 to be interviewed. We're calling it Art Bus TV actually over on YouTube. So this interview today I am talking to the very lovely Myra Staffos also in Perth here with me. So we're luckily on the same time zone. So I've got orange and you've got kind of blue and green going. So I think we're sort of coordinated. So welcome Myra. Thank you Sophie. Lovely to be here. Super excited. Now we've just chatting away haven't we before that and it's like oh look we need to start going already. So we've already had a conversation everybody. So we're about to have a little bit more of a conversation as well. So as people come on live now I've got the chat somewhere. If you can just let me know if you can see and hear me okay that would be great. If I toggle across the chat so I can actually see that that would be really really helpful. But for those of you watching the replay or watching on YouTube then do leave us a comment below or ask any questions as we go through or if you're watching later because I'm sure that we love to come back and answer them as well. So Myra okay this is all about an artist's journey today. Now Myra has quite a story and so we have a lot of questions and topics to discover and talk about. So I'm super super excited and we kind of start at the beginning as well aren't we. Thank you. Thank you Karen. Can hear and see you clearly. She says okay great that's brilliant thank you. So tell us a bit about your background Myra and what brought you kind of here today. Well I grew up in Perth so I've lived here all my life and I was thinking about my childhood when I was reviewing the questions and Perth in the 19-somethings a long time ago was a much more sort of bush orientated suburb lots of trees and so on and lots of places for a kid to explore. So I used to take off on my bike and I'd be gone all day and just came back when I was hungry kind of thing and so that was my childhood very much exploring nature going down to the river going out in the bush and then my family had a very modest beach shack that my dad had built and we used to have weekends and holidays at the sea down near Miami and it was some idyllic childhood really and I think a lot of those early experiences of nature and inventive play and making your own fun has really impacted on the rest of my life in terms of my response to the world around me. So it was a very fortunate childhood my parents were just a middle-class conservative family life but my dad was very DIY sort of dad and he had a shed and we'd tinker about in the shed and I learned to use tools and all of that kind of stuff so that's also been really useful and he he was very interested in photography he was an amateur photographer and this was back in the day where he used film and he would turn the kitchen into a temporary dark room and we would learn to develop our films and then we'd print them. So that was an interesting introduction and of course photography had stayed with me since that very first little toy camera I had when I was 10 so photography is something that I use every day and I credit him with getting me interested. Yeah absolutely that's amazing isn't it it's like you're describing a different era I know that was a totally different era and I mean I'm totally ancient I'm a typical baby boomer and very much a product of my time and a lot of things that happened during my say university years were a lot of those really times of social change that were going on where you had things like happening with the women's movement and a lot of things that were really hard fought for during those years are things that are now taken for granted like like people pay for women for example. Yeah absolutely. Lots of opportunities that people don't actually realise came as a result of that social change so it was quite a dynamic time in lots of ways from art and culture and music a lot of experimental stuff was going on in society at that time. Somebody says that they totally understand your childhood so I guess that must be another and you're another per I mean I have to say where I was it was very country and you did ride your bike and you came back like you said when you were hungry and it's the same that perhaps it's not that same world you know anymore and I think as an artist you absorb all of that stuff so from that childhood what was the next step for you then? Well I was very fortunate in that from the age of about 12 or 13 I knew that I wanted to be an artist and an art teacher I did have a good art teacher when I was at junior high school and then I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to a specialised high school it was a new program the special art schools and I was among the early students who I took in that and it was a fabulous insight into what an artistic life would be like and all of my classmates were people who were on the same page as me and we had some of the best Perth artists teaching us and so I was going to exhibitions when I was still in high school I was you know going out on painting trips on weekends with my girlfriends from school and that kind of thing so it was very much an artist in my whole life has been very much an art focused life I've never had another kind of job. But isn't that lovely just to know it's like this is it this is my thing this is what I'm going to do I think so many people are coming to art later on and it's like I think you're very very lucky somebody says the freedom of the childhood that they meant I can't see the names unfortunately on this silly software but brought up in Singapore and the UK okay yeah that's too very very different exactly I know about the UK but I'm not so sure about Singapore yeah having the freedom as a child is wonderful yeah was that was there something at age 12 I mean did you know before you have an inkling or something like an overnight thing my earliest memories are of making things I was always making stuff so I