EARTHBOUND

Clockwise from

above Julia sits in one of Greg’s handcrafted chairs as she works on a painting. She says she feels held and protected by his craft; at the front of the house, built by their son Sean when he was just 21, rescreens are ready for an emergency; Greg and Julia stroll towards Greg’s workshop. the contrast to the tough industrial suburb he’d grown up in couldn’t be underestimated. It was the magic of this experience that consolidated his desire to follow a career in craft.

Greg’s most recent chair—based on an eighteenth century West Country style—has me convinced he is a chair whisperer, a nest-builder of sorts. When I sat in the chair I felt myself held. Protected even.

The West Country craftsmen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had a strong vernacular quality in their chairs. The rustic quality speaks to the characters who made them. Their lack of concern for uniformity is something that resonates with Greg’s own work practice. Greg uses hand tools for the majority of time, as opposed to sophisticated machinery. Each piece is handmade. It’s not a production line; it’s one item at a time.

We both value the creative journey, the privilege that comes with creating whether that be making chairs, painting, writing or lm making. The process acts as a mirror. It connects you to a deeper part of yourself. Every bit of frustration and di culty can be seen and felt, but the search for beauty leads you deeper in, and therefore shines brighter outwards.

I love the regularity and rhythm of our lives. Meeting for lunch at the kitchen table, sometimes we hardly need to speak, other times we discuss the meaning of our lives—who we are both individually and together—and the importance of treading gently on this earth. Other times it’s just talking about business.

Like the landscape itself, crafting furniture has shaped our lives—our daily rhythms, the choices we make—right down to the wrinkles on our foreheads.

Encouraging one another has been key. Greg has always supported my need to nd my own creative voice too. Similar to Greg, I left home at 15 to pursue my own dream of becoming a ballet dancer. Now I paint. It is the closest thing to dance for me. It is a celebration: being still enough to see and transform the moment acts like a meditation. It’s incredibly nurturing.

I manage our business as well. The rise of the internet and social media has been hugely liberating, especially for a country-based business. It means our reach is Australia-wide, and we can connect more directly with clients. Recently I took online classes in lmmaking so as to give glimpses into Greg’s work practices, and unexpectedly fell in love with the process.

Xanthe Berkeley’s lm-making classes reminded me of the need to play, to accept myself where I am and make the lm anyway; it doesn’t need to be perfect. As the eighteenth and nineteenth century craftsmen of the West Country show us, a lack of concern for uniformity and perfection can lead you to creating a gem. n gregstirlingfurniture.com; @gregstirlingfurniture; @julia _stirling

Interested in how colour and texture can be created using natural materials, Lucy Hersey works in earth pigments and plant inks foraged locally to her South Gippsland home.

Words Lisa Marie Corso Photograph Nicky Cawood

You can learn a lot about a person on a phone call: it’s the sound of their voice, the rising pitch when delivering a punchline, the way they navigate the silence between sentences. People are more forthcoming over the phone, even when it’s two strangers speaking for the first time, as was the case for artist Lucy Hersey and myself.

Lucy is a really good talker. She’s also a really good painter. Most of her life she’s been painting, beside her other commitments, but at the beginning of this year she took the plunge to make it her fulltime day job. It’s hard to paint on the side when painting is at the core of everything you do.

‘It’s just something I can’t not do: my brain sees things I can paint and gets excited and I can’t turn this feeling off,’ says Lucy.

Painting in her backyard studio on her property in Loch, a town in South Gippsland, Victoria, Lucy’s domestic and creative lives meld together the same way a splash of milk hits a cup of tea: the good way. If this sounds like things just fell into place, they >

The natural world is the source of Lucy’s materials and the inspiration for her paintings, too.