“It feels good that I didn’t have a boring life”: Waroona artist Carmen Tyrer shares her art journey

From humble beginnings as an art-infatuated dentist living in a politically unsound Chile, to a renowned Australian artist, Waroona resident Carmen Tyrer has shared her story. The entry to Ms Tyrer’s house is a gallery of its own, clay masks of South American influence strewn across the exterior fence lead into rows of carefully crafted sculptures, paintings and mosaics, each one Ms Tyrer says is a reflection of her story. “I feel a bit funny about it actually, because it may be looked at as ‘oh she’s full of herself’, but it’s not that, it is just an emotional load, the pain that I went through,” she said. Ms Tyrer’s story starts in Chile, during a time of political unrest, the 1973 Chilean coup d’état — a military coup that deposed the left-wing government of President Salvador Allende and saw the repression of political activity through an established junta — was fast approaching and her small family needed to make ends meet. The monetary pressures that a career in art could not satisfy at the time led Ms Tyrer to study dentistry, however her inkling towards the world of art was still there. “I couldn’t do much art because we had to knit to pay for my studies — my mum, my brother and I — we knitted little baby suits, I worked the knitting machine, my mum knitted by hand and my brother had to make the balls (of yarn),” she said. “I worked on pieces of brass, I used to etch pieces and put them in nitric acid and my brother used to clean and polish them and they would go to an artisans fair in the main city which was a tourist city.” During the height of the 1973 military coup, after being asked by the Red Cross to perform dentistry on political prisoners, Ms Tyrer was abruptly laid off and told she could only practice privately. “Something happened, and we (Ms Tyrer and two colleagues) were sacked,” she said. “I had my own practice, but I didn’t own the building and only had the equipment I was renting, people came and only had the tooth pulled out that hurt, they couldn’t afford anything else,” she said. Ms Tyrer said after an epiphany and a sense of determination she turned to the Red Cross for help and was given one month to decide to immigrate to either Venezuela or Australia. “We had to sell as much as possible because we didn’t have money, so I sold my car, everything was in a rush, I just closed my eyes and we were in the plane,” she said. Now a renowned artists whose work has featured in galleries across Australia, Ms Tyrer reflects on her affinity towards art as a child and the tactility of creating something. “Since I was little I loved to do things by hand, sewing with my grandmother, knitting with all my aunties, cooking, that’s how it started,” she said. “It feels good that I didn’t have a boring life,” she said. Ms Tyrer’s art has been the feature of the Waroona Visitors Centre throughout April and May where residents can view her array of unique felting, crochet, sculpting, card-making and cold porcelain artistic works.