Creative Parents: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah and Anna Louise Richardson (contemporary artists, curator, and father and mother of three.)
"Trust in God but tie your camel."
It feels like a really heavy week this week for me, and most people I speak to, as we face bedtime battles and dinnertime struggles, families in Gaza are being starved to death by Israel. I feel so helpless. It’s really hard to know what aid is getting into Gaza, but Nasser Mashni is a great resource to follow on Instagram, so I urge you to check in there. What the Palentisian people have faced since the colonisation of their country makes my heart so heavy. Entire towns have been systematically wiped out over the last 80 years (Google why Israel has so many pine tree forests). And now we are witnessing it in real time. Israel is targeting children because they are removing future generations. Both my kids are sick this week, and I just feel like I want to keep them home and hold them close. I can’t imagine having to dodge bombs or having nothing to feed them. I’ve been reading about mothers whose milk has completely dried up, and there is no formula in Gaza as Israel is blocking it deliberately. I think about this every time Margot asks me for milk.
Artists in Australia have been speaking up, and it’s incredible to witness, especially as they face silencing from Zionists. Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (one half of our Creative Parent interview this week) resigned from the board of the National Gallery of Australia in 2024 over his comments about the genocide. As an artist, Abdul-Rahman speaks to the current issues today with such sensitive and poetic expression. It can take you off guard. Currently at ACCA, Melbourne, his work Witness (2025) features a life-size wood carving of a Palestinian mountain gazelle.
He says, “The Palestine mountain gazelle embodies a sense of resilience, populating poetry with elegance in the face of adversity. Highly endangered and relying on vigilance and speed for survival, they cling to a precarious existence through the Levant. Witness, or ‘shahid’ in Arabic, translates as both observer and martyr.”
I spoke to Abdul-Rahman in 2023 for an interview in Art Almanac, and he offered so many interesting insights into both his work and parenting. “I figure that family is going to engulf every aspect of the daily rhythm, so I may as well throw myself in and enjoy it, try to be good at it or at least survive with a smile. Being a parent is hard labour and I meet my own limits every single day, but you can’t exactly get a refund on kids.”
When I started this series, I reached out to him and also his very talented wife, Anna Louise Richardson. So I have my first ‘couple’ interview this week for you! (Watch this for more very cute artist couple insights). Anna and Abdul-Rahman both explore hyper-realism in their practice with different methodologies, from wood carving to charcoal. Interestingly (and maybe not surprisingly since they live on a farm on Bindjareb Nyoongar Boodja in Western Australia), animals feature throughout their practice. These two put a new spin on BUSY! Three children alone makes my head spin a little, but their dedication to their art is inspiring for any artist. The school drop & pick up alone takes three hours a day… But there are some great tips in here, from Google Calendars to equality in their careers and at home.
Ok enough from me, thank you for reading, and keep speaking up about the genocide by Israel!! Free Palestine, today and always!
Here is the Q&A of Abdul-Rahman Abdullah and Anna Louise Richardson, contemporary artists, curator, father and mother of three:
Can you tell us about your art practice — what do you create, with what, and why? How did you get here?
Anna: I make drawings, mostly life size or large scale of animals, plants and objects – realistic representations of the world at large, but mostly the world around me and my family. I am in love with charcoal and have found a non-conventional support in cement fibreboard. My practice is grounded in personal experience and rural life, having grown up on the holistic beef cattle farm where we now live and work. I regularly explore parenthood, intergenerational relationships, mortality, and human-animal connection as themes in my practice. I also work as a freelance curator, focusing on projects that address identity, regional practice, and women’s experiences of the world.
Abdul-Rahman: I’m a visual artist working mainly in sculpture. My process and materials are based in figurative woodcarving, and my visual language is populated by animals, nature, family and culture. I have other aspects to my practice as well, such as drawing, various advocacy, advisory, and board roles, and I work with Marrugeku dance company as a set designer. I’ve always looked at the world through a creative lens, although I’ve only been an artist since 2013 after many years as an illustrator, designer and commercial sculptor, specialising in Christmas design and Zoo habitat design and build. Prior to that, I was a labourer, paint mixer, factory worker, burger flipper, and student at different times.
What inspires your work?
Anna: My work is very much about the experiences that have defined my life (big and small) and telling those stories through the animals and objects I encounter. I see my job as connecting an intangible moment or feeling to a known and accessible object. Animals are almost a language without words that we can relate to in our own way. I don’t have an academic or referential practice, but I do have a lot of artist peers, good people and solid political standing in humanity that are my guiding stars. I trust in the power of energy and the universe, but there is always a practical action or list we can make towards what we want to create. My personal philosophy is to ask for what you want and share what you have. My favourite sayings are the Islamic hadith: Trust in God but tie your camel. And Bo Wong’s catch phrase: The rising tide lifts all boats.
