About Cviisual | Cviisual Art Studio

It has been a long journey to get here, and where is here you might ask? An artist is born is the narrative of this short story. In my head, I have always been an artist. Over the years, I have had many internal conversations on the topic, but due to my need for a steady income, art took a back seat. I forged ahead with a career path of being a sign writer, a sign fabricator, and a sign installer. This decision was necessary but at the same time it prevented me from following my true desire, to be a full-time artist. Well, not anymore!

I remember being teased from an early age about my name. Stuart Currie could easily change to ‘stewed curry’, the natural progression from there was ‘hot stuff’. Over the years I have had many nicknames. The first one I remember that really stuck was ‘chook’, and to be honest, I forgot how it came about. As I was trying to recall, thoughts of having a big nose that was reminiscent of a chicken’s beak loomed in my imagination. Did I have a funny neck movement as I walked that was similar to a chicken pecking at grains scattered on the ground? Or maybe it was because I was good at impersonating a roosters crow, which I often did in the mornings at school. Anyway, one day about 40 years later I brought the topic up sitting around a campfire with some mates, (I still have a dozen or so high-school friends) and I was brought back to reality. I went by the name chook because I was good at playing handball, and my specialty shot was to deftly hit the ball low and swift into the corners. This type of shot was called a chook!

Back on topic, I have always been involved in art. I vaguely remember getting praised at the tender age of 6, for a drawing of my parents. We had a class activity to draw our parents in preparation for parents day. Apparently, my parents had form. Meaning I drew real bodies that were proportionate, not just ‘stick figures’ that were the norm for that age group. Anyway, I don’t remember anything else until my teenage years, this is when I started to draw in earnest. I was interested in fantasy and escapism, drawing wild creatures in fantastic lands. Then I dappled in anatomy a bit, took to brushes and eventually started to paint.

I had a very keen desire to learn more so I took Art as an elective study in my final years at Holroyd High School. To my shock, horror and dismay, art history was the star attraction for our art teacher. All she wanted from her students was for us to learn art history. The practical classes I yearned for were non-existent, thus each lesson was spent in the library with our noses in books.

I have always had trouble with reading because I am dyslexic. I remember getting dragged by my mother to elocution lessons after school during my primary school days. I remember getting 0 out of 100 in a spelling test whilst in primary (+1 for the right spelling and -1 for wrong), obviously I got more wrong than right. I also remember being made to stand up and read chapters from books in class. Getting the sequence of words jumbled up in my head so what came out of my mouth was all wrong. Kids being kids, I was laughed at and ridiculed time and again. So going to the library instead of learning how to paint was very frustrating and disappointing for me. So much so, I nearly failed Art at high school.

I left school with no clear direction however on a ‘careers day’ excursion I was fascinated watching a tradesman airbrushing flames down the side of a panel van. As it turned out, he was a sign writer and I thought “wow, what an awesome job”!

When I left high school in 4th form (year 10 nowadays), I enrolled in a pre-apprenticeship TAFE course. The course was at Ultimo TAFE and was a 2 year full-time course with the guarantee of a job at the end. I graduated and my working life began but I quickly found out, airbrushing vehicles was a specialized niche, not standard work in the trade. I did an airbrushing course after hours at Rydalmere TAFE. I then started private landscape painting classes with Professor Raymond De Cusack (The Rocks) followed by Michael Zaiter (Merrylands). All these artistic endeavours were after work and purely to improve my technical skills as an artist. I sold work periodically, privately and in group shows but nothing sustaining.

Now I will digress for a moment here because around this time in my life I acquired my 2nd nickname. I think you will chuckle at this passage of narrative. Over the years I have played a lot of sports. My very first sporting activity was playing marbles at school lol. Nah, probably can’t include that. Onto the real stuff. I have played soccer for Queens Park Rangers. Our home ground was in Randwick, right next to Centennial Park. Now I couldn’t remember this (you will find ‘memory loss’ will be a running theme in a lot of my stories), but my mum told me years later. Apparently when I was 8 years old, I went missing. It was a Saturday morning around 8am and I was nowhere to be found. I don’t want to create a mini story within a story, so I’ll get to the chase. I went down to Queens Park to sign-up for our local soccer team! I can only imagine the pride on my face would have changed dramatically once confronted by my worried, frantic mother.

I played rugby union for Randwick Primary School for 2 years and this I do remember. We played in a Grand Final at Moore Park in the teeming rain, and I was fullback. It was close to halftime and the opposition put up a bomb. I ran back behind the try line to catch the ball on the full, but due to the heavy wet ball and the rain streaming into my eyes, I fumbled the catch and the other team scored. That was the only try scored during that match and we lost the grand final because of it.

I also played rugby league for my final year at Holroyd High School. We went through the entire comp undefeated and my claim to fame was this – I played in the same team as Brett Kenny! Some of you will be thinking “who is Brett Kenny”? Brett went on to play in one of the great Parramatta Eels squads. He also represented NSW blues (state of origin) and he played for Australia! I just played for Holroyd High School lol.