would make stuff out of paper I would draw I would poke around with little bits of wood and and because my dad let me come in the shed and you know glue bits of wood together and stuff like that um and I always was I was probably a bit of a tomboy in some respects you know because yeah although I did enjoy I did play with dolls and I did like sewing and dressing my dolls and those kinds of things I was very much into inventive play and you've got to remember that in those years there wasn't a lot of distraction of other things like technology for example like we had no TV when I was a kid until I was in probably late primary school and the only technology in our house was the telephone a landline telephone as one radio so um it was you had to make your own entertainment if we keep our own letters yes yes I know so it and we walked everywhere because my mother didn't drive and there was only one car in the house and so uh it was a very different type of different time they okay so you knew that you wanted sorry yeah no that's all right go on I was gonna say so you knew that you you wanted to do the whole art thing at 12 13 but a big part of your career has also been the teaching aspect so when did you know and you said you knew that as well when did that start and how did that start well as I said I knew I wanted to be an artist and an art teacher from age 12 13 so that it was a good thing to have actually discovered at such a young age because it helped to send me on my career path it it helped me to choose my subjects at school and it basically just set my life out for me having made that decision and so when I finished school I went on to university to art school and um you know this lovely young sweet young innocent girl walks up to art school and um again had some fabulous teachers um but the the society that I grew up in was very much okay so right you go to university and then you go and get a real job yeah that's right you go to work you don't go wafting around and sitting on your uh on your behind just doing nothing and just thinking oh maybe I'll do some art or or living some kind of bohemian life I mean some people did but not the people who came from my family so um get a very much you get a real job and for women in particular at that time um the real jobs that women had if they weren't domestic goddesses with children very young they um went into nursing or teaching or secretarial work so teaching was considered a respectable reasonably well paid job and and people had a better attitude I think in lots of ways to the teaching profession in those days so and did you choose were you teaching in schools at that moment yes so I trained as a secondary school teacher and my first position was in a very small country school where you have to be very um so as a state school system school you have to be very versatile to work in that environment I was like 400 miles or k's away from four hours driving anyway away from oh my god um but I didn't last very long in that system I ended up teaching in the private school system and I found that suited me a lot better and when did you transition then to teaching adults uh so I taught in secondary schools for probably about 15 or more years and um and then um probably about the time that my daughter was born I decided to retrain not so much retrain but just do postgraduate work so I went back to university and studied part-time and worked part-time and parented full-time uh so it was a big balancing trick uh but it was a good thing to do so after that I worked um I worked only part-time which gave me a bit more time to do my own artwork okay yeah quite well doing it that way great those two things so what would you say that you really love about teaching like you know you obviously when you look up you said you must be a misprint Mara but you say that you've been teaching for 45 plus you must have actually been teaching since you were five well well literally I have been teaching since 1974 I graduated um just a little bit before then and so when I started teaching I was really only probably four years older than my older students yeah and so there was a really lovely um appropriate friendliness you know you always still have to maintain that certain decorum and that certain separation that professional teachers you kind of understood where they're at because you yeah that boundary yeah I understood my boundaries but at the same time with a lot of fun and for a lot of teenagers the art room still is but also was a refuge and it was a place for them to explore themselves as much as it was to explore materials and the processes that I introduced to them and even today I still get little notes or messages sent to me from students I taught many years ago saying how important their art days and how they and loved their art days and so many of them have gone on to art careers in all different areas of all facets of art related business and and career and wow very satisfying to see that they've achieved their goals and have done wonderful things it's amazing I mean I hear you talk about teaching with such a glow do you have areas sorry if you have areas that you specialize in like now I haven't taught for many years your things that you particularly like teaching well the curriculum to some extent would dictate to you um what were the areas that were required but then there was a lot of movement within that lot of flexibility within that and when I was at university I deliberately chose to do a lot of extra electives so that I would be well qualified and knowledgeable to teach my students all these different fields because I wanted them to learn how to express themselves through their own discoveries of different techniques and so on rather than be limited by what I could offer yeah a very broad art education yeah and like that usually worked out quite well so yeah so you've been doing that for obviously a really long