Canvasing the World with Sean Diediker

-My name is Sean Diediker, and I'm a painter.

I've always designed my paintings based on travel and chance.

I love exploring the human condition as I look to find beauty in true, unscripted reality and then documenting that experience with paint.

I love merging the craft of Old World masters with modern-day media to create and share unique windows into humanity.

Join me as I canvas the world to explore the interplay between art and the human condition, every episode a place, every episode a painting.

-Aboriginal people -- they're the First peoples of Australia.

They were the people who were here for tens of thousands of years.

-There are pieces of evidence that have been found down around Lake Mungo that indicate 60,000 years.

Maybe humankind originated here, and it wasn't out of Africa.

It was out of this place because after all, this, Australia, is the oldest continent in the world.

-I'm always looking for people who can take a simple idea and evolve it into greatness.

Just outside of Sydney in the Blue Mountains, I found a tree house unlike any other... ...an extraordinary piece of architecture built around a turpentine tree.

Then drove up its creator, Lionel, a man of few words but many smiles.

Lionel works with sustainable materials to build structures that harmoniously coexist with the surrounding environment.

Lionel offered to drive me around the mountain and show me more of his work.

That's the guy.

That's the man with the plan.

He introduced me to Luke, one of his creative partners.

-...here, and we just... -And they showed me how they turned a 4-1/2-ton stone cube into a bathtub.

-It's made for two people, and it's called the star bath so you can lie back on the roof of the cave in the bath and look at the stars.

-It was obvious that these guys are master stonemasons.

-We cut right through here, and cut through here.

-However, what they did to a nearby cave was beyond words.

There are very few times in life that you literally get a step into somebody else's dream.

When I walked through the little round door, I knew I was doing exactly that.

They had even carved the history of the area into the cave walls.

Standing in Lionel's cave, you can't help but absorb the creative ambition resonating within its walls.

And with any luck, I'll be able to carry some of that back to the studio.

Lionel graciously allowed me to stay a few nights in his tree house.

After the sun went down at the tree house, there was a knock at the door, followed by a bearded German.

All right.

And what's your name?

-My name is Jochen.

-He suggested there was something quite rare recently discovered down in the valley below.

-Yeah, we only found it about six months ago which was a huge surprise considering, you know, we've had the property for about 15 years.

I mean, coming... -It was pitch-black outside, and we were in the middle of nowhere.

Perhaps daylight hours might be better.

He said, "No.

It's something you can only see at night."

-We'll discover that as we go down.

There's actually, like, an -- The track is probably more interesting down here.

There's a creek.

Here's a waterfall, so there'll be plenty of good opportunities as well.

You're going to see them in a sec.

So we'll just get everyone to turn their lights off now and just have a look over here at the wall.

You're going to be amazed.

-Oh, whoa.

They're called glowworms.

It's one of those experiences that really challenge the senses because you can't tell where the stone ends and the night sky begins.

This is what the canyon looks like during the day, and this is the same canyon at night.

-But little did we know up until about seven months ago that there was in fact glowworms here.

-So we're some of the first to see these guys.

-Absolutely.

This is really new.

They've actually got a web so they can catch little insects, little flying insects, and how do they do that?

Well, they glow, and so if you think of a moth that flies towards a light glow, that's exactly the same principle, just on a tiny scale.

-And are these found all over the world?

-Just in Australia and New Zealand, this species.

-Staying in Lionel's tree house and exploring the forest with Jochen ignited my curiosity about the history of the Blue Mountains.

So I set out to learn a little more.

-[ Speaking Ngiyambaa ] -A few miles up the track from Sydney, I met up with Aboriginal elder John Oats, a descendant of the Ngiyampaa Wayilwan people, but more commonly referred to as Uncle John, who graciously offered to take me into the sacred bushlands near Yengo Mountain to help me understand a little more about Australia's First people.

I'm not sure if it was coincidence, but I saw more Australian wildlife in my one day with Uncle John than I did on any of my previous visits combined.

-There he goes.

There he goes.

Good.

He's looking straight at you.

[ Speaking Ngiyambaa ] -Not long after we set up camp, we heard a rustling in the grass behind us.

We were obviously on his turf, so we just stood still as he casually inspected us.

Then entered a challenger.

-Oh!

-Confident in his victory... You are the king, buddy.

...he decided to charge me as well.

And that's when we decided it was time to go.

We visited many sites considered holy to the Aboriginal people... ...some of which I was asked not to film, and of course I respected that.

Others were right beneath my feet.

-[ Speaks Ngiyambaa ] There's another one that I showed you right here.

Very early on when, you know, some of the first settlements were made all over Australia, there was a lot of it, resistance, right?

Aboriginal saw it, first of all, as a visit that turned into an invasion.

After the killing times up until the 1830s or '40s, those who were left, Aboriginal people, were rounded up into reserves and into missions and were given work on a lot of the cattle stations and things like that, so there was a lot of mixed marriages, and, you know, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal parents having light-skinned babies such as myself.

In those days, the government would look at someone like me and say, "He needs to be taken so that we can protect him.

He has to be 'protected' from living with Aboriginal people."

So to protect light-skinned Aboriginal kids, "protect," right, they were taken away and supposedly trained to be part of white society.

They were dragging kids out of classrooms, dragging kids out of homes, dragging kids off reserves, grabbing kids at bus stops with police and government officials.

