Creativity
and Practice
with Paul Mallam
image by Field
words by KaldorPaul Mallam paints two different self-portraits.
One is on the website of Mallam Law (which he founded 12 years ago, after moving on from the partnership of a national firm). In this portrait, Mallam is shown in a suit and tie and reading glasses with sleek frames. He looks relaxed and confident, like he’s just been fielding questions from audience members after delivering a presentation in a hotel conference room. He is friendly and credible – the perfect mix for the blue chip telecom clients that have trusted his advice for over three decades.
The other is his Archibald Prize entry from 2014, “The card player”. Here the mix is inverted: we see a flamboyant outfit – loud shirt and pork pie hat (“the kind of flash thing my father would have worn”) – paired with an expression that is pensive, bordering on skeptical. His hands clench five playing cards. Mallam, who is also a photographer, understands the power of gesture – and this gesture says that the character is at once playful and secretive. He looks like someone who might have interesting ideas about epistemology, but you probably wouldn’t expect him to share his knowledge about the latest ACMA guidelines.
Like all of us who balance the personal and professional images of ourselves, there is a tension between Mallam the lawyer and Mallam the artist – even though he’s had plenty of experience (and success) wearing each of those hats.
When Laws of Creativity speaks to Mallam, he is more “The card player” than “Mallam Law”.
His patterned shirt is a dizzying backdrop for the object he’s brought along to the photo shoot: an orange paper-maché tiger with a detachable head, which he picked up at an art and craft fair in Delhi. The object reflects a lifelong interest in India. Before law and art, Mallam studied Indian history and culture – and he’s currently working on a series of small landscapes that follow in the Indian tradition of miniature paintings.
But there are still glimpses of the lawyer, who occasionally appears to excuse the eccentricities of the painter:
I usually talk with my hands … I am surprisingly expressive when I talk. I don't realise it because it's natural, but a lot of lawyers aren't very expressive when they talk. I happen to be.
Despite their different outfits, the men in both portraits have a uniform respect for practice: “if you want to be very good at a skill” – whether it’s law or painting or anything else – “you have to practice every day”. And for Mallam, practice doesn’t just mean time in the studio (or the office), it also means seeking out “people who are much better than you”, emulating their work and absorbing their advice.
“Practice, practice, practice”: this is the common thread that stitches together Mallam’s best appearance, whether he’s wearing a suit or a pork pie hat.
Mallam remembers being reprimanded by a teacher at art school for thinking “like a lawyer”. He explains the lesson he took from that episode: “I was looking for a solution to a problem. I wasn't seeing that the problem can actually be the creative edge.”
Practice may well be the shared means for Mallam’s success in law and art, but it has divergent ends in each field. For law, he believes the practitioner seeks out the ideal state, the clichéd “perfection”:
There can be very serious consequences … So you have to spend a lot of time being absolutely right. When you give an opinion, when you draft a contract, you have to be very sure of the solution.
This heavy burden might explain why Mallam feels that “studying art intensively … has not changed” his approach to law.
If the aim of legal practice is to ‘make perfect’, creative practice is about making mistakes. Mallam remembers being reprimanded by a teacher at art school for thinking “like a lawyer”. He explains the lesson he took from that episode: “I was looking for a solution to a problem. I wasn't seeing that the problem can actually be the creative edge.”
For Mallam the artist, rigorous practice is a ritual that helps him access the essence of creativity: being “childlike”, harnessing a “sense of play and fun” to achieve “constant reinvention”. (Mallam also thinks reinvention is important in organisations: after 21 years at the national firm, he felt his departure would enable “regeneration” and opportunities for others.)
Whether he’s seeking perfection or reinvention, Mallam ultimately recognises that practice – although critical – is not enough on its own. You also need “the randomness of human creativity”. On this point, “The card player” acknowledges the influence of 20th century philosopher, Paul Feyerabend.
By the end of our conversation, Mallam’s portraits of law and art are again converging.
They now look more like masterpieces from the same studio, rather than works produced in separate periods or by disparate techniques. In both images, the brilliance lies with the ability of a seasoned practitioner to take an unexpected leap – maybe even unexpected for themselves.
And that unified image happens to look a lot like Mallam. As a lawyer, he aims to “deconstruct problems and … look for inventive solutions”. Making the jump to a creative solution is perhaps only possible when you’re first able to lay the stable platform of experience.
His art fits within the same frame. He’s recently been challenging himself to produce paintings in less than an hour. At first glance, this feat could seem like flourish from a highly practiced painter. But it also suggests an artist who is hoping that the pressure of the clock might force his brush into a stroke of random brilliance.
"Random brilliance" might also be a fitting review for a 2010 photography project that Mallam is still yet to display publicly. Iceland, religious clothing, cross-dressing, submersion in cold water. Laws of Creativity can’t say more – partly because words won’t do creative justice to the images; partly because it's Mallam’s decision whether or not to share the project; but mostly as a thinly veiled provocation for him to take the leap, to play his cards.
Paul Mallam has been a leading Telecommunications, Media and Technology practitioner for over 30 years. He is a painter, sculptor and photographer who has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize, the National Photographic Portrait Prize and Head On. He has studied Indian History, Law and Fine Art.