Creed McTaggart Is A Painter
portraits and photos of artwork courtesy of creed mctaggart.
A man of Rage and water and music, Creed McTaggart is a painter.
He’s also a professional surfer. I don’t know anything about surfing, but I’m told that he’s quite good, and under a lot of his YouTube surfing videos are comments like, ‘raw power’, and ‘power lord,’ and ‘holy fucking shit this fucking mother fucker can fucking surf, bitch,’ which tells me that what I’ve heard about his surfing ability is in fact true. However, if people are telling me this so matter of factly, and the YouTube comments under various Epokhe and Rage videos are swearing at me, then I don’t need to tell you that, or worse, pick over the bones of whatever water-related question there may be left now, years into his career.
Creed McTaggart is very good at surfing, but I don’t give that much of a shit about that, especially not compared to how good Creed McTaggart is at painting - or shall I say, how good he has gotten and is continuing to get. There’s something lovely about finding an artist with a perspective untainted by art school who is in the early years of the craft but not so early that they’re drawing dicks and tits on stick figures. There’s a sweet spot where the vision is coming to fruition (accidental rhyme, or was it?), and there is a certain ignition (it wasn’t accidental) in their career. Creed’s working has legs and is learning to walk, and so we asked about it.
I was at the Juju (The Musical) in Japan, it was fucking sick!
Oh, no way! She did a good job, hey?
Yeah! Me and Jaleesa (Vincent) went on the Team Average trip together. She was really chill the entire time, down to hang, but then she burst into song and dance on screen and I was like, ‘holy shit, you’re the coolest person I’ve ever met.’
She’s probably the most talented person I’ve ever met. Everything she does, she does it amazing.
How’d you get involved with that?
She talked about it for a while, and when she asked me to be in it, I was super keen to do it just because she’s a good friend of mine and I wanted to support her dream of making a surf musical, but I was definitely really nervous because it wasn’t like anything I’d been a part of before and I like to sing and make music, but I’m not much of a dancer, or whatever you call what I was doing in that. It was heaps of fun, I had a really good time making it. She did such a good job.
You’re a pro surfer, but everyone knows that, so I don’t want to talk about that. How long have you been making music?
Some of my friends and I started a band in 2015 called Wash. My best friend, Toby, was playing in a band called Skegss. Before they were big, we’d go on little tours and meet all these other bands down in Melbourne and Sydney. At the time, I couldn’t play any instruments or anything, but we were just super keen to try and get a band together. We played really bad music, but it was just a lot of fun with a lot of supportive people encouraging us to play gigs. I played bass in that and sung. They were probably some of the funnest times in my life. In surfing, most of the time you kind of meet the same kind of person and have similar conversations, and when you meet other people in bands, they’re quite the opposite of you in so many ways. A lot of them just do it because they love it, they’re not making any money - they’ve just devoted their lives to making music, which is really cool.
I think there’s something very cool about that. Our generation has this idea that if they do or make something, that it must be monetized. Bands want to get signed and turn their art into a money thing, and that’s totally fair, but there’s something very pure about making something for the love of making it.
For sure. WIth surfing, ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a professional surfer. But with music, that was never the goal. It was just a really fun thing to do with your friends and made me feel good. And also being a complete kook novice at it was nice; learning really slowly, but it was exciting to learn to play a bit better or write a better song together.
There’s a certain legendary skater who took up surfing recently and he’s very dogshit at it, but he said he loves it for that reason. He’s done skating for so long and the whole time, he’s been very good at it, so to start something completely new and be novice at it and learn slowly and also for no money or career, has been really fun.
Getting paid to surf, it can kill the enjoyment sometimes because you put pressure on yourself to do better and get better and keep up, I guess, but it’s so refreshing to be bad at something and slowly learning little bits and pieces along the way.
Does that translate to painting? How long have you been painting for?
I’ve been painting for about two years. When we moved to this town, I didn’t really have many friends and I had heaps of time on my hands, so my girlfriend bought me a box of paints and brushes for Christmas. I just started tinkering with those acrylic paints in a note pad. Then I started going to shops and buying old paintings and painting over the tops of them. I hate the word ‘natural’, and it wasn’t natural, but it was fun, and it felt interesting to me. I was really bad at school and that didn’t come natural to me, so using the creative side of my brain is something that I enjoy more than the academic side. I have days where the waves are bad and I just stand in the garage all day and paint and listen to music, and I realized I really love doing that. I wish I had started earlier, but I’m really grateful for her buying me that box of paint because I don’t think I would have started at all if she hadn’t.
Why did she? Were you drawing or making art up to this point?
Nah, not at all. I used to spray paint my boards a little bit when I was younger but never really was much of a drawer. I was always interested in art. When I was in Japan or New York, I’d go to galleries to look at paintings, and when I started, I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I do. I don’t know anything about painting, so being completely oblivious to everything, I’d do a painting and someone would be like, ‘oh that looks like so and so,’ and I’d go check them out and be like, ‘fuck my painting is exactly like that guy’s painting,’ and I kind of liked that.
I thought about doing an art course but I thought maybe it’d ruin it for me. I like the innocence and naivety of putting colors together and slapping them on a canvas and seeing what happens. I look at it as a problem solving thing. I’m just trying to solve problems all the time; I’ll do something I like and then fuck it up and have to try and fix it. It’s kind of poetic in a way. Sometimes you make mistakes in your life and they end up being the best things that ever happened.
Do you have other artists that you’ve found who inspire you, and if not, what does?
One of my friends Christopher Zanko, and he used to play in a band called the Pinheads - his art has recently taken off and he’s a big inspiration for me. I really like Danny Fox’s paintings and the color that he uses, but I don’t really try to get too into painters and what other people are doing, it try to not think of that as much as I can. I think that that was one of the things about moving down to a quiet place - you get to reflect on things that you’ve done and a lot of things, you didn’t really get to process at the time. So when you have quiet time and no distractions, memories and experiences kind of come out, and in painting, for me, I get to process some of those experiences and childhood things that I overlooked. I feel like I draw a lot of inspiration from emotions rather than other artists or music or anything.
I know it’s a passion for you and not a professional thing, but do you have any specific aspirations for it? Get into a certain gallery or whatever?
I’ve been a part of a couple of group shows, but I still feel like I’m such a novice at it and I don’t want to be this guy that is coming in super hot - I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew. I’d love to be able to do a solo show one day, but I don’t know if that’ll be in two years or ten years or twenty years. With Instagram and social media these days, I feel weird even posting my work - I get so self conscious that people are like, ‘oh he thinks he’s an artist now’ or some bullshit. I reluctantly post my art, I don’t feel like an artist, I just enjoy painting.
