First-Ever Interview

This is something I’ve been wanting to start for a long time. Enjoy meeting Andy the artist and please feel free to leave a comment at the end 🙂

Synchronicities Abound At Kapi Art Space

For Andy Machray the many leisure drives through the Dandenong Ranges paid off one day not so long ago when he decided to pop into Kapi Art Space. With a varied background as a pro golfer and employment in the construction industry, he certainly wasn’t expecting his life to take the direction it did at that moment:

    “I had the thought in mind that it was time to get some colour into my drawings, particularly the drawing of the Teahouse at the foot of 1000 Steps in Upper Ferntree Gully. I’ve been drawing since very young but it was time to mix it up a little. Upon entering Kapi I noticed a leopard painting and when I enquired about it the Curator informed me that it had been painted by the owner of the Teahouse of my drawing. Co-incidence? I think not; I’ve always been a big believer in serendipitous synchronicities so signed up for a class on the spot. My first painting was a water drop on a leaf. ‘Downstream’ was completed within 18xmonths and then I went onto ‘Abundance’.”

I have to say right here that after having spent the entire day traipsing through ‘Open Studios’ dotted throughout the mountains held over the 2nd/3rd of April and meeting artists, potters, poets and sculptors Kapi was the final destination on the list for me before heading home, so when I walked in and saw ‘Downstream’ it was in fierce competition with many other pieces of art I’d already had the pleasure of seeing and falling in love with that day. But then I was informed that this painting was only the second ever of the artist and that he was quite new to it. The painting took my breath away and when I was told by the Curator that the artist was on the site I immediately introduced myself to him and asked him for an interview. I wasn’t disappointed. 

Andrew Stewart Machray was born on a golf course in Tandridge, England and migrated to New Zealand with his parents when he was eight months old. He spent 25 years as a pro-golfer and then many more working long hours on skyscrapers and for Metro trains. It’s sounding a little ordinary at this point and I can’t match these beautiful works of art with the story but read on.
    “I went through a difficult time when my marriage broke down and knew I had to re-create myself into a newer version, someone who could handle the stress, someone who could break through the glass ceiling and find happiness again. It was a long journey but now I’m at a place in my life where I am so wrapped up with the beauty of life in any given moment that my ardent wish is to help others to discover this way of being.”

Andy talks about the feeling of kicking his boots off at the end of a long day working on construction sites and then “milking that feeling” at other various times when his mind is beginning to wander back toward the negative. He doesn’t like the word ‘mindfulness’ but agrees that training his mind in a certain direction is what saved it. He tells me about Abraham & Esther Hicks and Dr. Jo Deispnza:

    “Meditation has really helped, I usually meditate every day for 15, 30 or 40 minutes. It stops the thoughts from running on so that when the momentum is going in the wrong direction you can stop it and change it – reset the dial.  Painting does it for me as well. The brain has 40,000 neurons and telomeres, so imagine the plastic bit on the end of shoelaces. The idea is to prolong the life of the telomeres and you do that by thinking about your food and water choices, your brain/heart coherence, your lifestyle decisions and being sure to remember appreciation – as opposed to gratitude – which always gives you a good vibe. The good vibe is what we are going for.”

I too am familiar with this and have often heard the term ‘vortex’ which was introduced by the Hicks’. We talk about yoga and mediation for a while. They have also altered my life in surprising ways…

The 15-second rule
    “It’s inevitable that our minds struggle at times but the golden rule is to not indulge those random negative thoughts for more than 15-seconds at a time before we pull it back on course. If something drops off a desk in front of you be thankful for it because it is happening to remind you to watch your thoughts – we all have control over this even though we may think we don’t.”

Andy told me about the road trip he took after his divorce, his first trip alone for a long time, and it sounded like an excerpt from Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton:
    “You stop in the middle of the night and lie in the centre of the road and stare up at the night sky, that will always make you feel alive. A guy at work was upset because out of the 100 trains that had driven past that day one driver hadn’t waved to him. But doesn’t it make more sense to instead think about the 99 who did?”

We are all familiar with the wonderful reward that is waiting after training our minds to follow the correct course. It makes no sense to dwell on something that is futile or saddening when there is so much to celebrate. I had this conversation with someone just yesterday when they informed me of their bad health diagnosis and they had no idea what I was referring to. We are our thoughts. Our thoughts are everything and control everything.

    “We have a choice to make in every second,” Andy continues and he shows me the Koru on his necklace from New Zealand. “I went to an open-plan school in New Zealand so from a young age I’ve been taught to always seek the alternative. I have a two-handed machete in my mind that I use to destroy anything in my mind that is spoiling it so I can then completely forget it. I studied for an NLP certificate in the late ’90’s to take my golfing to a whole new level and it worked but by 2005 it was like a piece of chewing gum that had lost its flavour and was ready to be tossed aside. The key is to know when to move on. No-one should ever have to accept tedium and negativity. We can control this.”
I agree wholeheartedly that mindfulness practice has changed my life. Andy is also in the process of writing a book about a frog on the ascension journey and it sounds fascinating.

    “It took 18xmonths to paint ‘Downstream’ and the price ticket can not reflect that but that’s not how I think of it. The many experiences I’ve had as a part of Kapi, making new friends and learning a new skill can’t be traded in dollars and cents. Just this week I took ‘Abundance’ to a printer in Steel’s Creek to have prints made, who was recommended to me through an artist friend of yours (Ada’s) and it just happened to be a building in the middle of a pig farm out the back of nowhere,” Andy smiles. “There are so many people places and things just waiting for us, how can we help but be excited almost all the time. And we need to celebrate people like Heather, my teacher at Kapi, who has made this place so inviting for everyone – only good things happen here!