Moving along, that little segue leads to this. Outside of school sports, I played weekend soccer for decades. Starting at 8 years of age and retiring at age 39. I didn’t play soccer every season between those years, sometimes I preferred to go surfing. During my adult soccer years, the majority of them were spent playing for Wentworthville Warratahs (affectionately called Wenty or The Tahs). Over the years I have tried to stay reasonably fit, and injury free, so I used to do a lot of stretching exercises before the game. Does anyone remember the famous Warwick Capper shorts? Well, that was the normal sports attire of the day. 

So, after viewing the photo link… you will understand.

My teammates started calling me ‘lovenuts’. When I inquired about the strange nickname, they suggested that the single young ladies loved looking at my nuts during warm-up, stretching exercises.

Years passed, I decided to quit work and be a ‘real’ artist. In 1985, I enrolled at East Sydney TAFE with the vision to get my Diploma of Fine Arts. Nearing the completion of my 1st year, insurmountable pressure from my friends to join a sojourn to Bali led to the collapse of my dream. I caved in and got back into paid work so I could go on my first overseas travel experience. I must say, that decision has haunted me in the ‘what if’ scenario. However, the life experience I gained from travelling abroad, the broadening of my mind, and embracing of a different culture was life changing. It was profound. So, no regrets… well, maybe a little.

Travel forward a few decades. A bitter marriage breakup left me a single parent with 3 young adorable children (Brendon, Joshua, and Nicole) to care for. This made me contemplate… maybe this is my chance? I had a thriving (work from home) sign business at the time but decided to ‘shut shop’ to become a full-time mature age student. Moving along, I completed my Diploma of Fine Arts at Nepean TAFE in 2004 with 11 distinctions attached. I went on to complete my Bachelor of Fine Arts at COFA (College of Fine Arts – Uni NSW) in 2008 and somehow, I acquired another 11 distinctions. At this point I have to admit, when we had our student group exhibition as a grand finale, I was feeling very proud of myself. After receiving 22 distinctions over 4 years of study, I had a quiet confidence that some Art Gallery director would snap me up. I thought I would get a contract to exhibit my work in a prestigious Sydney Gallery. Wrong. Nothing happened. I was gutted and confused. Other students were getting Gallery offers, why not me? There seemed to be one common denominator – the other students getting a chance to exhibit were all young, I was a mature-age student already.

I met my current wife – Nitcha Khampradit (affectionately known as ‘Nitcha my wife’ and ‘Nitcha darling’ – a reference to an inhouse running amusement whilst working at Signaction), during my student days at university. Nitcha is also an artist so in more ways than one, you could say she is my partner in crime. I thought this was going to be my time,… finally! But I was wrong. Marriage, followed by the birth of our beautiful daughter Pimchanok, led me away from art yet again. But it did lead me to my next nickname…

I won’t go into all the details of where I worked or for how long. What I will say is I have had a long working relationship with Signaction that spanned many years. During my time there, work colleagues tried very hard to come up with a nickname for me. Finally, Guy came to me one day and said “I’ve got it, it has to be Puff”. As in curry puff. “Oh, really original Guy, another reference to my surname” I replied. But it stuck. Then it started to morph into a brand, like it had its own identity, it was fluid. Different people would make their own spin on it. I was getting called ‘puffy’, ‘puff dids’, ‘p dids’, ‘p diddy’, and finally ‘dids’. This nickname stuck with me, but never escaped my working life.

Jump forward again, a big breakthrough looms. The beginning of 2020 changed our lives forever. The recent bushfires as devastating and stressful as they were, something more sinister was coming for us. The arrival of the 100-year pandemic, covid-19 reared its insidious head, and it has terrorised the world since. Shockingly, so many lives lost, and we are deeply saddened by this global catastrophe. Australia has weathered the storm better than a lot of countries. The Australian Government’s decision to close the borders to international flights saved 1,000’s of Australian lives, it also led to businesses going burst and job losses on a gigantic scale.

Yes, you guessed it – I lost my job but I am still alive so I am not complaining. Working as a sign writer | manufacturer | installer on a contractual basis for a company that was (and still is) a major supplier of signage products for Australian Airports. Let’s just say I had to re-evaluate my life going forward. I have been training myself with new skill sets related to opening an online art store. I have had to learn about social media and how to integrate different platforms with a website. But first, I had to build my website with a WordPress theme. Learn to use YouTube, start a profile on YouTube. How to make and edit videos, how to upload the videos and link them to my socials. Of course it goes without saying, I am just a novice at all these new skills. It has been a hard road, but I can now finally say – at the tender age of 61… I am finally ready to be a full-time artist!!!!!

So there you have it, a brief history of how Cviisaul Art Studio was born. We offer a subscriber ‘Newsletter’ but it will be different to the usual style of a Newsletter email list. Of course if we have a ‘special offer’ or some new works then we will advertise it but the primary purpose of our Newsletter is to tell stories. I want our subscribers to connect with me, feel like they are part of our community. My stories will be related to different random events in my life, some funny, some shocking and some probably boring – regardless, something different.

So, if you are reading this story still, it means it was engaging enough to keep you here. Why don’t you join our Newsletter community for more amazing short stories!

Thank you for reading 😉