Ian Nielsen in his studio. His daughter Elsie Sauer has designed a website for on-line sales of his work and he has exhibited at art shows which has added to those sales. Photo: John Thistleton.
If Ian Nielsen’s life was represented by one of the tubes of oil paint on his studio bench it would be totally squeezed out from the bottom, cut up a bit and leaking at the sides. But not discarded, nor consigned to the scrap heap. Because there might be another tiny drop that somehow can be conjured up in the name of creativity.
Nine years ago I wrote about Ian writing a book: Still Here, a wild ride to survival about his unconventional journey back to reasonable health from a ruptured ulcer and near-fatal medical misdiagnosis.
The story could have ended there. But it hasn’t, even though he is 82, has a dodgy heart and is so lame (his words) he’s unable to get out into the bush and capture on canvas the action and drama of the high country of Australia that mirrors his rollicking ride through adulthood as an exceptionally talented equine vet.
Early in his veterinary career he and colleague Dave Adamson established a hospital for horses at Yass and later an equine and small animal hospital in Canberra. These days as an artist capturing from online images life around horses, Ian is as curious as ever to find out if he is any good at painting. So curious he has been collaborating with Gunning artist Margarita Georgiadis and husband and actor Max Cullen on an exhibition of 35 of his paintings at their Picture House Gallery early next month.
An artistic streak runs through his family. His father Paul Nielsen, a wool buyer who came from Denmark (where Ian was born) after World War II, later in life took up painting as a naive artist. Ian and his brother Jorgen have also taken it up in their later life while their sister Annie Herron is a professional artist and fine arts teacher.
Attending Canberra School of Art for evening classes for beginners in the late 1980s Ian learned enough technique with everything from pencil sketches to using crayons, water colour and acrylic and oils to pursue his artistic bent.
On the first page of his book he says he fell passionately in love with horses during his veterinary science studies and believed then his future was locked in at that point in his life. It’s obvious looking at his paintings that adorn almost every inch of his walls at home except for the occasional needlework from his wife Trish, that his burning ardour for horses hasn’t cooled.
Developing artists often make a mess of painting horses; either the animal’s neck is too long, or their head too small or body oversized, and yet Ian portrays them realistically each time he takes to his canvass. His method is simple.
One of Ian Nielsen’s paintings Too many dogs showing a cattleman, his horse and his dogs at work with a wayward heifer in the high country. Photo: Ian Nielsen.
“I have been looking at horses for way too long to be able to accept proportions being wrong,” he says. “ My trick has been to just allow my head to operate without interfering. I can’t paint without music playing.” (Classical music including Mozart 1 to 27.)
He recounts a book he read while at Canberra School of Art called Painting on the right side of your brain which recommends allowing your creative half hemisphere of the brain to take over and to stop being analysed by your left half which is all your numbers and science, which is analytical.
At the exhibition his paintings will be priced from $400 to $900. One will be asking for $1500.
Before picking up his brushes in earnest he was in the depths of depression after ill health took him from the job he loved, unprepared for retirement.
“I would have worked until I was 150 if I could have,” he said.” So suddenly, boom: I was retired. I had no plans whatsoever. I got depressed I think for a good two years.”
Painting for six or seven hours a day has turned around his health enormously. He is now preparing for his first public exhibition.
Horses and High Country, an exhibition of original oil paintings will be on 4 October, 2 pm, for drinks and nibbles at The Picture House Gallery, 82 Yass Street, Gunning. The exhibition will remain open every weekend in October, from Saturday to Monday, 10 am to 4 pm.
