Change of art - Nola Diamantopulous

By Michele Roach

Tax manager turned artist? Believe it. Nola had never studied art until she decided, at 37, to become an artist.

Nola Diamantopoulos was once a worldwide tax manager in the oil and gas industry. Five years ago she decided to become an artist. The transition was neither natural nor easy; in fact, it barely seems possible - until you speak to Nola, and glimpse some of the determination and humility it took to get her here. Her message: creativity is essential in all our lives. She hopes this is finally getting through to business leaders and educators.

What I want to know is how on earth did she move from tax to art? "One day I asked myself: What am I going to do next?" Nola explains. "I realised I was really trying to answer the wrong question, which was: 'What can I do?'

"Instead I asked myself: Who do I want to be? That opened about a billion doors." She rolls her eyes. "It was very long and scary answering that." She took a huge piece of paper and some pens and brainstormed with herself. At the end she looked at her piece of paper for the answer.

"There was nothing there to suggest this, but I thought, 'I'm going to be an artist.' It was a moment of total excitement. The only thing I had to do then was learn how to paint and draw!" At the time she was trying to paint some icons as a gift for a nephew. "They were very, very bad."

The strangest, most courageous thing about her decision was the fact that Nola was a complete art novice. On her own admission she knew zilch about art. "I didn't do art at school. This sounds terrible, but I didn't even go to art galleries. But I had to do something creative. I recognised that I was only excited in my managerial role when I was being creative."

Journey from tax to art

Nola resigned from her job three weeks after making her decision, but was asked to stay another year when her company was taken over. In the meantime, she was drawing every day and learning everything she could about art and art history.

The job finally over, Nola made her home into a studio; that lasted six months. Then she got her own studio. How did people react? "Well -" she laughs. "My family just wanted me to be happy, so long as I had some sort of income. But of course, they didn't realise how serious I was when I made the decision.

"It was only when I held my first solo exhibition that everybody took what I was doing seriously."

Making it alone

At first Nola tried some art classes but as a beginner was frustrated. "There were always so many people who knew a lot more, and I knew nothing," she says. She tried to find a master by attending exhibitions and meeting the artists and offering to work for them for free, to learn. But she found that a closed shop as well. "I didn't want to steal anyone's ideas. I guess I just wanted a mentor."

After that she turned to the masters in her art books and became her own teacher. "One of the things I did was to draw every single day from a master, to borrow their eyes. Not to become them but to see what they saw, to see what I couldn't see. Slowly I learnt the language of drawing.

Eventually, Nola incorporated teaching into what she was doing. "I was in my own studio, and I established a weekend workshop with a very simple formula: one weekend workshop, once a month, and whatever I earned paid the rent.

Barriers? Bah!

Negative comments from other people weren't a major obstacle; according to Nola, she had to break through her own doubts, her own limiting beliefs. One of them was that her drawing wasn't improving. She couldn't see it, because originally she'd draw and screw up the paper and throw it out. She started to put her drawings up in her hallway, open to the gaze of anybody who came in.

"I found myself explaining about things that took me three hours, 'Oh yeah, I just knocked that up in ten minutes,' because I was embarrassed that it didn't look so great. Then I decided to stop explaining - if someone says they like it, thanks; if they're not really keen on it, thanks. It doesn't really matter.

"I'm not suggesting you shouldn't take criticism," she says. "Otherwise you're fooling yourself. But it's important to recognise that anything you're doing at any point in time is where you are to the moment."

Live to create, create to live

It's Nola's central belief that self-expression is vital in our lives and that we need creativity to survive and grow. "It's a need that must be nurtured, like water, breath, love," she says. In corporate life, she believes, the only time anyone gets excited is when they're creative. For example, as a tax advisor she never felt excited when she was reproducing information she'd learnt. But it was exciting to work on a big transaction like an acquisition and find a creative solution to a tax law problem.

Our education system with its focus on exams isn't about knowledge, but about giving 'correct' answers. We're an answer-driven society. However, the fact that companies are now interested in team-building and realise that businesses need to be innovative to grow suggests a change is taking place. "If companies need to innovate to grow, that means the people within those companies need to be innovative," says Nola. "This is a very significant shift for people on a personal level."

Finding out where you want to innovate can be a revelation. "I like to do what I call a 'desire check'," says Nola. "People say to me, 'I can't cook,' and they feel a failure. I say, 'Well, do you want to cook?' 'Actually, no.' Look at the language - 'I can't'. But what is it you want? I feel where people are now is not knowing what they want any more, they haven't stopped to reflect about what it is they're doing in their lives."

I guess the complicated part is switching streams midlife. "You know how easy it is?" We both look around the studio. "It's like falling in love. When you're interested in someone you go out of your way to get your outcome. Translate that desire to anything else in life. Ambition doesn't do it. Money doesn't do it."

What's this about passion?

What does Nola get out of her life of art? "A shine in my eyes!" Could she ever lose her passion for it? "Think about it - here I have the studio, I get excited wondering who's going to come in today, I'm excited about teaching, I'm thrilled that I'm given the opportunity to work on commissions and I can never wait to get started."

However, the word 'passion' is probably too confronting a concept for many of us. "I find 'passion' a really strong word; I tend to use 'desire'," Nola says. "If you have a really strong desire to go for something and you have total integrity in that, and you pursue that, doors open. I could not have imagined the doors that have opened, and the life that I have now. It overwhelms me at times.

Nola runs Mosaic Madness, which offers Mosaic Madness and Art for Strictly Beginners courses. You can contact Nola on (02) 9818 7471 or visit the website: www.mosaicmadness.com.au

Michele Roach is Senior Editor at Editor.com, which provides proofing, editing, writing and training for clients across a range of industries, including finance and high tech. Contact Michele on 0405 134 381 or visit Editor.com's website: www.editor.com.