Margaret River Region Open Studios returns with artist Chloe Wilder at her Dirt Temple Wines new home studio

While artist Chloe Wilder has been involved in many Margaret River Region Open Studios, this year will be the first in her new studio for the event. Calling Dirt Temple Wines home means the studio was, unsurprisingly, an old winery shed that Wilder and her partner Alex — who took on running the Osmington family vineyard from his parents — have painstakingly converted over the past two years into a multipurpose space. “Alex is a cook and does a bit of catering, so we’ve added a commercial kitchen in here as well,” says 36-year-old Wilder, who is mother to four-year-old Herbie and eight-year-old Iggy. “It’s our office, it’s our kitchen, it’s our studio, it’s our kids’ playroom sometimes. When you’re a parent and an artist, chaos reigns and it’s very hard to find that environment where you have full control. “It’s a dream to one day have a studio that remains a studio solely all the time, and I can leave oil paints out on a table for six months, have them all solidified to the desk and not have to think about cleaning it up later. We just need the kids to get a little bit bigger, so I don’t have to worry about having art sitting out without getting a football kicked through it.” Wilder is one of 150 artists in the region welcoming visitors to their usually private studios in September for the 12th annual Margaret River Region Open Studios. The 16-day event brings artists and art-lovers together for a special opportunity to explore creative spaces and artistic practices. Born and raised in New Zealand, Wilder came to Australia as an 18-year-old, having always viewed art as her escape from a rough childhood. “It was one of those things that I would just get so immersed in,” she shares. “It’s like being in another world . . . so when I was dealing with the most trauma, I was making a lot of art around that time as well, because it was such an escape. “Even now, I still kind of disassociate, but in a more positive way. My partner will walk up behind me and place a hand on my shoulder, and I’ll jump out of my skin because I haven’t heard him coming. It’s almost like jet lag, it’s very weird where your brain’s in a different place to your body.” Wilder’s passion for animals and a very intense sense of justice in her early to mid-20s originally took her down the career path to environmental scientist. It was while working on Two Moons Whale and Research Station on the Dampier Peninsula, north of Broome, surveying population and behavioural studies for humpback whales that the seed was planted by a colleague to pursue painting as more than just a way to pass time on the research base. “He was the only person that had ever even suggested that it could be possible to actually do that (art) as a job,” she says. “I’d always considered it to be something that I do purely out of passion. Just that one random person that existed in my life, having a small amount of belief that that could be possible, really lit a fire under my a. . . so I moved to Melbourne and studied art at RMIT, and I’ve been going on all cylinders ever since.” Visitors to Wilder’s studio will likely find the painter and ceramics artist at her most comfortable, with paintbrush in hand, and ready for conversation. “I’m a little bit of a hermit gremlin human and I do work in isolation a lot,” she says. “One of the things I love the most is talking to people, because I think explaining the reasons why I make certain kinds of artwork helps quantify them, not only with the people that I’m talking to, but with myself as well. Sometimes I might even reveal to myself new ideas for why I did something. “They might leave with a better understanding of you as an artist. They might leave with a better understanding of themselves. Those moments are the ones that I love with having people visit the studio.” Margaret River Region Open Studios is on September 13 to 28. Dirt Temple is at 1654 Osmington Road, Osmington. Full program of participating artists at mrropenstudios.com.au.