In Conversation with Karlee Mackie
20.04.20224 Kate Middeleer and photography Adam Robertson
Miica, Robbo, and I sit on a nice stoop in Ocean Shores, staring at the stoops across the street, and wondering if we are even at the right house. We also wonder how long is too long before it gets inappropriate to loiter at a stranger’s front door—when Karlee and her son poke their heads out from the back garden.
Karlee leads us along a back balcony, garnished in paintings and prints, colors and words. We enter the little back studio lit by spotlights on the floor and open to the elements, spinning slowly, craning necks and stooping low, taking in her work.
“You want to see the best moldy wall of the Northern Rivers?” she asks. “Check out behind that”. She points to a huge canvas, the back of which is painted and speckled with Picasso strokes of glorious mold. “Lucky it’s green and not black, right?”
One crazy rain a week ago and she’d been forced to flip it, scrub it, de-mold it, paint it, and flip it back. All with her exhibition just months away.
How do you stop your canvases from getting moldy?
“You can’t”.
We study a painting. And Karlee turns to her son, Koda.
“You found another love heart?” He holds something in his hands. “This guy finds hearts in everything”. We turn to Koda.
You surf?
“I used to,” says the pre-tween with multiple teeth missing.
“My mom would paddle me out the back, to catch the wave. And now I’m into skating. A lot”.
Where’s your go-to spot?
“Byron is my favorite skate park, and then South Africa”.
South Africa?
“He’s just checking to see you’re listening,” says Karlee. “You mean Suffolk Park,” she says to him.
“Pretty close,” says Robbo.
“Maybe he can answer questions for me instead,” Karlee says. “He’s way funnier”.
We spoke with Karlee during the weeks leading up to her show Pretty Bones in collaboration with Portia Sarris and Barry Mclay, on April 16th, held at the Thom Gallery in Byron Industrial–the works and turnout for which were absolutely epic. But, as many artists will attest to, it was a scramble toward the finish line.
“I’ve gotta do this,” Karlee explains, “move house, go to Bali, then have three days left to paint. We’re open to miracles.”
When she’s home she has a busy work routine to match: “I do the washing, put Koda down,” she says. “Can’t do anything till he’s in bed. Then I can hopefully get some painting done. By the spotlights set up”.
We walk back from the studio on a porch that snakes the house, lined with works. Karlee points to one in particular that catches our attention. A colorful canvas with a stencil that says, “My nan says aliens exist”.
“Yeah, I went to visit my nan,” Karlee says, “and as soon as I walked in the door, she said ‘sit down, sit down, it’s very important. I need you to watch this. And she cooked food while she made me watch the box set series of Alien History. And she keeps saying, ‘What do you think? What do you think?’. And I just thought, nan thinks aliens exist, and most nans wouldn’t say that.”
A beautiful fleeting conversation, now immortalized with paint and three enchanted witnesses. Are there more shows on the horizon?
“Yeah. It’s just as mad as childbirth (putting on exhibitions). It’s like ‘I will never do this again’. And then, ‘Oh I might have another one’. It’s just the madness. Of creating, giving birth, creating, giving birth”.
Koda says something we can’t quite hear. His mother does.
“Which one of your friends was antagonizing, a high schooler?” His mom asks. “I get to listen to all the school politics on the way home, don’t I?”
When she’s got creative block, she paints to get through it. “When you’re working on a show,” she says. “it just triggers other ideas so quickly. That’s why I sometimes paint a gun. A trigger.”
Karlee has an endless list of ideas for shows to come, and a propensity to turn song lyrics and photographs into spectacular murals. Attend one of these next collaborative shows for a look into visual arts that explore words, stories, color, and notes from nan. If you’re lucky, you may run into Karlee. If you do, ask her about the tattoo that says “Vagina = Jesus”.
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