time and you know we were just talking before we got on that you were preparing a print workshop for the end of this year and then you're looking at workshops for next year would you recommend this teaching model for other artists if you know if that's as a way to make a living well for me um teaching has been the perfect way for me to make a living because um it it has given me um a sort of structure to some extent to my life it's obviously given um that whole summoned by bells john betcherman some by bells concept of the terms and your life being divided up into into parts of the year and all of those kinds of things and I still think like that yeah um it has given me the opportunity to travel because I've had money to do things and I've traveled all over the world visiting all the major galleries in the world which I would never have done if I was just starving in the garret kind of idea we're not suggesting that you have to be starving in the garret but this is a good so basically what you're saying is that this if teaching is right for you this is a good solid way of of earning a living doing what you love right exactly I mean I don't think that teaching is for everybody no you have to actually love it and you have to be passionate about sharing knowledge with people uh in a fun and exciting and dynamic way which is not that hard if you love your subject love it yeah and um you just see the most exciting things happening with your students that are really very dynamic and satisfying I mean there are certain times where it's exciting to see how your ideas get extended and worked on by your students but then I I have to say there are times when that's also a little bit frustrating not so much for me now but when I was still a high school teacher where you didn't have the time to explore stuff yourself your kids were doing it yes yes and that was the point where I gave up yeah because you're just looking you're like they're doing it yeah yeah but in the main it was um it has always been my career path my chosen career path and and as I said before apart from when I was university waitressing and selling shoes it's the only job I've ever had it's wonderful isn't it what do you think is the most important part of being a good teacher uh I think being knowledgeable and passionate about your subject and being um very patient and authentic about the way that you work with your students um it's you've got to bring out their creativity without um I like you you've got to offer a certain amount of technique and a certain amount of suggestion but at at some point it's their work so they have you have to kind of like you have to enable them to find their own yeah that's right sticking to their voice yeah and so sometimes that can be something of a challenge um and it's interesting now that I am working with um more mature age students because um after I finished at um high teaching high school students I went into the tape system and taught people from the age of 17 to 70 plus um and now I teach in community arts um in a trisilian in the community arts area and so most of my students now are people who have retired and who are looking for art to be a leisure activity and a fun activity and these are people who've been CEOs and had major careers and uh so it's quite a different clientele and I'm really enjoying the interaction on a completely different level with this group of people and it's wonderful working community arts because of course there is so much less pressure there is no report writing there's no exact that's right there are no visual priorities to mark yeah and that has also been very energizing as well and I'm only teaching one session a week so the rest of the week I'm in my own studio and that's a really good link exactly yeah it is it what I'm doing in my own studio then bubbles back into my classroom um and vice versa you know there's always this interchange of ideas and processes that come from the students and my classroom to my own work in my studio and then back from my studio back to them so it's like um a never-ending dialogue really I like that okay that's that's pretty that's pretty cool I was gonna just say tell us a bit about the journey of your own art practice but I think you're really starting to yeah tell us that yeah do you do you work with themes or do you just how do you pick what you're gonna paint well it's interesting because um that whole going back to nature from my childhood thing that just is ongoing so I'm interested in a lot of different themes like nature uh seascape botanical things objects the land rocks fossils all sorts of things architecture activities that you might have done while you were traveling inspiration that you might have got when you were traveling sometimes it can be the lines of a song or something you read in a book that triggers a whole train of thought I'm more interested in a more impressionistic interpretation of things I'm not so much realist I do like working with still life the idea that uh Suzanne used to talk about how sit still and they won't talk back to you and stuff like that yeah apples dying um they are behaving themselves uh without change and without clouds coming in and rain that's right like changing and yeah absolutely um so there's all of that aspect um I think the other thing that we were talking about before is that my body of work has gone through a number of different cycles because when I first graduated from university I made it in painting and then when I went back and did postgrad I made it in ceramics because I became more interested in working with clay towards the end of that first degree and so I established quite a well uh considered pottery studio ceramic sculpture studio and I was showing work all over Australia and what my work was collected for a few major collections and stuff like that and then uh towards the late 90s ceramics kind of fell out of favour in