The Life of Toni Burt

I had the incredible opportunity to profile an interesting person for one of my Uni assignments. In the process I met the incredible Toni Burt and had the privilege of getting to know about her mixed media life and what makes her tick. I also spoke to Jackie Barragan, an American artist and friend of Toni's. It was lovely to learn about an industry I had otherwise known nothing about. The article below is the finished version accompanied with a few photos I took of Toni's artwork in her studio and at the Donna Downey workshop at Joybells Scrapbooking. Please check out Toni's website http://www.toniburt.com.au and Jackie's Facebook page here.

With an obvious French provincial influence, her house is a home. It is seasoned with a feminine character through its shabby chic furnishings and paintings that line the walls. The soft cream paint and open French doors are genuinely welcoming, like a warm hug on an early winter’s morning. Fresh country air fills the atmosphere as nature surrounds the petite cottage. Homemade soaps sit side by side in the quaint bathroom.

A large horizontal canvas covers the main wall in her art studio. It’s shades of pink. There are stamps of feathers dangling from dainty dream catchers, detailed with hints of forest and lime greens. It’s covered in layers and layers of different papers and textures, showcasing Toni Burt’s love for mixed media.

“You don’t have to sit there with a blank piece of paper, or blank canvas in front of you and start drawing.

“You basically just keep putting down layers and layers and layers of different material and eventually it ends up being something.”

Amid the precious canvas is a cluttered corner of priced goods, readily awaiting their sale. But the money earned from this simply isn’t enough for mixed media artist Toni, to hold on to her home.

Toni’s cottage is a reflection of her as a person. Like the shabby chic interior, she has a soft and genuine persona, warm and welcoming. She is a soulful lady with a passion to inspire others. Her personality extends to her artwork as she has hope for her art to “evoke an emotion in people”.

At 49, Toni has had a distinguished life. She was born in New Zealand and is the eldest of four children. Her mother abandoned them when she was four, leaving her father to pick up the pieces. This had a dramatic impact on Toni’s independence and the way she leads her life. From plumbing to planting, she does everything for herself having never relied on anyone.

She has always been one of those arty-crafty types, someone who likes to make stuff. In high school she took all of the practical and creative subjects like woodwork and photography, thriving off the ability to get her hands dirty.

After leaving school before the end of Grade 11 she took up secretarial courses, before moving to the US and living in both California and Seattle. But it wasn’t until Toni arrived home that she decided to pursue a career and go to University. She enrolled at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane and studied interior design.

“It wasn’t throwing cushions around and picking colours,” says Toni, having worked on huge commercial projects with architecture firms. She was involved in the Prince Charles Hospital and Griffith University redevelopments, which eventually led to project managing in construction.

But it was after losing her job in 2014, that she took six months off and started mixed media. After taking some online art courses she realised she didn’t want to go back to the stress and took up art full-time.

Jackie Barragan, an American artist and friend of Toni’s, says “what first captivated me about Toni were the beautiful, whimsical girls she paints.

“Just as lovely as the girls’ faces were the words that accompany them.”

Alike many of her followers, Jackie was initially drawn to the faces that feature amongst the layers of sheet music, texture paste and vintage imagery. But these artworks aren’t planned and Toni simply makes it up as she goes along. This is a common theme for her life as she waits for opportunities to come to her, rather than plan for the future.

“That’s the kind of life I want to lead now.

“I don’t want to try and plan and work everything out in advance, because I have found that over my life that the best things that happen just kind of pop up on your path.”

There is something very spiritual about this whole process and although she doesn’t have a plan for her girls, they come from a place of soul searching. This is furthered through the inspirational messages in each of her finished products. “Align with spirit” are the three little words that feature in her latest artwork. They were whispered in her ear as she was sitting in the forest near her house, meditating.

She attributes her Dad as an influential power on her spirit journey. He died from leukemia when she was 13 but she feels closest to him, even now.

“I feel like he has been looking after me this whole time”.

While Toni admits she is someone who would be happy to turn back the clock and live in a little house on the prairie, doing and making everything for herself, she turned to the Internet as a way of connecting with artists.

After being approached to be a guest teacher for “Let’s Face It”, an online art course run by Kara Bullock in the US, Toni started filming, editing and publishing videos for herself. These clips show Toni in her studio creating art, showing the process from blank page to finished piece. Her channel has more than 40 000 views.

However despite having had her work published in a line of greeting cards in Australia and the UK, as well as selling a variety of her pieces online and becoming a teacher for “Let’s Face It”, Toni has to give up her shabby chic cottage; the place she has called home for the last six years.

Her home sits in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, the country as Toni calls it. She never had any intention to live here, having been a city girl her whole life, but she bought the home as an investment property and fell in love.

The sad truth is that she isn’t making enough money to support herself with her art taking over every aspect of her life. Toni spends around 80 hours a week committed to her art, mostly promoting herself on Facebook, which leaves little time for the properties maintenance. Although she could get herself a full-time job, doing something similar to her role in construction, she feels like “art is her thing”. It’s a sacrifice she is willing to make in order to pursue the passion she loves.

Toni will inevitably have to close her French doors one last time, saying goodbye to a place of inspiration and the sanctuary that began her path as a mixed media artist. For the time being she is searching for a new home something that “has to have a soul”.

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