My name is Millie and I am the brain behind MakaDactyL, an ever evolving journey where I explore colour, sexuality and drag. I live in Melbourne, Australia and have just returned from living in Istanbul, Turkey for 2 years.
I began my art journey as most people do, doodling on paper as a child, but I suppose the real beginning of what this would become started in Art School. I studied at the Victorian College of the Arts in the sculpture and spatial practice department in my early twenties which spiraled off into a teaching career and this project you are now exploring.
Sometimes I feel awkward calling myself an artist, impostor syndrome is very real in my brain! However, I have been developing a sculpture, drawing and textile practice for 10 years.
My real obsession with digital drawing started when I saw David Hockney’s exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria Current in 2018. I was about to begin teaching Visual Communication Design for the first time in a rural Victorian High School, and I knew that I needed to step up my game in the technology arena. An iPad with Procreate was all it took and I started to obsessively turn all of my favourite Drag Queens, plant friends, pets and family members into digital drawings.
I have never been good at just having one aesthetic or one medium. I consistently dabble across sculpture, painting, drawing, textiles, drag, weaving and DIY projects.
In 2019, I was supported by Sawtooth ARI in Launceston, Tasmania, to have my first solo show, displaying my drawings and textile pieces to the public for the month of March.
I also regularly exhibit in the annual Teacher Artmaker Project (TAP) with the University of Melbourne and try to exhibit locally whenever the opportunity arises.
It was around 2016 when I started to draw vulva’s and use them within most of my drawings and design projects.
They have become symbiotic with my work.
Often you will find them on plants, used as patterned backgrounds or simply on display in all their glory.
The roots of my interest in art comes from artists such as Mirka Mora, Yayoi Kusama, Howard Arkley, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Matisse, Marina Abramovic, Tracey Emin, David Hockney, John Olsen, Grace Cossington Smith, Margaret Preston and Brett Whiteley (just to name a few). Each of them play with colour, shape, women’s identities, sexual desire and pain in ways that intrigue and excite me.
Much of my work originates with my fascination with the uncanny when I was studying at university, and still today I am drawn to anything which is a bit strange, contradictory or mysterious in a way that unsettles me. This could be anything from a feeling of dejavu to subtle juxtapositions of imagery in everyday life.
I hope you enjoyed peering into my minds eye and I look forward to hearing from you if my work inspires or sparks a dialogue between us.
♥