-Where were they taken?

-Taken to the institutions.

The boys were put in homes and trained to become farm laborers.

The girls were put in homes and institutions and trained to become domestic servants.

A lot of people were taken away and never saw their parents again.

A lot of people were taken away and never saw their brothers and sisters or cousins or aunts and uncles or grandparents again, and a lot of people, as a result of that, were absolutely, totally traumatized and became lost.

Which view of the world do you want?

Do you want one that shares the true spirit and belonging of the place, or do you want to go along with the dispossessors?

It's up to the next generation to make the change.

It's up to the next generation to help everybody in Australia see the world through Aboriginal eyes.

-Further.

-Okay, Blackbutt Lookout.

-That's it.

That's it.

-Pinnacle Lookout.

-That's it.

-There we go, open.

It's perfect.

I have always painted and drawn and painted since I was little.

I've always been creative.

-There's the two points.

-Ah, okay, those two.

The ultimate message I am trying to convey through my work is that we are pieces of the earth itself, that even despite the fact that us humans seem to live as if we're not, we literally are little pieces of the earth, and there's a story being played out here for us to recognize.

I started this process, Merging with the Earth project, which is all about painting the First people of the world into their lands, in Australia, and I started working with a guy called Gavin Ivy who is a Minjungbal man from the Bundjalung nation tribe which is northern New South Wales.

The First people of the land have a very strong connection with the Earth that is intrinsic to our existence but also to our ability to come clean with our conscious here.

Ultimately when we get together to do this, we're entering into a ceremonial experience of honoring our connection to the earth, and so the experience itself is of far greater meaning than the final artwork.

-As Aboriginal people, as indigenous people, it's such a gift to be able to just merge into your country, you know?

I'm speechless.

And this is another way of, you know, letting people know who we are and how we relate to the country and each other.

-I don't think it's the same as panting on a canvas because the canvas isn't necessarily feeling whether you're upset.

That's why we can paint as artists when we're sad, when we're upset, just paint it out.

It's amazing, but you cannot do that on a human.

The most difficult part of the process would have to be the ability to communicate the depth of this experience before people have the experience to develop a sense of immediate trust.

The hardest part would have to just be holding space for the people to have an experience that is like none other that they've ever had before.

-"Holding space," I like how you said that, "holding space."

I'll remember that.

-So, in the end, when Dad wasn't around, my brother and I were taken.

We were taken down to Sydney to live in the Sutherland Shire, and growing up, we were denied that connection to our Aboriginal belonging, to our Aboriginal family.

We were never told anything about Aboriginal people.

Living with Aboriginal people, I would have been living with my grandparents.

I would have been living with my uncles and aunts.

I would have been living with dozens of cousins.

I would have been part of a beautiful, strong family group that looked after everyone and everything.

So I was lost.

I was really lost.

How do you destroy a people?

How do you destroy a nation?

You destroy their families.

Take them away from their family, from their land, and from their culture.

Then, after years and years, my brother organized a meeting with our Aboriginal grandmother, Nansmes, and I went along.

I think she'd come down from the bush, and she was at Campbelltown at one of our auntie's places, and soon as Nan saw me, she gave me the biggest cuddle and a kiss and then sat down and for at least three hours, held my hand and told me all about everyone and everything.

She said, "Out of all the kids that have been stolen, very, very few come back, but you've come back."

Said, "Don't forget.

Please, don't ever, ever forget us, and don't forget who you are and where you belong."

-"Canvasing the World" fine art reproductions printed on pearl linen and museum-quality cotton rag are now available.

To order your own fine art reproduction of "The Stolen Generations" or any editions from the "Canvasing the World" television series, please visit ctwgallery.com.

-If you'd like more information on the series or a peek at what's currently on Sean's canvas, you can follow "Canvasing the World" on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, or visit us at canvasingtheworld.tv.

-[ Speaking Ngiyambaa ] O0 -I like using old photographs in my creative process because they're real little time capsules.

There's something about taking a photograph of real people in the circumstance that you're exploring and putting my own artistic voice to that photograph to build a new composition.

To me, it feels a little bit more authentic.

For my painting "The Stolen Generations," it was important that I recognize some of the people that this actually happened to, some of the people that were taken and that actual frozen piece of time, so I did use a lot of old photographs to do that, and I would take bits and pieces from one and bits and pieces from another, and I came up with an original composition based on those old photographs.

I like to use a lot of symbolism in my paintings.

Most of the composition is carefully considered.

I don't, however, like to explain all the symbolism.

I like to viewers to find out what they think on their own.

-The thing that touched me the most about the Blue Mountains is of course John Oats' story of a stolen generation.

That dynamic was a similar dynamic in Canada where the native Canadian children had been taken from their homes and put in a residential school, and that would be run by the government, run by the church, and the idea was that this would be a better dynamic for these young people.

They would be raised speaking English.

They would be raised in a different culture, and somehow that would be better for the young people.

As a Canadian, in the early '90s, I traveled along the tundra in Northern Canada.

I've been to some of these schools and native reservations.

When I saw this had happened to John Oats and the stolen generation, it really impacted me because I had had experience of that.

I had seen that in real life.

It's devastating to think that that actually happened, and the last residential school for native Canadian kids closed in 1996, so to imagine that that perpetuated for that length of time, it's unbelievable.

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