Holly Ringland

La Coiffure, by Edgar Degas

I didn’t exactly need arm twisting when I found out there was a free event happening at the National Gallery on Saturday afternoon: I would have handed over my credit card willingly to take respite from the unforgiving heat in an air conditioned cardboard box if I could have.

Instead, for two sublime hours, I sat in a small theatre listening to some of Australia’s finest writers read from poems and novels by contemporaries of Degas, whose glorious art is the NGA’s current exhibition. I was entrenched in Paris, the bawdy house of Europe, through the affairs and cross-dressing of George Sand, Zola’s descriptions of the glittering displays and the dark underside of Paris under the Second Empire, Balzac’s account of an orgy, Baudelaire’s questioning of Romantic values, Flaubert’s platonic love letters and Théophile Gautier’s description of the Opera. I was swept from Paris to Russia to London via poetry and prose selections that left me breathless with spells brewing in my eyes and the words of classics lingering around me in a velvety fog.

As I walked out of the theatre and back in the bright lemony light of day and the outside world, I felt the swirling words and sumptuous art settle over me, Paris soaking into my skin. The loveliness lingered well into my weekend and I have thought to myself often since how enamored I was by the experience, how instantly I fell in love with the writings of Degas’ contemporaries and the brush strokes of Degas’ social commentary layered under portraits of ballerinas and top-hat gentlemen or horse racing and carnivals in green countryside. I recognised the feeling; I feel the same way when I come across a piece of writing or artwork on Red Bubble that takes my breath away and envelopes me. As I was driving home, I thought to myself given the chance, I would have added that afternoon to my favourites.

Ever since, I’ve been thinking about our favourites and what the function of ‘favouriting’ something means on Red Bubble.

To me, that one little strip of light boxes on my Red Bubble page is my own personal gallery, my own personal bookshop; a cool quiet sanctuary that exists wholly and solely for my pleasure, delight and wonder. I favourite work that changes me, that alters who I was before I absorbed the work to who I was afterward. Being able to ‘favourite’ work on Red Bubble fills me with the same itching in my fingertips that I feel when I walk into an empty house and immediately start collecting things to fill the space with; colour, sentences, textures, moments, scents, themes and life.

Since Saturday, I have been sumptuously and gloriously going back through all my favourites, reading your words and tracing the stroke of your pens, your ink, your paint, seeing the world through your eye. I found myself, after a page or two, hungry and cold and aching to physically crawl into and immerse myself in your work; to fill my belly with your colours and vowels and frames and sentences, to wrap myself in each piece and hibernate amidst such vibrant and potent creative energy: because like Degas and Balzac and Zola, our art and our writing are pieces of ourselves, whether built from experience or imagination, that we have set adrift in the world to say, here I was, here’s what I observed about being alive, here’s the ink I’ve spilled, the paint I’ve shaped, the charcoal I’ve recycled, the image I’ve scored on negative, here’s the mark I’ve left behind.

Whether we’re Degas (or not) we are each of us artists in our own right, brave enough to allow our craft to see the light of day. I humbly thank you for the pieces of yourself I fill my Favourites sanctuary with.