Harder Than Expected: Balancing expectations with limitations

Since my initial blog post, my intention was to write once a month, at the very least. However, it seems that working for yourself as an artist is a full-time hustle and I have not worked this hard since I was fired from my corporate job ten years ago due to my acquired disabilities making it impossible for me to work in an office environment.

Don’t get me wrong, with that job I was working 8am - 6pm, then immediately working on the charity I was running until midnight most days. This new form of working is not as intense, nor do I hate the work that I am doing. Art is a salvation in my life, and I am blessed to be practising it and that my disabilities do not limit my ambition.

However, whoever came up with the concept that all artists do all day is sit in cafes and people watch/dream, was a right naff tool. That idea couldn’t be further from the truth. I nap less now than I would like; napping being an important part of my weekly well-being routine.

So what have I been doing with my time if not napping, blogging, or sitting around in cafe’s? Since 7th June, I have: attended workshops for artists, run by the Merri-bek council; met Caity Lotz at Oz Comic-Con (ok, so I can’t be working all the time!); entered photography awards; applied for gallery space for my January exhibition; been interviewed for another photographers trans photography project; sat with a CBD treatment specialist and subsequently started a trial for pain management; attended art galleries; continued with fortnightly photography adventures with my support worker; edited those images; fought with my laptop/whispered sweet nothings to her to coax her to work whilst she constantly and consistently crashes; worked for The Emerging Writer’s Festival, photographing their closing night event, celebrating 20 years; fighting with the landlord over the condition of the apartment building (she owns the whole thing) and a water bill three times higher than normal that we were sure was due to a building leak she refused to attend to; locked in a gallery space for January; attended an ecological-meets-science-meets-art panel discussion featuring Yin Paradies and Ecological Gyre Theory organised by Green Bee; wrote a couple of grant applications; had my second essay in Archer published online; submitted my application for a Midsumma 2024 event; applied to a couple of group exhibitions; exhibited a piece from my current series at a group show; hopped back onto instagram for the first time in two years to promote my passions; submitted documents to Sol Gallery for the upcoming September exhibition; watched Electric Fields soar alongside the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at Hamer Hall; watched Midsumma Pathways alumni, most of whom were my 2022-23 cohort, smash it out of the park at Midsummica - so talented!; write the audio descriptions for all my artwork because accessibility is key; and finally, I completed my series: The Reclamation of Terra! Phew!

Six weeks with nary a nap in sight. I’m wondering how sustainable this level of work is for me now. With my cognitive disability it takes me thrice as long to read and comprehend anything, which means responding to emails, reading/writing grants, and researching tech-speak to try and fix my failing laptop is an onerous chore that eats into my creativity time. Not to mention my poor sleep has eroded even more with the everything of logistics swirling about my head ‘til the wee hours of the morning.

So no, my blogging may not, going forward, be consistent, but I can assure you, it will be quality. My expectations of what I can achieve have been tempered by what my ability can allow. After a lifetime of being gas-lit, of having everyone’s expectations dictating to me what I should and shouldn’t be doing with my time, I am still negotiating with myself what exactly my limitations are. I am still coming to terms with loving this refurbished version of myself. I am having to stop and look at the above list and say, “Well done Teague, you accomplished so much!” Because my expectations had been a massive pile-on that in the end wasn’t feasible, but what was accomplished was a heroic effort.

Is this sustainable? I’m still unsure. I have always had a strong work ethic and a blinkered focus. To not give 110% every day is exasperating. However, I will keep working with my counsellor and the rest of my support team, family, and friends. I will continue to live unmasked and ask myself whether the hurdle in front of me is manageable today, or can it be postponed for a week or two?

I have deadlines now, many deadlines, my health is regretfully failing as I draw nearer to my 50’s, these two things are not necessarily harmonious, but I am determined to find cohesion and balance and consciously live with joy each and every day. I have limited social media to an hour per day, my phone blocks it after that, so that is one less stress to worry about. I am asking more of the people around me, letting them know that I cannot actually do it all myself. I am saying “no” and loving myself for that. When you have acquired invisible disabilities, it is often difficult to see yourself through a lens not of societies creation. People will often look at me when I tell them I am disabled and you can see their brains ticking away, trying to trace your disability, seeing whether they approve of its origin or not. I initially struggled to not judge myself the same way. Now, however, I can say I am strong, I can say I am an amazing human. I can give myself the lenience and the love required to live my life on my terms.

