curious about life around me and I usually approach a new project with a ‘what if?’ and see where it leads me.

In Tis the Doing Not the Deed I explored the theme of Alexandre Jardin’s publication Les Gens Très Bien, in which he tried to come to terms with the conundrum of what to do about a grandfather whom he loved, but who committed crimes against humanity in WW II. The idea behind the novel was slightly different: ‘what if’ someone does something for noble reasons, but which has unforeseen and unfortunate consequences for the future.

In It Happened Tomorrow, I simply had fun ‘taking the mickey’ out of difficult biennial-style art. In this novel I also developed two Australian/French couples who followed me into Tis the Doing Not the Deed – and now, into the manuscript I am currently writing.

The Heritage You Leave Behind followed the story of Ellie, a young Scottish sculptor as she tried to understand what her father did in WW I to cause the shameful courts martial of two Australian corporals and why her mother left her in Glasgow with a war-damaged father and a needy aunt.

To Carve Identity rounds out Ellie’s story as she marries and moves to Australia with her lawyer husband, Jim Blackwood. In summary, this novel explores how a woman who is not only a dedicated sculptor, but also a wife and a mother, negotiates life in mid 20th-century regional Australia. Now that there is some distance between myself and that manuscript I see many parallels in the life of a woman writer – perhaps all women who create outside the domestic sphere. I grew up in the Hunter Valley town of Maitland (where the novel is set) in the 1950s and 1960s and I now see the strong convergences with my family’s life.

My formal training in art history allows me, not only to access and absorb a vast body of art history and historiography but also to transpose aspects of it into a creative form that resonates with fiction readers who might not have the same access to that knowledge.

Possibly, but not in any particularly conscious way. The fiction and non-fiction journals and anthologies I have edited encompassed a very diverse range of genres, themes and ideas. I always enjoy reading the products of other scholars’ and authors’ imaginations and intelligences, but they are not necessarily in sync with mine.

When I was a mature-age student at the College of Fine Arts (UNSW) in the mid 1990s, I caught the eye of Professor Kerr (who had recently arrived at COFA) because of my increasing focus on Australian art. She became something of a mentor to me. I was delighted to contribute two entries to her compendium, Heritage. The National Women’s Art Book (1995). At the time I was writing my memoir, Alpine Beach. A Family Adventure (1999) and developing an interest in biography. Several years later, after publication of Forget Me Not, I was looking for a project. I wrote to Joan Kerr asking if I could write her biography. She was at a crossroads in her career and so welcomed my suggestion. I spent many hours at her home, talking to her and going through her archives. Then she became extremely ill and died in 2004. At first I was undecided as to whether I should continue. Yet, I thought, Joan never gave up on a project so neither would I. So, I approached several university English departments with a proposal to write Joan’s biography as a PhD in Creative Writing. UNSW was the best fit (after my degrees at COFA) and so the rest was history.

What did I learn from the process? Discipline and focus; time deadlines and word length requirements. I also gained a deeper understanding of the worlds Joan researched: neo-gothic colonial (Australian) architecture, women’s art AND craft; how a determined woman negotiated family life and career. Joan had a very wide circle of friends and acquaintances – a rollcall of Australian art history in the last decades of the 20th century.

As a mature-age student I had life experience but little ‘work’ experience and although I lectured at COFA for several years after obtaining my M. Art Theory & History, I found it difficult to break into the world of Australian art in a professional capacity. I joined the Independent Scholars Association of Australia Inc, in 1998 which provided a very worthwhile vehicle for publishing non-fiction work. I joined the Society of Women Writers NSW Inc in 1996 and that organisation provided a productive environment to explore the worlds of fiction writing.

In the last twenty years I have found much satisfaction in writing fiction. It is a medium that allows me to explore not only the factual world of art but also the fictional (ephemeral?) world of art interpretation and the relationships between human beings.

Fiction transports readers far from their everyday lives. ‘Art’ fiction does so perhaps even more because readers have a fascination with the act of creation and the mysteries of inspiration. I find readers are often drawn to these aspects of my novels. A talk I have developed for To Carve Identity deals with my own identity as well as my main character’s. I have come to realise that rather than art per se, it is life in all its complexities that forms our identities. I derive much satisfaction in looking, thinking and writing about art but I’m not sure if it has contributed to my ‘identity’.

