Carrie Tiffany was anxious when she flew from Melbourne to visit the artist Noel McKenna at his Sydney studio.
asserted
she → fly → studio
“I’m always nervous about meeting people for the first time and he’s someone I hold in high regard,” she says.
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she → ’m → regard
“The first thing we did was talk to the dogs, and then we went out to the balcony to look at the butcherbird.
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we → do → butcherbird
So we were slightly communicating through the animals.”
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we → communicate → animals
This was the ideal introduction for two animal-loving, creative introverts.
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This → love → introverts
“We’re definitely not out there,” says the laconic McKenna.
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McKenna → ’re → ?
They were collaborating on Tiffany’s new book, The Lady with the Dog, which tells the story of an old woman with dementia whose confusion and loss of language are filtered through an old dog.
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confusion → collaborate → dog
Words and images travelled in quiet dialogue between Tiffany’s house by the Yarra river and McKenna’s home-studio at Rose Bay.
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Words → travel → Bay
She has always written about odd but ordinary characters and their animals in exquisite short novels: Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (2005), Mateship with Birds (2012) and Exploded View (2019).
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She → write → Birds
At just 10,000 words, the new one is described by her publisher as a novella and by Tiffany as “possibly an imaginative biography”, based on her own mother’s experience.
uncertain
one → describe → experience
“I’m a miniaturist in all things and the big world annoys me,” she says.
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she → ’m → me
“I’ve always looked at things close up.
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I → look → things
For me it’s very difficult to do something in a story that is wholly original.
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that → ’ → story
We’re all working on the seven plots.
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We → work → plots
But it’s exciting what you can do in a sentence that is completely in and of itself, and you can put it next to another sentence and create these strange juxtapositions and reverberations.”
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you → ’ → juxtapositions
McKenna’s ink drawings perfectly fill out the 100-page hardback book and the spaces in the woman’s mind that words can’t express.
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words → fill → that
“We’re both sort of distilling complicated things to make the essence,” he says.
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he → distil → essence
McKenna, too, is a celebrated artist of everyday domestic life with a timeless nostalgia and gentle humour.
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McKenna → celebrate → nostalgia
He paints lone figures in sparse rooms shared with cats, dogs, birds and horses.
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He → paint → cats
He listens to music – Talking Heads or Michael Jackson – and his old dogs, Melman the greyhound and Rosie the Jack Russell terrier, are always nearby.
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dogs → listen → music
The National Portrait Gallery paired McKenna with the 20th-century artist John Brack for a recent exhibition highlighting their wry social commentary.
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Gallery → pair → commentary
Another recent show in Sydney was titled Memory.
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show → title → Sydney
Tiffany has a strong visual sense and has written essays about contemporary artists.
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Tiffany → have → artists
Like McKenna, she admires the assemblages of American artist Joseph Cornell and they both make collages.
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they → admire → collages
She first saw McKenna’s art – in an image of a racehorse – on the cover of Gerald Murnane’s essay collection Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs.
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She → see → collection
Her partner, the New Zealander writer Lloyd Jones, gave her a painting by McKenna called Fish Talking to Horse.
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partner → give → Horse
McKenna was the artist she wanted to work with on her book.
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she → want → book
“I read the story at different times and I could see images coming,” McKenna says.
uncertain
McKenna → read → times
“There were connections with me, with my brother having Alzheimer’s, with the dog, and there’s a black stove mentioned quite a bit.
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brother → be → dog
I immediately thought of this outsider artist in America called James Castle who was a deaf mute and spent his whole life making drawings, mainly with soot and spit.
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who → think → soot
I love his work, and that got my interest.
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that → love → interest
By chance, there have been seven-year gaps between all Tiffany’s books, which have won many awards, including the first Stella Prize, and twice she was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin.
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she → win → Franklin
She has always written slowly, while raising her daughter and son, and working with farmers and environmentalists as editor of Landcare magazine.
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She → write → magazine
She has a new grandchild and travels between Melbourne and Auckland with Jones, whose home is on Waiheke Island.
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home → have → Island
They married there two years ago after being separated by the pandemic.
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They → marry → pandemic
(Reading Madame Bovary together on Zoom helped to connect them.)
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Reading → read → them
COVID also brought worse complications.
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COVID → bring → complications
Tiffany grew up in Perth with her mother, brother and stepfather, and left at 16 to work as a park ranger in the Northern Territory.
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Tiffany → grow → Territory
She felt a terrible mixture of guilt and relief at not being able to visit during Western Australia’s two-year border closure.
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She → feel → closure
Her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and, wanting a small dog for company, ended up with Sally, “a smelly old German shepherd”.
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mother → diagnose → Sally
…and 33 more, not listed.
The Aporia
