If one could distill a person's entire life into two words, the two-time Archibald prize-winning artist Del Kathryn Barton's might be Tight Curation.
The Sydney-based fine artist, sculptor and filmmaker has had to learn to harness the white noise.
Creatively, she dances on the tip of a needle, ever on the precipice of the truly outrageous.
"The challenge for me," Barton says, "is to almost put my blinkers on because I find the world overly stimulating sometimes."
The goal is to find a sense of quiet and stillness at the heart of the wild, cosmic rainbow of fruit flavours she leaves in her wake.
What began as art therapy for the anxiety and depression Barton suffered as a child is now her vocation. Her eye for the strange, beautiful and delicate made her work immediately collectable, then propelled her into the wider public arena when she won the prestigious Archibald Prize in 2008 for her self- portrait You Are What Is Most Beautiful about Me.
Barton has since painted the likes of actors Cate Blanchett in 2011 and Hugo Weaving in 2013 – and won a second Archibald.
A multimedia juggernaut, Barton collaborates beyond art, joining forces with Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales, the duo behind fashion label Romance Was Born, to work on projects including a children's show that inspired Barton's 2013 artwork, What I Am Also.
Most recently, Barton won an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award for her work on the reinterpreted Oscar Wilde fairytale, The Nightingale and the Rose – a stop-motion animation created with filmmaker Brendan Fletcher and scored by Australian songbird Sarah Blasko.
Art, Barton has been known to say, saved her life. The steps to success, however, were no cakewalk. Before moving to Sydney to start art school, she lived in tents and sheds with her family. "I had this strange, almost hippie-style upbringing," Barton says. She swam, rode and drew. "I very much lived in the world of the imagination. And I do feel those years deeply informed my creative spirit and essence, which is still incredibly manifest in my work today. I draw a lot of energy from the natural landscape."
Take that anxiety and depression, remove the sanctuary of bush and family, then add the city and art student Barton was suddenly navigating Sydney streets, sinking into human traffic, alone and lost in the noise.
"I think if I knew then what I know now, I would have found pursuing a career of being a fine artist insurmountable," she says. "I would have been crushed by that knowledge."
Initially, it was an experience that almost sucked her up and swallowed her whole. Instead, she learned to arm herself – pursuing her art with tenacity and surrounding herself with beauty. A little like a very sensitive magpie.
"I think the thing that sustained me most as a young artist was an incredible level of naivety and idealism and a bit of brokenness. The strong, emphatic advice I'd give to a young artist now is: 'Give everything to the work. And when you think you're giving everything, give more. It has to be your primary relationship'."
The magic and fantasy of Australiana-meets-other-worldliness in Barton's work is so dense and rich, one could almost sink in her landscapes of wild-and-outrageous dream-like flights of fancy; of space unicorns and cosmic bunnies, sex and crocuses, rebirth and reformation.
Barton's world is filled with movement and light, deep colour and rich texture. Barton herself is a wild aesthete, found in furry sandals or polka dot silk pyjamas, or both. She is a sartorial renegade, a whirling dervish of colour and texture. Her home is so densely soaked in colour and movement, it almost vibrates.
"I do find my brain calms down when I'm in the presence of kinetic energy," Barton says. "And for me, there's something about surfaces so detailed that at a certain point they become minimal and the energy is so heightened that it becomes distilled."
On her walls and in her life, Barton takes inspiration from strong creative women, which in turn feeds deeply into her art. Works by indigenous artist Sally Gabori (1924-2015) take pride of place in her lounge room. "It's all about the integrity of the line and the energy in the work that you just believe. And there's a lot of prowess that's inexplicable."
She also points out a small drawing by influential Australian modernist Joy Hester (1920-1960). "I'm very mindful of the fact that she died very tragically of cancer around the age that I am now. The work that she made late in her life speaks so deeply to me. I think of that wonderful and curious paradox: the closer you are to death, the more life there is. For me, there's that alchemy in her work."
The idea that to stand still is to rot, and to be successful is to be consummate, rings true for Barton who, like many successfully creative people, is constantly producing work.
She harnesses a city's light, its energy, and admits to getting a little teary every time she flies back into town. As an extension of that, Barton reflects on Australia Day. "Existing within our richly multicultural society, it is with immense gratitude that I call myself Australian," she says.
THREE AMAZING BARTON WORKS TO CHOOSE. Available as a signed, limited-edition giclee print from thestore.com.au/barton
The Highway is a Disco (2015)
"Of all the work I've made, this painting is very dear to my heart. The success of artworks, and your response to them, is an inexplicable and varied thing but there is just something very felt for me about this work.
"It crystallises more successfully and more passionately some of my other works.
"The strong female warrior protagonist riding her blue bunny through the universe on a singular little pink planet with two perfect waratahs … It's incredibly idealised but equally strong and it's sort of my greatest vision for what I hoped my life might be."
We Will Ride (2014)
"The architecture of the waratah always reminds me of extraordinary little UFOs that have landed in the harsh, muted bush. Often Australian landscapes have deep tertiary colours – greys, browns – and the luminosity of that waratah is so insane.
"The kangaroo is almost like an artist sat down and made up a magical creature. There is just something so aesthetically unique about a kangaroo.
"And it's also a painting that really unashamedly celebrates the mother. She has the little joey nestled in her pouch and hopefully it speaks about the strength and vulnerability that being a mother defines."
What I Am Also (2013)
"This was from a show that [fashion label] Romance Was Born had invited me to participate in. We have such an ongoing love affair and I know they're very careful in what they ask from me and I'm very careful what I ask from them, but basically it's always an emphatic 'Yes' before they even tell me the project. So I was very happy.
"And also being a mother, I felt to be more mindful of age-appropriate content, but I don't feel the picture lacks any verve or energy or electricity as a consequence of that mindfulness. I'm always a little bit sad-faced when there are no boobs in a painting."
To own a signed, limited-edition print from this collection, go to thestore.com.au/barton