Culturally? Art is often called into service to validate a cause or even a national identity – often with disastrous consequences (Nazi ideology comes to mind). Grand events such as Olympic Games often call on a nation’s art to validate its authority. So I am often suspicious of over-grand claims for art. However, in Australia, Indigenous art has – and still is – helping shape an Australian identity that will, hopefully, not only acknowledge First People’s ownership of the continent, but also engender greater respect for the land itself.

My time as a lecturer in Australian art was quite brief so I don’t consider myself a teacher; nor I think, did that time influence my writing in any significant way. I very much enjoyed my interaction with the students (and their ideas and fears), and especially communicating (like Joan Kerr) my enthusiasm for Australian art.

A big call. In my first drafts I let my imagination, knowledge, intelligence – and curiosity – take me where they will. In subsequent drafts I must refine and ‘corral’ my ideas. I’m not sure that I do work with ‘memory’ per se as my characters tend to look forward, not back. Perception – or perhaps self awareness – is something my characters must develop, almost by themselves. I think of Ellie and Rose (Forget Me Not). Writing these characters has, perhaps, made me reflect on my life.

You make it sound as if I have a plan! I like to have a long-form fiction manuscript on the go at all times, but art-related articles are often in response to a request to write about a particular subject. Or an artwork or an exhibition might attract my attention which I am then encouraged to explore in thoughts and then writing. Finding avenues for publication is another matter.

Often organisations I belong to, produce anthologies to which I am always an enthusiastic contributor, be it fiction or non-fiction. Readers? I hope I convey a love of and respect for visual art. I think this is particularly so in To Carve Identity. In my novels, the art is mostly (although not always) fictitious. I had a wonderful time imagining Ellie’s body of work. For this I borrowed ideas from the work of artists I admire (Barbara Hepworth, Margel Hinder for example) and have given such influences to Ellie.

I hope my perspectives on artworks, especially those that evoke landscape, are interesting and challenging enough to help readers ‘see’ the art with fresh eyes.

Yes to influences from real-life experiences and historical figures. In Tis the Doing Not the Deed, the character Constance is an amalgamation of several Australian women painters who studied in Australia before heading to London, often to the Slade School of Art.

In To Carve Identity, Ellie’s mother Finella Craig is modelled on sculptor Fairlie Cunninghame (whom I included in my M Art Theory & History thesis). Fairlie C, like many Australian women artists, ‘disappeared’ in the 1920s. I changed her name because I gave her a daughter and a tragic history.

In Forget Me Not, the main female protagonist (Rose) evokes one side of my character – that of a bookworm at home in libraries. The outdoorsy Australian woman she meets in the French Alps is my other half, in love with the mountains.

The landscapes of the Hunter Valley and the Alps of Haute-Savoie are definitely ‘characters’ in several of my novels. My family home in Maitland and especially my old chalet in Montriond are often important players in my stories.

I would not categorise myself as being ‘deeply involved’ in academia although I hold to its rigour when writing – both non-fiction and fiction. However, I am deeply involved in creative writing. I belong to at least five writers’ groups both in Australia and in the US. I am about to begin work as editor for an important anthology for the Society of Women Writers NSW to mark the centenary of the Society’s creation.

Most writers of fiction I know, especially those who write historical fiction, undertake research with the rigour of an academic scholar. In my opinion, non-fiction writing must follow the rules of fiction in character development, exploration of motives and actions, and place setting. In saying this, I don’t really see a distinct demarcation between the two. I am reminded of C P Snow’s 1959 lecture, ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’, on the mid 20th century’s divergence of science and history with regrettable after-effects. That the gulf has been lessening in recent decades can only be good for both sides of this artificial divide.

Interestingly the fiction genre of climate change and its consequences have now moved out of science fiction and into science.

I think I found it by accident, perhaps through looking at writing websites. I really don’t remember. I signed up for a year or so when I published The Heritage You Leave Behind and was very happy with it, then let my subscription lapse for a while. When I rejoined AllAuthor I paid up before I had a cover for To Carve Identity. This meant AllAuthor automatically uploaded The Heritage You Leave Behind without asking me and I had a great deal of trouble getting your Admin to change to my most recent novel. Previously I enjoyed and used the cover banners suggested to me but lately, for To Carve Identity I haven’t found them particularly appropriate and have not used them.