some way and glass was kind of like the new poster boy kind of idea and so I did that that whole pivot into a new direction of finding my way through glass I'd always been interested in glass it it has always has always um you know when I was traveling in Europe I saw all the beautiful big stained glass windows in all the big cathedrals and that kind of thing and a lot of the uh more contemporary glass coming out of the factories in Scandinavia and so on that was very popular around about that time so um I studied as much as I could about glass I've been to probably 20 different workshops master classes with some of the world's most interesting glass operatives and teachers and um and now I've sort of come to another turn in the road where I feel I'm starting to leave glass I feel like I've got I found out all I want to know about glass yeah okay and I was saying to you before glass is a very expensive material to work in and very uh physical and obviously not getting any younger so I sort of felt that it might be time to consider uh paralleling my paint going back into painting which is where I started yeah because you need huge amount of equipment and studio space and a lot of muscle literally physical muscle to operate in the glass field right so I thought maybe while I'm still able um I should start maybe focusing back more on my painting so that's what I've been doing but in doing that I've given up all of that connection and all of that if you like sort of reputation I suppose you'd say to kind of almost come back to having to start again and I've done that but you're still you they want you you know you're still your own brand they're still you yeah so and we were talking before about how what was the correlation between all of those things like pottery and and glass and paint yeah and a lot of those themes that I'm primarily interested in uh just flowing right through the whole story so if you like that's what my consistent pattern is yeah it's it's what I'm thinking about you know doesn't really matter what material I work in absolutely I think what I think that's actually quite key I think so long if you have that theme that thing that you're interested in how you explore it is almost irrelevant isn't it so yeah so um yeah that's wonderful and I know that you know with in terms of exhibiting you're part of a group here in Perth tell us a little bit how that group is going well um I'm lucky enough to belong to the Just 10 Contemporary Artists group and there were originally 10 and now there are nine uh women artists who met as part of a Facebook call out for artists who might be interested in walking as a group and trying to get a bit of exercise yeah and so that was our primary startup um we met one day and we all started walking and that group's been just kept we've kept walking and we've now been walking for five years wow and we meet about twice a week and we do our 45 minutes 45 minutes to an hour walk and then we'll have a coffee and all breakfast and we talk about all things to do with art you know if we've got a particular question that somebody might know the answer to uh or perhaps maybe ask for a critique for a particular piece of work um we might share the uh dropping off to exhibitions you know so if someone might be doing one of the country exhibitions and someone say oh I'll take that up to the depot for you or I'll pick it up wonderful that kind of thing so we've been a very supportive group for each other yeah and um we have quite a lot of expertise within that group that yeah means that if you have something that you're pondering you can usually get the answer from somebody in the group so you just almost started a mini mastermind there then I think initially when I heard about that I just thought you were a group I knew you walked but I thought you were just a group that walked and exhibited together but actually you're way more than that way more than that yeah well I guess when you've been together and you've seen each other twice a week and so rain hail and shine absolutely uh at you know some sometimes some very ungodly hours um you um you build up a sort of certain level of trust and a certain sort of collegial um togetherness yeah which I've found is being absolutely invaluable and I and I think all the other women think the same yeah that yeah it's been a really important thing that we are lucky enough to belong to oh I think it's fantastic so considering all of what we've spoken about and obviously I specialize in in teaching art business do you see yourself as having an art business or not so much well I just love this question Sophie because as you know I've been trying to uh to turn my mindset um I've been I've been training with Sophie over quite a few years now and I've done quite a few of your courses and I'm still trying to train my mind to accept that yes I am running an art business but in my own brain no I'm not that's why I lost the question because it is a mindset shift isn't it because I've always relied on teaching as my primary source of income yeah and a little bit different and I I have just always thought well that's where I earn money and I don't like the whole money thing to do with art you see and then this is something that I need to shift in my own here we have actually talked about this I know we talked about this in one of our um private groups we had conversations about this and quite a few the other people said the same but I yeah probably a couple of years ago I did actually start to be much more proactive in um learning about art business because when I was at university nobody taught that whole art business side that the university is now and so nobody taught you how to approach a gallery or how to hang an exhibition or how to cost your work nobody taught you anything like that so all of what I know now has been obtained through experience or ad hoc kind of cobbling together bits and