It’s no secret that true presence is hard to cultivate these days.
With our heads often stuck in our phones or our jobs, we’re increasingly distracted; our awareness is increasingly scattered. We spend our days busy working so that we can rest. It’s rare that we really get the chance to observe, explore, and connect. Creativity has long been a channel to the world of awareness, requiring that we notice and demanding that we express.
Recent conversations with friends and painters, including Sam Doughty (aka Mango) and Andy Nethercote (also known as Phuckos), have prompted me to think about the relationship between creativity and presence. For these two, painting is about more than art; it’s about staying interested in the everyday.
They’ll show their paintings together for the first time, this Friday in Newtown, a mutual ode to the subtleties of their lives.
Sam and Andy met properly at art school back in 2014. Aware of each other’s work from afar and pulled towards creative career paths, they bonded, and a friendship quickly blossomed. At first glance, it’s easy to describe their painting styles as distinct. But their works have more in common than you might think. The Australian landscape creatively energises both, embracing sunburnt colour schemes, dried out tones and native plants.
A walk around Studio551 this Friday may spark impressions of their diverse influences: Margaret Preston, Reg Mombassa, Albert Namatjira, Eyvind Earle, Lee McConnell, Biffy Brentano, Hans Heysen and Jason Cordero.
Mango (Sam) is an illustrator, painter, muralist and graphic designer from Sydney’s inner-west. Nicknamed “Mango” by his high school friends, the name stuck with him as he refined his unique painting style, which originated from interests in skateboarding, graffiti graphics, and culture during his teenage years.
After school, he went on to study print-making, the influence of which can be observed in the heavy blacks, bold shapes and muted tones that mark his works. Though often with a domestic focus, the subjects of his paintings are far from conventional. Using acrylic on canvas, he drops vases, fruit bowls, plants, tile patterns, and lamps from his vibrant Sydney home into real and invented urban and earthy scenes. The viewer is tempted to unwind in Sam’s world, a reverent kind of psychedelic still-life.
Phuckos (Andy), hailing from the Blue Mountains, also blurs the lines between reality and imagination in his work. The natural world is, understandably, pivotal to the surreal scenes that he dreams up. A tattoo artist by trade, he’s known for the abstract patterns, people and animals that define his designs.
But these days, it’s when he’s painting that he feels most immersed. Using a mix of watercolours, spray paint and acrylic, Andy fixates on the finer details of his picturesque locale. Burnt oranges, muted greys, browns, pinks and blues melt into each other through twisted branches and rugged rock formations, transforming his viewpoint into something fairy-like.
Painting offers Andy a form of escape. “I love what I do, but painting offers me an extra kind of freedom to experiment with detail,” he says. Awakening different textures, tones and senses, it’s a treat to observe the natural elements he encapsulates in his work; deep forests, knots in trees and patterns on bark. Regardless of the subject matter, nature is the biggest inspiration for them both.
“I think it’s because that’s when my mind is most at ease,” Sam tells me. “It’s not about where I am, but what I’m doing; mostly when I leave the city for the bush, and almost every time I walk my dog.”
“I’ll notice little things about what I’m experiencing and who I’m with, and then get really keen to get back into the studio and create. But there’s another side to what compels me to create. It could also be a song or a really good experience with friends. My paintings are usually a combination of a few of these moments in time.”
His latest mural, which, amongst other things, merges flowering gums, a cockatoo, jars of pickles and a family portrait on the front of Lilyfield’s Beirut Boulevard, is the perfect example. Though his paintings are about the things we often overlook, engaging with these details to create his own sense of calm is a skill Sam has worked at to cultivate.
“Finding that place mentally where I can just kind of relax is not something I was always able to do. I used to abandon a lot of work out of fear of an imperfect outcome. But I’ve realised that leaning into looseness is actually good for my process and the art I create. It’s less about achieving a certain outcome now and more about the intrigue of my day-to-day.”
For Andy, paying homage to the Mountains and all that they offer runs in his family’s blood. His late father and grandfather, Roger and Ron Nethercote, were also painters, in addition to their careers in architecture, illustration, and design. Though more impressionistic in style, their tendency to steer towards the ethereal shows the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“I think growing up surrounded by the bush, that landscape was going to seep into my work whether I wanted it to or not,” he says. “My grandad’s paintings have always been around, you know, my house is full of them. But I think in the last five or ten years I’ve come to appreciate them a lot more.”
Andy recently shared some of these works on social media. Some of my favourite paintings by my late and great dad, and his dad, that deserve to be seen. And so painting is something Andy has reacquainted himself with in recent years – picking back up the brushes after a long stint focusing more on ink on skin. Now that his own son, Remi, is in school, he has the time to focus and hone in.
As both artists build momentum and are eager to share their work with the world, the viewer’s invitation is clear: look up and look around to find the things that compel you to go deeper. It could be cooking, calculus or crochet: creativity as meditation comes in many forms. And while wondering how that might work for you, make sure you come and take a stroll through their brains at ‘Here, Somewhere’. It’s open to all.