Is this period of frenzied work sustainable? Follow my blog to find out.

T.Leigh

Official flyer to Teague Leigh’s debut solo exhibition “The Reclamation of Terra”, proudly supported by Pride Foundation Australia, at Sol Gallery, Thursday 7th September @ 6pm. On the left is a canvas painted in hues of textured acrylic paint. In the middle is a landscape photograph of a yellow sand dune with one lonely tree to the left side and deep blue sky above. This central image is repeated in collage underneath in three chopped up lines. Above the central image are the colours of the progressive pride flag in wavy lines leading to the top left corner. On the right of the flyer it is black with the details of the exhibition.

Here I Am

Over ten years ago, reaching the end of my 30’s, I was diagnosed with autism and multiple acquired disabilities. The diagnoses were both a weight lifted from my shoulders and a confusing mixture of fear, self-loathing, and self-questioning.

I had always been creative, focusing in my late teens and adulthood on my writing practice. I wrote erotic queer prose, poetry, and short stories. I celebrated female sexuality, championing the notion that females should never be silenced over their needs and wants. I performed in clubs and pubs around Canberra, Australia, as well as queer festivals and events across Australia. Sometimes I performed to as many as 400 people. I have been published multiple times in several anthologies. All in my dead name or a nom-de-plume.

I use the term “dead name” because in my early 30’s, in 2003, whilst studying gender theory as part of my second degree focusing on English and History at the Australian National University, I discovered the “trans” section in one of the campus libraries whilst writing an essay dissecting the gender binary. I read more than was necessary for my assignment. I read that the feelings I hadn’t been able to understand when I was a child, and the feelings I brushed away as stupidity as a teen, were real. I was a transgendered man, assigned female at birth.

This was another awakening in my life. Probably a happier one than discovering I had been gas-lit all my life whilst living/struggling with autism. My acquired disabilities have greatly diminished the ability for me to read, comprehend, and write. I didn’t know what to do with my life. I had always been creative, but if I couldn’t continue to write, how could I outlay that creative passion?

Decades earlier, when I was around 16, I did a photography course through school, then in my early 20’s I studied dark room practices. Harking back to those days more and more the answer became obvious to me - I would buy a cheap refurbished camera off eBay and let the images speak for me - say the words I now found so difficult to recall.

I have been photographing landscapes, primarily, each fortnight with the wonderful support worker I found as part of my NDIS funding, for some years now. We go out into nature. Even before being diagnosed with autism, I have always found nature to be my balm. I live in an Inner North suburb of Naarm and it is busy. Billboards, cars, cyclists, pub-goers, screaming babies, barking dogs, the list goes on. Noise. Visual and aural noise. It has always added to the stress of my daily life. Nature is the quiet that calms my nerves and provides me with soothing equilibrium.

Over the last couple of years I have been thinking about my queerness. I am both trans masc. and bisexual. I have been thinking of my rainbow community, wanting to champion our voices through my art, like I did with my writing. But how does one queer up landscape photography? In 2022 this nagging voice was particularly strong and in June of that year I developed an idea. A couple of months later I joined a nearby art class through Arts Access Victoria, applied for the Midsumma Pathways mentorship program, and applied for the Yarra Sculpture Gallery Summer Residency for 2022/23.

Surprisingly (to me), I was awarded with both the mentorship and the residency and began nurturing my idea into a fully-fledged reality of mixed media and acrylic canvases utilising my landscape images, as well as creating a sculptural element, and working on a companion video. These pieces form the series “The Reclamation of Terra”, a call to arms to the LGBTQIA+SB community and their allies to rise in unity to reverse the drastic climate change happening globally. What good is fighting for equality, if we have no planet on which to live?

I am very pleased to say I have secured Sol Gallery in Naarm to hold my debut solo exhibition opening on the 7th of September, 2023. It is with great excitement that I also announce that the event is supported by Pride Foundation Australia. So, after 10 long years somewhat in the wilderness, I have emerged with clear intent. A clear direction. A clear voice. Here I Am.

Hope to see you on opening night.

T.Leigh

Unofficial invite to Teague Leigh’s debut solo exhibition “The Reclamation of Terra”, proudly supported by Pride Foundation Australia, at Sol Gallery, Thursday 7th September @ 6pm. Teague stands with his sculpture at the recent Artstop group exhibition held at Schoolhouse Studios, 11th May, 2023.

Teague Leigh.