Spontaneity and success

works in progress

There is something wonderful about spontaneity in the studio.  Those happy accidents you can not hope to anticipate.  I have had plenty of these moments recently, especially the morning I walked in and discovered I had re-painted five canvases and left them to dry with the intention to continue re-painting them in the following studio session.  Had it been a week?  I remember at the time devoting myself to the re-painting of these canvases that I thought I could do something far more interesting with.  I had a system. Paint, dry, sandpaper, repeat.  Then when I walked in on Friday this whole system seemed entirely ludicrous so I immediately adopted a new system.  Paint, dry, repeat.  What was with the sand paper? So I have been re-painting.  Some of the canvases are for a future painting, the others I am allowing to mature until that spontaneous moment calls for them.  

This moment presented itself recently on an occasion when I least expected it.  I found some sea grass I had collected from the beach several years ago.  I had bound it together with cotton and placed it on a piece of chicken wire.  I took it from the bookshelves and placed it on the small stretcher I made ten years ago.  Behind it I placed a section of shipping chart.  As I looked at it I realised I had finally found the right combination of objects and solved the problem of how to use these small frames that had been moving around my studio for six months.  It all sounds so simple, but I had literally spent those six months trying a variety of objects in various combinations without success.  The simplicity of the act and the solution make the entire venture all the more satisfying.

The joys of a studio.  The nature of my work has changed dramatically thanks to finally having a space of my own to spread out, create a mess...and leave it.  So I look forward to the happy accident that occurs with the three remaining canvases, and I look forward to sharing that moment with you.

Sketches

Frangipani Bali, pencil on paper

Bali, pencil on paper

Ships at Anchor Singapore, pencil on paper

We have recently returned from a holiday to Bali and Singapore, which was obviously fantastic.  What I think we all love about holidays is being in a new location, experiencing different cultures, landscapes, adventures, lifestyles.  But what I love most about going away is the disruption to the everyday routine.  It is finally having the time to sit down and do nothing.  Most of my time in Bali was spent on the day bed reading and drawing.  What a luxury!

I have included a few of my pencil sketches for your perusal.  They are not necessarily the best drawings, they are merely a sample.  I still enjoy the act of sitting and observing.  It requires time and patience, neither of which I have.  Often I find I launch in to a plein air drawing or painting only to discover I haven't the patience required to complete it.  I admire the work of (old school) landscape artists such as Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Arthur Streeton who liberally apply paint to the canvas in a hurried and seemingly careless manner.  Upon close inspection the myriad of impasto coloured dots and blobs playfully entwine one another.  When viewed from a distance, the dots merge together to form a shaded leaf or the sunlight on grass or the shadow on a face.  

While I would love to throw paint across a canvas to capture the energy and vitality of the landscape, I find I more concerned with details, both when I paint and draw.  My lines are controlled and tight rather than loose and fluid.  It is the way I work and that is partly why I gave up on painting plein air.  I will return to it again, maybe in twenty years when my eye sight starts failing me, or when I no longer have time restraints, school pick up, dinner and the like.  Having said that I probably should challenge myself by completing a painting in ten minuets.  I do like that idea.  Might find those small canvas boards and my paint tubes and see what happens.

Sew?

Map, oil and acrylic on sewn canvas, 2005

I have been sewing canvas together since 1994, if not earlier.  It came out of necessity as much as anything.  By the time I was in the second year of my Bachelor of Fine Art degree, I had already spent three years studying graphics/ art straight out of high school. When I finally completed my degree I was not just poor, but in debt.  So I did what all thrifty creatives do and recycled.

I sewed together all the scraps of canvas I had to make them large enough to paint on.  When I say scraps most of them were already quite large, but not the size I wanted.  I often used the seams as divisions in the paintings.  I did one series (if you can call four paintings that) of the seasons in this manner using colour within the sewn panels to depict the variations.

The above is a map I sewed together when I was studying my Masters of Visual Art, some eleven years after the first sewing began.  It was created on pieces of an old painting that I cut up in to panels of 10 x 20cm.  I then painted part of a shipping chart onto each panel individually before placing lines and symbols in a manner that resembled a map. This was the same year I painted and sewed feathers to panels of identical size, although the original painting I cut up was one with washes of  white and pale yellow, which was more sympathetic to the feathers.  Eight years later these small feather paintings   inspired the painting Flock. 

I enjoy sewing, although I have no idea why.  I especially enjoy sewing different materials.  I have a piece I began so many years ago that I can't remember, lets call it the early 2000's, where I sewed the first 100 pages of the Melway (Melbourne street directory) together.  I have another painting  Compare, (100 x 200cm).  It dates back to 1997, and is a slightly abstracted sunset over water.  Behind the paint, sewn and glued together onto the canvas is a Melway map of the Mornington Peninsula, where I live.

I have two more leaves to paint before I begin the arranging and sewing of them.  Of course I have already begun sewing shipping charts together and my next project is to tackle...yes, the Melway again.  It's funny, but until now I hadn't realised how much the map and sewing have existed in my work, and how they continue to inform my decisions.  I guess we pursue the things we love, either consciously or sub-consiously.

Rosalie

'Found', sea charts and cotton 120x120cm (on completion)

"And they went along, and they went along", so the story goes according to Henny Penny, which precisely describes my practice at present, only without the rooster, duck, goose, turkey or fox and none of that sky falling stuff.

