THE ARTS

Painting it Forwards

Author/ Being Neighbourly
14 November 2024

“I didn’t expect you to wait on me...”

Lindsey McAlister

I had seen photographs of Lindsey McAlister, looking peacock-like at various arty events, but I wasn’t sure if she would be outfitted as vibrantly to meet me in the more pedestrian setting of Emmer, Pacific Place. Would I have to work a little harder to spot her, I wondered? I am not disappointed, and once I’m finally seated after getting our drinks, “I didn’t expect you to wait on me,” she tells me, she says she always dresses like an artist.

McAlister hands over her self-designed business card, which bears some very important letters after her name, not just the ‘OBE’ I’d expected from her biography but a ‘JP’. I do a double take. But McAlister is nonchalant: “They probably didn’t have many people to give awards to that year…” She’s disarmingly modest about her achievements, which impresses and I would later leave, warmly hugged, feeling like I’d made a new friend.

Frankly, there’s very little that’s not impressive about McAlister, and her story bears all the hallmarks of myth with her stratospheric rise from ordinary beginnings in Southport in the north west of England to the dizzying heights of the position she occupies in the creative world in today’s Hong Kong. “Moving to Hong Kong, I was able to reinvent myself,” she shares.

An art graduate, she, nevertheless, settled on theatre when she arrived in late 1980’s colonial Hong Kong, and took out all her money to produce her first festival. Eventually, her efforts eventuated in the founding of the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation (formerly, the HK Youth Arts Festival), an organization that now employs 800,000 young people annually and is in its thirty-first year. “If you know anyone who wants to try out, we’re holding auditions”, she ventures. Auditions are for McAlister’s latest production on the environment.

“Creativity is in my DNA. If I don’t create, I feel sick.”

Lindsey McAlister

“My son is very gloomy about the environment”, she says, adding that he wasn’t keen for her to write a play about it. However, once she had, presenting a more positive take in which his generation enact change,” he came around, she adds.

Note: If the interview were to stop now at McAlister’s achievements in youth theatre, writing scripts, casting actors and even directing choreography, I’d already have a great story, but as with any good script, there’s a twist… She continues: “During Covid, I was cooped up at home and I couldn’t go out and do my usual things. So, I went back to my beginnings as an artist”. She began to dabble in multi-media art using tools that weren’t there in her youth, summoning her imagination digitally. She founded Crafty Bitch and fast forward a few years, there’s a complimentary stream of her artwork: Lindsey McAlister Fine Art; and she has procured gallery representation.

“Creativity is in my DNA. If I don’t create anything, I actually feel sick after a couple of days”, she shares, adding that her creative process comes naturally. Thankfully, she’s in good hands when it comes to being ill: she met her surgeon husband after a fall during rehearsals. “I banged my head and he put me back together,” she laughs.

From theatre to art, it’s hard not to be swept along by the creative force that is McAlister — a woman who is a natural at the things she’s doing, and who you sense is deeply appreciative that she’s found her calling. She is also keen to pay her opportunities forward. “Just message me!” she shouts once we’ve said goodbye and I’m retreating into the distance.

Being Neighbourly welcomes Lindsey McAlister’s participation in our inaugural art exhibition, Transitions, November 21-25 at the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre.

McAlister shares 3 things that have influenced her creatively

Dame Zandra Rhodes, veteran British fashion designer

‘Life is Art, Art is Life’ is a quote that resonates with me. I am my art, and the way I dress and accessorise is like creating an artwork. As a younger person, I wasn’t as flamboyant as I am now, but I was mesmerised by photos of then fashionista Zandra Rhodes (now, Dame Zandra Rhodes) a pioneer of the British and international fashion scene since the late 1960s. I now have her vibe… and love it!

Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s pattern qualities and colour choices

At Art College, we studied the work of Gustav Klimt, the Austrian symbolist painter. It was his pattern qualities and colour choices that really appealed to me. There is a bold use of colour in his work with symbolic images inspired by nature. My most recent work reminds me a little of some of his bold pattern choices.

The work of German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch

As well as being a visual artist, I am a playwright, choreographer and theatre director. There are so many similarities in the way I create in all art forms. I start with nothing — a blank page, stage or canvas and then, whatever the medium (actors, dancers, written word or paint), I use texture, colour, emotion and energy to create meaning. I have been very much influenced by Bausch’s ‘total’ theatre style.