The delicate (and smoky) art of painting with fire

Emily Rose Hastie's journey into the fire-based art form of pyrography started with a cheese board. A high school teacher from the Gold Coast, Hastie had recently rekindled her childhood love of drawing through a local art collective, focusing on charcoal and toned paper. Then her mum asked if she could draw a mouse on a new wooden cheese platter she'd bought. But drawing or painting the design would mean the board couldn't be washed. "I originally used a laser printer at the school to just trial the design, and it was really not that satisfying," says Hastie. "For me as an artist I was like, 'I can do better'." So she visited a hardware store, bought a $30 soldering kit, and gave it a shot. "It was like I got the soldering iron and this whole world emerged," she says. Now, Hastie is an established pyrography artist who co-founded her own art studio. In 2021, she had her first solo exhibition, and she entered this year's Archibald Prize with a pyrography portrait of former Greens party leader Christine Milne. She even appears on the latest season of ABC iview's Portrait Artist of the Year, where she created a pyrography portrait of Danni Minogue in just four hours. "I love it, I can't even transition back to canvas anymore — it feels strange to me," says Hastie. "But it was a total happy accident. And I always attribute it to my mum, bless her." While Hastie has been exploring this art form for the last few years, it's a practice that goes back thousands. Ancient songlines of the possum cloak story Pyrography is an artistic tool practised by cultures all over the world, including by Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. While it can be executed on a range of materials, the art form has been long linked with decorating highly valued possum-skin cloaks in south-eastern Australia. That particular art form was lost to the silence of colonialism for a long time, but younger generations are helping it take on a new life. Iluka Sax-Williams grew up surrounded by the art of his grandmother, mother, aunts and uncles. "I've got very fond memories of going to the Koori night markets when I was a child and watching Uncle Mick Harding burning on wood and other materials," says the 26-year-old from the Taungurung people of the Kulin Nation and Zenadth Kes (the Torres Strait Islands). He was also taught the intricate technique for decorating possum skin cloaks. "Our ancestors would use these cloaks as a record of one's journey; certain things, depending on your connection to the tribe, would be inscribed on these cloaks," says Sax-Williams. "As time went on, the cloak would grow with its wearer, and by the time you were ready to rest, you would also be buried with your cloak." But it's only been in the last 30-odd years that the art form was really revitalised in Aboriginal communities. Very few cloaks were still in existence, having been destroyed, buried with their owners, or just broken down over time. But everything changed in 1999 when three women — Aunty Vicki Couzens, Aunty Lee Darroch and Aunty Treahna Hamm — were shown two First Nations cloaks from the late 1800s, which had been stored in the collection of Museum Victoria. Holding the highly personalised possum skins of their people in the cold storage rooms of the museum had a profound impact on the women. "It was a call from the ancestors to reawaken the song lines of the possum cloak story, to return the cloaks to our people, to reclaim, regenerate, revitalise and remember," Dr Couzens told the Australian Council for the Arts. "This is the old people's story and our journey is to carry this vision forward." Together with other Gunditjmara people from the western districts of Victoria, Dr Couzens started hosting possum-skin cloak workshops with community, revitalising the practice and connection with the art form. Inspired from a young age by Dr Couzens' work, Sax-Williams has now built a career for himself with his practice. A pyrography work on kangaroo skin titled Woora Liwik earned him the RMIT Emerging Artist Award, and was featured on the Rising Melbourne Art Trams. His work will be featured in the upcoming Journey Among Men exhibition at the Koorie Heritage Trust in Naarm/Melbourne. While he says he was always drawn to "lasers and burning", the cultural link makes him proud. "These women had to fight hard to get these [cloaks] back into the hands of our people," he says. "But it's not just that, it's the knowledge as well, and spreading that back to us. That inspires me." Meditation through burning Perhaps oddly for an art form that involves a red-hot nib that irreversibly blackens the material it's applied to, both Hastie and Sax-Williams say pyrography calms them. "I think I'm quite a perfectionist," says Hastie, "and even though I like painting, I love pyrography because I have to commit and be at peace with what I've done." And when you're creating intricate portraits with fire, focus is key. "Every medium has its own gift. I suppose when it comes to pyrography that one's mindfulness." Hastie says working with all the different types of wood is a challenge, but it also makes every piece completely unique. "I've always been drawn to nature and there's something so grounding about working with wood," she says. "You also have the grain, and it's just such a beautiful thing to collaborate with — half the joy is picking a canvas." It's also a relatively accessible art form; while there are countless modern tools and toys to explore, Hastie still frequently uses the basic nib she bought from the hardware store. Sax-Williams has experimented with a lot of different materials, too — he favours kangaroo skin, which is larger and thicker than possum. He runs a lot of pyrography workshops for children and adults, and says his students are always surprised by how pleasant it is. "I find it very therapeutic; it's a very slow process and it slows me down," he says. "In this fast-paced world it's kind of hard to get two seconds to yourself, so it's really nice to be able to really zone out, or zone in, and just really dive into it. "I won't say it's a breath of fresh air, because it's definitely smoky, but it's a lot of fun." Teaching is a very important element of Sax-Williams' art practice; his parents ran an Indigenous education consultancy, and raised him to understand the importance of sharing knowledge with others. "It's part of our culture, it's something that was stripped away from us, and so growing up as a young black fella, we know these are things that we have to pass on to the next generation," he says. He also teaches the practice to the wider community, and has travelled the world with his art. "It's really wonderful to be able to share that knowledge, share that culture, but also share that love as well," he says. "That's what we're all about." Watch the new season of Portrait Artist of the Year on Sundays at 7.30pm on ABC TV, or any time on ABC iview. Journey Among Men will be showing from 22 August - 22 November at Koorie Heritage Trust.