I guess my point is that I am happily producing both ideas and art works for the sake of it, with no consideration to theoretical background.  It is very liberating and a little disconcerting.  Does it matter that I have no idea what my work is about?  Not at the moment.  My studio practice, the producing of work and resolution of ideas is of greater importance to me at present than trying to understand any deeper meaning.

I have been looking at the work of Rosalie Gasgoine.  She is most well known for her wall based assemblages made from disused wooden creates and reflective road signs.  Rosalie herself was a collector (hoarder) of found objects or discarded materials, particularly anything that had been exposed to the elements and weathered, something that already had a story and a life embedded in it.  Most of her collections were rescued from the local rubbish tips around Canberra where she lived.  This began in the 1960's before tips became a place of order and cleanliness, when recycling was not a catch-phrase and before the burning and burying of junk.

Rosalie's art works are about the material and the arrangement of the material, not the theory.  Her assemblages speak of mass, repetition, pattern, colour, shape.  Collections of singular objects are arranged to create something larger and evoke the landscape and times past without nostalgia. 

Maybe the sky falling is not such a bad thing, after all it allows you to view life from a different perspective. 

http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/galleries/australian/featured-works/gascoigne/

Possibilities

acrylic on paper

I have started a new body of work.  I am painting leaves on paper, water colour style only it's acrylic and much thicker, more like a gouache I guess.  Although the painting requires quite intense periods of concentration, I am enjoying working on a much smaller scale.  I am working on paper 20cmx40cm, which I have ruled into four panels, each containing a painting of a single leaf.  The idea at present is to paint roughly ninety-six individual leaves, cut each panel in to a separate piece and the sew them all together.  Why?  It's a fair question.  I want to present work that examines the notion of collecting and the obsessiveness of the collector.  I believe for the art works that I am proposing regarding the collection, mass is an important element.  I also want a response from the viewer along the lines of 'that is just crazy'.  I want to produce labour intensive works.  And while they are labour intensive as a whole, as an individual each leaf takes me about an hour to paint, which is great when you are time poor in the studio.

The collecting of the leaves has included my children who help me find them on my studio days.  They understand the type of leaf I like to paint, well seven year old Ella does at least, she has found some great leaves.  Three year old Charlie however finds mostly dry leaves that have already lost their lustre.    I tend not to paint his leaves, I prefer them brightly coloured with a waxy, flexible quality to them.

As I mentioned, the plan is to cut each panel and sew them together, but I am beginning to consider other possibilities for display.  Having said that I think I will finish this piece as intended and make another work to be displayed in another manner.

Think

My Pilbara collection January 2014.

I have been working, collecting, sewing, painting and thinking.  I often find thinking a difficult thing to do.  Not the day to day thinking of who does what today, where do I have to be and when, and most importantly, what is for dinner.  No I am talking about deep, contemplative thinking, the kind you do on your own in a quiet space.  Not the kind you do on your feet in a house of noise and chaos.  

Unfortunately my studio days are non consecutive and I find that the things I thought on one day may have disappeared entirely by the next studio visit, only to be rediscovered several days (maybe weeks) later.  The other thing about thinking is that it has to be quality thoughts.  Driving, for example, often provides a quiet time for contemplation, however I find myself 'vaguing out' and thinking about how dry the grass is, or the formation of the clouds, or the colour of the sky.  All very romantic, not very helpful when deciphering Jean Baudrillard's 'The Cultures of Collecting' and how any of it relates to my work...or doesn't.

So rather than over thinking, which is easily done, I opt for the more serene thought pattern of the grass, the clouds and the sky.  Sometimes it is easier to just drift rather than set a course.  Sometimes that is where the best ideas are found.

Studio

Studio desk

Studio shelving with 'Flock'

I am finding this increasingly difficult.  As you may have noticed, but probably didn't, I missed the December edition of my blog.  It was close.  I actually went so far as to open the page, upload an image and begin typing, but found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what I was typing and eventually gave up.  That said, I have been extremely pro-active in the studio.  Yes, I now have a studio fully set up and equipped and I have to say it is the most wonderful thing to have a space of my own where I can work without distraction, where I can put something down for the day rather than pack it away and mostly wonderfully of all I finally have a place where my mind can wander freely.  I have a place I can switch off and switch over to think about things other than washing and cooking and cleaning and ironing and what everyone is going to eat for lunch.  My studio provides sanctuary, pure indulgent escape, something I have craved for years.

So with my new found freedom an emergence of new ideas has erupted.  I am finding it increasingly interesting the way my ideas are unravelling themselves.  Usually when I start a painting I have a very firm idea of what the finished work will look like.  However, at present I find myself viewing my work from the periphery.  I catch a glimpse, but if I turn to look it vanishes.  I have vague ideas, I have vast collections, I have no idea, I still have vast collections.  I have found my work to be cyclical in that I will pursue one line of inquiry for years until I it runs its course or I run out of momentum.  In this case my last few paintings began a line of inquiry that lead to a logic that required change - of subject matter, of materials, of investigation.

Chance played a wonderfully intervening role in providing me with an idea toyed with but not explored which I began some ten years ago and had since forgotten.  I have found it has taken on a life of its own, yet I only have parts, a glimpse and not the whole picture.  I don't think this is a bad thing, rather I am excited by the possibility of discovery and I am interested to see how the ideas unveil themselves and how the work will progress.  I am in no hurry for the work to be completed, preferring it to take its natural course.  I must say it is a relief after becoming so meticulous about the previous paintings to relax a little and allow the natural flow of creative thought take its course.