pieces and um so that couple of years ago I I decided okay right I'm going to focus my attention on trying to learn more about this side of of art and so I even have especially for you I have um my little book oh look I love your book all these scraps of paper that I used to write all my stuff on I now have all in a book it's all still scrappy but it's in there look I can find it kind of like it's like an artist journal book for business the first time I saw the book it was like wow just literally look at that this is my file that has got all of my commitments so like all your terms and conditions of exhibitions that you're entering all the deadlines and all of that kind of stuff and so I'm much like a set aside time during the week where I actually write in that little book and I look at I give myself a critique I look at what my deadlines are I plan what my next quarter is going to be I actually know how much I've spent on certain materials and if you'd ask me all of this prior to me meeting you I would want what what why are you talking about no idea uh so thank you Sophie for getting me better organized but no yeah I'm still grappling with the idea of it being a business yeah it's funny it is a mindset thing isn't it but it's like the moment you put yourself out and you want to make money and you're gonna sell what you do then you've got a business somebody I can't say I people are leaving comments but I can't see who they are because of the software that we're using so um somebody says they're a bit late we're literally coming towards the end but it's okay because it's going to stay exactly where it is so you can watch watch it after the fact so don't worry about being late at all we're just talking about having a mindset shift of having an art business it's weird it's an ongoing process I think so Myra where can people find out more about you like if they want to find out and see your work and find out about the workshops tell us a bit about what workshops that you're running currently if you are that CEO Perth and you want to learn what are you currently running and where can we find out about it I've got my next workshops coming up at Jackson's drawing supplies store in Zubieco in November from memory that is the 18th of November it's a Saturday anyway and you can find information from them in the store but it's going to be a printmaking workshop uh so that will be a lino printing workshop so three and a half hours and then I've got several exhibitions running through to the end of Nick this year so next deadline is St Hilda's which is coming up at the end of this month and that's a three-day plus opening exhibition and I've got a stand of about four metres worth of work in there and I'm going to be involved in the glass exhibition at Zigzag Gallery in Calamanda yes that's at the end of November early December and that's glass plus exhibition and then to finish the year I'll be at Juniper Gallery where they will be having their charity a special event for the Christmas lifeline and so I've got some little tiny little paintings in there that are going to be raising money for charity for lifelines so it's just a way that artists will often get together to do things positively or that you give back to society and can we get all this information on your website yeah so there is my website you'll find it's my website is a bit clunky but it's there so that's www.myrestaffer.com.au and I will put all the links to that and of course you're on the socials as well this is for media probably the best way to find me because I'm always there is Instagram and that's it at Myrestaffer and I'm very active on Instagram you are and I do enjoy sharing my process and showing people day to day or at least week to week what I'm working on and that's probably the my most up-to-date you're great actually with the Instagram because I you know engage Instagram shows me straight off and it's just like it's a really inspiring journal of all these things that you're doing and exhibitions and all this stuff so follow Myra please because you'll be totally inspired if you haven't been inspired already you'll be even more inspired on a day-by-day basis thank you so very much this has been so exciting and it's so wonderful to find out you know all these bits and pieces right from childhood to today sounds a wonderful group somebody says I mean I think we we might do another interview on how how to maybe create a group like that because I think it's we talked about that before and that's something special isn't it you know where there we all are in our separate studio spaces and I know that lots of people like to try and get together in a group so maybe watch this space we might I might persuade Myra to do another interview and then we'll talk about how to form a group and the pros and cons of forming your own little artist group but I think I think that could be quite exciting so thank you so much for doing this today I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed it it's been fun and it's been very interesting to reflect on the questions that you posed so thanks for putting those together because you know it's good good thing to do from time to time to just actually take stock of where you're up to and what you know about yeah absolutely it's fascinating I think for artists we want to know you know what is your journey what have you done how have you done it it's it's fantastic so wonderful thank you and for those people watching thank you so much and you're welcome to leave comments below anytime because I will come back and answer them and if you've got a question for Myra then I'll make sure that she as well or you can tag her in it especially if it's on Facebook and if it's on YouTube then I will let her know as well all right so thank you so much enjoy the rest of your day Myra because Sun is out thank you bye everybody thanks for watching bye everybody bye take care