Abdul-Rahman: I’m inspired by the world around me, where I live, my children and my own childhood, the natural world, and the cultural geography that we continuously create around us. I’m a Muslim man with mixed Anglo and Malay heritage, building a loving life with my beautiful wife and children, living on an incredible piece of land on Binjerup Nyungar country. All of this sustains my creative life; nothing can be separated. My philosophy is to recognise truth, embody empathy, let experience change you, eat well and live a love story.
When did you know you wanted to become a creative? Was there an influential figure growing up?
Abdul-Rahman: Although it took me until my mid-thirties to begin my career as a visual artist, I was only ever going to live a creative life. When I was a kid, I had no idea what art was; I just wanted to draw, read, and play. My family was my biggest artistic influence, especially my older brother Abdul-Karim. We never had a TV and no real access to popular culture, our world came from books and comics, as a teenager, it was skateboarding, boxing and art school. Home was a mix of Muslim, Malay, and very Australian cultural inputs in a haunted 1920s house in a dodgy suburban environment. It was an odd mix, but it made me who I am.
Anna: Growing up I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I’ve always had many irons in the fire and plans but one way or another being an artist always won out (over nursing as I can’t handle hand injuries, I have no aptitude for maths to make it as an architect, I thought Jillarooing would be my calling but I’m scared of animals and the dark and I don’t make a good teacher). I am also good at drawing and have been told so for most of my life, so the ego boost certainly helped drive the decision, as well as encouragement from teachers and parents. I blitzed my TEE mainly to beat my big sister Julia (she’s a science triple major nerd, and sibling rivalry is a powerful driver), and then went to TAFE to study 3D design as a gap year, interestingly, with my mum, who was in her third year. I learnt so many hands-on skills and was exposed to many practical ways of working, in contrast to the conceptual and not hands-on Bachelor of Arts at Curtin University, which I then went on to do. I also have a half-finished Master’s in Cultural Materials Conservation and a rekindled love of chemistry.
My Mum was an incredible woman who showed my sister and I how to be leaders, be creative and never let anyone call a grown woman a girl. She famously stood up in a huge Holistic Management conference in Perth and asked the presenter to stop calling the women girls. They became the greatest of friends and our farm business consultant for many years. My mum was the first female equine vet in WA, a teacher, a farmer (with my consistently and reliably quietly loving dad), a furniture designer, and then an artist. Growing up, my mum has been my biggest influence in staying curious and learning new skills, and that it’s worth investing in the right tools.
We also had no TV (until the 2000 Olympics), and Julia and I went to a Steiner school, which nurtured many of our values for creativity and the natural world.
What have been some of the highlights of your career, and what do you have coming up? Do you have a favourite project?
Abdul-Rahman: I’ve had a really fun career trajectory so far, with great opportunities arriving at the right intervals to keep me going, especially for a sculptor working in regional WA. Every day is a grind, and I‘m fairly obsessive about making art, but it’s also the best job in the world. I love it so much. Some highlights have been the big shows such as the Adelaide Biennial at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2016 and 2022, The National at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2019, a big solo show at John Curtin Gallery, Perth in 2021 and more recently great outcomes at the Australian art fairs Sydney Contemporary and Melbourne Art Fair in 2024.
As for the rest of this year, I can give you a run-down – I’m currently in a show called Five Acts of Love that just opened at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne with an incredible group of artists. I have a solo show at Moore Contemporary, Perth, in mid-August. I’m making new work for a show at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, in October that should tour to Perth Institute of Contemporary Art next year. I’m working on a set design project with Marrugeku. I have some mentoring projects on the go. I’m in a local show at Rockingham Art Centre, and finally, a bit of art prize judging. Anna and I have just secured our first collaborative public art project in Melbourne, working with the kids, and I’m working on a big solo show at Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney in February 2026. There is quite a bit of travel planned too, visiting Naarm, Gadigal, Yindjibarndi, Yawuru and Bardi countries. Also, family life doesn’t stop for work. I feel exhausted just listing it all!
Anna: This is the hardest question. No favourite project, but I do have artworks and creative mementoes from each of my curatorial projects around the house that I love. As many artists do, I also love to look at my own website to remind myself what I have achieved, especially when a new project is feeling hard.
My biggest career triumph would be the national tour of my solo exhibition The Good, co-commissioned by Dr Lee-Anne Hall of Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and Rachel Arndt of The Condensery & Wangaratta Art Gallery, which is touring to 11 regional galleries across Australia from 2023 until 2026. I had a mini survey show called When Night Falls at Maitland Regional Art Gallery in 2020 that feels like it put me on the map.
