Artist Shirley Cresswell made her start in life as a Nurse. Shirley developed a visual language with the same attention to detail that she cared for her patients. With her ultra-realistic works on canvas healing communities ranging from other medical professionals to former patients, and general lovers of fine arts.
At 17 years old, Shirley went straight from high school into nursing. She graduated as a nurse at just 19 years-old and moved to Hamilton. As a young nurse, Shirley worked in a variety of roles. Initially, haematology, followed by post-natal and theatre, and intensive care before having children of her own. The ‘adrenaline junkie nursing’ of the ICU attracted Shirley to the Emergency Department, where she remained for about eight years, which she absolutely loved. Eventually a combination of overwork and stress affects many medics, Shirley says, “Back then the emergency department was quite old, and you had patients out in corridor. When I oversaw a shift, I always worried about something going wrong. I think it was around the millennium when the violence towards staff was a big problem. One day, one shift, I was in charge on the shift and had to call the police a couple of times. I just thought, I’ve had enough. I can’t take that, that’s it for me.”
Shirley moved on from the emergency department to take a role as a school nurse. It was busy with up to 50 staff and children visiting the clinic each day, to get contraception advice, injuries, dealing with ACC, etc. Shirley loved the normal hours, having holidays off, spending time with her family and being part of the school community and the wider community engagement that comes from working at the school. It was while she was at the school that she started painting.
Shirley became a full-time artist in 2012. She started painting in 2007, with her first solo exhibition in 2008. She was mostly self-taught and went to a night class to learn acrylics with a friend. It was just something fun to do.
“I started painting from our photos. I found that if I used light and dark contrast, I could get them looking real. My first paintings weren’t like what I paint right now but it was the start. My first painting was of the mountain in Tongariro National Park. We spent a lot of time down there. I would take the kids down on the school holidays and the mountain was always beautiful with the sun going down with pink on the snow and a lovely light.
So that was my first painting. It’s not even signed, well, my initials SMC. So back then, not knowing that my art was going to be what it is, I always just signed my initials. Then I went and did an art business course, every weekend for weeks. They made me think about how to sign my work. It was the first time I’d ever heard of Facebook! All these things, as far as being an artist, was one of the most useful things I did, because it made me think, oh, this could be a lot bigger. This could go somewhere. I learned so much from it. From that course I started a website, started my Facebook page, changed how I signed my work, learned how to price my arts, all sorts of things. Marketing – it was useful. I’ve got 45,000 Facebook followers. It’s certainly been good for me as an artist having a Facebook because of the solitude you know, and Facebook is a way of communicating with people.
I do get asked to teach a lot. I did a lot of teaching as a nurse. Honestly, I’m too busy to teach and not only that, I also don’t think I’ve got the confidence because my painting is a lot of intuition and how do you teach that? I like to know when I’ve finished something that I have mastered it and then I know when to stop. Now, I’m painting tyres. It’s a big painting of a jetty so I’m about to work on the old tyres.
In the last year, I painted mostly commissions. I’ve got no stock of paintings at all – well, I’ve got one and someone’s asked to buy it today. Whether they do or not, I don’t know. They’re over in the UK. So, I haven’t got any work for sale. This year I’m going to concentrate on painting what I feel like painting. And I know I’ve got a commission that’s waiting, but they haven’t decided what they want yet, so I’m just going to just paint things that I want to paint.
Even as a school nurse, you hold a lot of responsibility, a lot of confidentiality – with troubled kids. It was just nice to be doing something totally different. Something just for my pleasure. I always loved doing dressings as a nurse and being very precise, making sure it was lovely and neat. Whatever dressing I did on someone, I see similarities in my art – I like to be precise… not in my studio organisation though!
The first year that I went full-time as an artist, I was at an art exhibition in Warkworth. A painting of mine won the first prize. This man came up to me and said, I’ve just bought your ladder painting. He said that ladder saved my life. He had fallen off the wharf and impaled himself. He ended up climbing up that very same ladder that I painted then rang the helicopter to come and get him. He was a very sick man and in intensive care. He bought that painting just after I had left nursing and decided to go full-time as an artist. That painting, at that exhibition, at that time, with that man. It was like the galaxy was telling me that I had chosen a path on which I could still help people.
As a nurse you’re always helping people and caring for people. The amount of people that buy my paintings and say: this reminds me of my father, this reminds me of memories of doing this, or going to the beach, or my dad used to build boats and it reminds me of my dad. It’s nice that I’m still helping people and I’m bringing those special memories back to people.
Nurses have been through hell in the last couple of years, especially. If you know a nurse, please acknowledge International Nurses Day today.
Thank you, Shirley.
