Each year on the first of January I check my horoscope. Inevitably love needs a major transformative in avoidance of past mistakes, wealth is illusive and health promises challenges over the coming year. Eclipses and conjunctions suggest change. Nothing new there. Forecasters all seem to have the limited vision of the future. I couldn’t help but notice though that this year, according to the astrologer in my local paper, that creativity got a mention. Pluto, Mars and an eclipse around my birthday promise a ‘march of destiny’, ‘awareness of creative power’ and ‘material success’. So be it! My life as an artist is about to change direction. After seventy-five years of endless creative activity, of working a professional eight hours a day in the studio every day of the year, things are about to change.

There must be flashing light signs of this promised largesse that I’m missing. Somewhat perplexed I check of my calendar for the coming year which reveals the possibility of an exhibition late in the year in a remote country gallery, two maybe other showings, a hanging of several works in a local business and another open studio in August where no doubt the few that take the trouble, GPS in hand, will complain about the studio not being in the CBD.  Then there is the major art prize being for only under 30s, one gallery taking note only of artists with CVs boasting extensive sales records and prizes and another two serving the needs of recent graduates. There have been other promises – promises that a purchase is pending from a gallery, that a deposit is about to be paid by on a suite of works [….it’s so expensive] and that a friend of a friend is really interested. But, my local newspaper astrologer knows nothing of any of this. He’s talking about planetary alignments.

Does a profitable extension of my creativity really depend upon a lifeless desert of a planet in Mars and a planetary body downgraded in status in recent years? Apparently so. I did read that the orbit of Pluto is remarkably eccentric, passing within the gravitational pull and orbit of a gas giant on its endless journey around the sun. That I can relate to as an artist – eccentricity. My orbit around humanity has always taken an odd path. I’ve put that down to having a different view of the purpose of life which few seem to share although I’m in good company with fellow eccentrics Picasso, Bacon and Rodin who were all Scorpios and not noted as followers of convention or in fact followers at all. Eccentric barely covers it.

As a Scorpio I’m designated as independent, condescending, arrogant and elitist – something else I have in common with noted Scorpio artists.  Being largely antisocial has more to do with an inability to tolerate the less logical and driven than anything else but being a Scorpio also puts me well down the list of creative signs in spite of Abramovic, Monet, Vermeer, Magritte, Serra and Mapplethorpe all being Scorpios. In zodiac terms Virgos get the main creative prize – Ingres, Ai Wei Wei, that organiser of bricks Carl Andre and Grandma Moses are or were all Virgos. However, if popularity and success are the order of the day then I was born at entirely the wrong part of the year. Leo’s have it all – notably that well-known self-publicist Andy Warhol and that oddball Marcel Duchamp.

Being born in the northern summer may also help. Or not, as the case may be. A quick survey of zodiac success among Australian artists revealed that not only has the Australian winter not turned up anyone of any importance but that no one has bothered to compile lists at all – this being Australia where the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome is at work. If you get too big for your britches then you get cut off at the knees unless you are a sports hero and then they erect a statue. Being a long way from the northern hemisphere obviously changes perspectives. Well known Australian thrill-seeker artist Brett Whitely was born in Aries. According to astrologers, the presence of Aries always marks the beginning of something energetic and turbulent – and that’s Whitely to a T even if a high profile and major success ended up killing him in an obscure motel on the edge of nowhere.  Success for Whitely came from leaving Australia not staying here which was also true of musicians The Seekers, The Bee Gees, Olivia Newton-John and Kylie Minogue. Perhaps all of their collective horoscopes mentioned travel broadening the mind and lining the pockets.

In truth there are major creatives and successful artists in every zodiac sign so creative. success must be down to other factors as well. Perhaps time and patience are factors. Pluto takes 248 years to circumnavigate the sun.  My time may well not have come in spite of astrological projections of bumper creativity in 2023 but with increased human longevity, I might just make the next rotation.