We are both proud of our regular collaborative projects, exhibiting with Fremantle Arts Centre, Goolugatup, West Space, and Castlemaine State Festival. In 2023, I was the inaugural winner of the $25,000 Girra: Fraser Coast National Art Prize at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery with a very personal work about my experience with birds after my mum died. I am working on a few projects at the moment, including a collaborative cross-cultural project with Jump Left, Art et al and TAB Space in Bandung, Indonesia, as well as working towards my next show with my commercial gallery, Jennings Kerr, in NSW.
Who is in your family, and what are their ages?
Abdul-Rahman: We have three children, our oldest daughter, Aziza is seven, our next daughter, Althea is five, and our boy, Aqeel is three.
Where are you based, and why did you choose this area?
Anna: We live on a multigenerational farm in Binjerab Nyoongar Boodja, 40km south of Boorloo/Perth. The kids are the 7th generation to grow up on the farm, which dates back to the original occupation by Thomas Peel. There are three family farms joined together, and a historical homestead on one that my sister Julia and I spent our childhood exploring. They have cellars, a whale cauldron, a shearing shed and stable attics, the Serpentine River and 3000 acres of bushland right next door. I still get so much joy out of exploring the farm, and I play a game with Abdul-Rahman where he sends me a photo from anywhere on the farm, and I have to guess exactly where and send the map pin! I get it right 95% of the time. The farm is home, and we are deeply connected to this place. Julia and her family (including my gorgeous nieces) live next door with my dad, and my mum is buried in the bush. I am fully conscious of the privilege it is to raise our kids on this land, outside and at peace.
Has becoming a parent changed your practice?
Anna: Absolutely, the stakes have become far higher with a family to feed. We’re both totally committed to each other, our home and family, as well as building our careers as artists. Our time is intensely scheduled, and we plan everything well in advance to keep the machine rolling. We’re both very organised and bring different strengths to the equation. Our kids drive us to do better, and each day is its own journey that doesn’t always go as planned. But most of all, we try to live a good life, filled with all the things we love!
What does your day-to-day look like, and how has this changed from previously?
Anna: Our shared Google calendar is a work of art in itself. I am an organisational nerd, and I did a calendar course that has literally changed our life. Prior to this, I had a paper calendar and Abdul-Rahman a Word doc, causing many missed communications and double bookings. We have the same job, and equality is very important to us, so our time with kids and work is 50/50 (unless one has a big deadline, then we take turns at the lion’s share). A large chunk of the day is spent driving the kids to and from school, 140km a day and about 3 hours. I now have a true appreciation of the labour my mum took on to take us to school!
Do you have any advice for creative parents?
Abdul-Rahman: My advice would be to include as much of your family world in your professional life. It’s your reality, and that’s what art does: it communicates different realities. Also, learn to sleep less.
Anna: I would second that and say that having kids forced me to let go of my employment and become an artist full time – and I ended up making more money that way. My identity as a mother is something that I bring to my work and projects, and I have largely found it to be a strength. The experiences I am having with the kids have inadvertently charted the direction of my ideas and projects. I don’t know about advice, but finding other art parents, especially ones who had a similar situation or even number of kids, was a revelation and has provided much support. I do have a practical suggestion. I did a mentorship with UK artist Lenka Clayton after Aziza was born, and I was floundering in my feelings towards my practice. It helped ground, guide and boost me so much. Afterwards, she set me up with an accountability buddy who I still talk to regularly, artist Camille Serisier, who, in our chats, has revolutionised the way we manage our money as a creative family! Relatable artist peers are the magic that makes this career possible.
What are your thoughts on the approach of the industry to parents? Have you found support or lack of?
Abdul-Rahman: My experience has been great so far. The art world that I choose to move in is mostly a progressive, inclusive, and welcoming space that is more than willing to accommodate families. In many cases, we have to drive that accommodation and offer solutions and strategies that make it possible, but people are understanding of what it means to be a parent. There’s always more work to do in the area, but there are so many good people working on it. It’s interesting to see that the majority of artists that I know don’t have children, while those working in the industry with job titles and superannuation are far more likely to have a family. It comes down to a level of security that artists often have to forgo, enough to see a real difference. I’d love to see that dynamic change, but I’m also totally supportive of whatever life choices people want to make and only hope that it is indeed a choice. Everybody’s circumstances are different.
Anna: On the whole, the industry is very conscious of being supportive of parents, and the people within it are very much so. Even so, the rhythms and opportunities do not fit well with family life, especially with small children or a large family. Many artists we know have a side gig as a lecturer or other work. It’s a hustle and a struggle, but a very good life.
Thank you for sharing! 🩷
Whoa talented couple alert!!!