Terrain...Indigenous art

On Monday a friend and I met at QAG to have a coffee and a wander. We inevitably ended up at Goma, and on the third floor was an exhibition entitled Terrain..so good!

This exhibition is a celebration of media which comes directly from the earth and the artists' environments. There are baskets made from spinefex with insides  smeared with  rich red dirt; fibre dyes are made from flora collected; everything resonates with a sense of site  and place.
There is a meditative quality and a sense of rhythm to the objects on display. Stitch after stitch; knot after knot... the works evolve into wondrous artifacts which still echo the places of  origin.

Go see!

 

VGA, Melbourne museum, and Goma visits

Recently I have visited a few exhibitions and here are some of my highlights.

The Victorian Gallery of Art was wonderful. I was particularly delighted with its display of Renaissance paintings from its own collection, and also the three Dutch Baroque florals..yes only three amongst the many rooms of mostly religious works.

Artists like De Heem (below) excelled in the secular depiction of fruits and flowers, whilst alluding to the transcience and impermanence of life. Stilleven, still life painting, became a celebrated  genre in its own right.



Jan Davidsz de Heem
Still Life with fruit
Oilk on canvas, 1640 - 50

"De Heem invented thge Pronkstilleven, or the sumptuous still life"..(VGA)

(The green square in the top left quadrant is a  reflection of the exit sign on the opposite wall:)

Close up of de Heem's painting.

Leopold Stoll
Flowerpiece, oil on canvas, 1837
There are 39 varieties of fruit and flowers in this work, and since the the 15th century Dutch artists had taken a scientific approach to the renderings of flowers and fruit. Accuaracy of detail was vitally important as can be seen with close up photos of  Stoll's painting.

Jan Francois van Dael
Flemish Flowerpiece 1811
Oil on canvas

Below..close ups of van Dael's Flowerpiece..

As the gallery rooms wound around, gradually the viewer entered the art of the 20th century. Here are a few pieces that stood out for me, although there were so many more.

Bonnard
Siesta, Oil on canvas, 1900
Gorgeous work.. and below is a close up of Bonnard's paint application..strong use of impasto.

Mark Rothko,
Untitled..Red, 1956, Oil on Canvas.
This is the first time that I have seen a Rothko other than a digital image..I did not weep!!





David Hockney
The Second Marriage, 1963
Oil, gouache and collage of torn wallpaper on canvas.
This was a large work and I loved the use of different media, and also the configuration of three cnavases sided together to form the illusion of a box..metaphor for marriage??

Whilst in Melbourne, I stayed with my Mexican friend, and so we were both keen to see the Aztec exhibition at the Melbourne museum. I won't go into the details of Aztec culture, but I have taken some photos of the stone sculptures on display..haunting portrayals of a culture that flourished for only two hundred years.

Back in Brisbane, I finally went to Goma in the last days of its much advertised exhibition "Falling back to earth" by Cai Guo-Qiang, and have been thinking how I felt about this exhibition. Strangely, I don' t really seem to feel connected to it at all. The exhibits are definitely large spectacles and quite beautiful to see, but I didn't feel touched or excited or intellectually stimulated by it. Of course it's interesting to read the didactics, and the blurbs put out by the gallery about this artist and his philosophy, but all said and done, it did not "touch" me in any particular way. I had been surprised to read that the "Heritage" exhibit was inspired by the artist's visit to Stradbroke and his very Arcadian view of the lakes. The ensuing exhibit was very much more global in context than specific to the original site. As I sat and gazed at the replicas of animals surrounding the constructed lake, and the leaping wolves in the next room, I wondered how many Chinese factory workers had sewed and fabricated these items without any understanding of the eventual purpose of their work. I had felt quite devoid of emotion and wondered if the labourers behind these works had also felt as listless.


I much more enjoyed the fallen gums on display..only because they were natural and so very tactile. They at least did not have a manufactured quality but still resounded with all the wonderous shapes of an organic life form.


Later in the day, I  made my way over to QAG to see what paintings were on offer, and once again I was thrilled with a line up of early Northern European oil paintings depicting religious themes. They were from about the early 15 th century and ranged from Flemish and Dutch to German works .(sorry but I did not take any photos here! ) I was smitten by the gorgeous patina of the oils on old oak panels. These works were intimate in scale, and the artist's hand was still evident in the brush stokes and the gentle application of the glazes. Five hundred years had not erased the feeling of personal involvement.

I will leave now with a quote from Alain de Botton and John Armstrong as read in a VGA flyer..
Art edits down cpmplexity and helps us to focus, for a brief period of time, on life's most meaningful aspects".      I like that!

Bugs and Blooms

I have been working on this painting on and off for a few weeks now..surprised how graphic the work is, but have really enjoyed taking my time over some of the detail.
My intention was to have a more contemporary colour scheme for this work..brighter and less sombre in tone than my previous florals...afterall I live in a sun drenched city!
The insects included still echo the inevitable processes of life as exemplified by the theme of vanitas.

Oil on stretched canvas  90 x 90cm
 

 Since I have been using insects as motifs in my art lately, I have become quite mesmerised by these little creatures..even their little corpses found around the house are quite amazing.

 

2103 and early 2014 update..still life, florals, vanitas, and Dutch masters.

It's been ages since I have posted on my blog..(where does time go!!) ...and I am now going to update a few photos of my latest body of work....however, firstly I want to briefly explain how I arrived at this new work.

After my creek project where I had collected, cleaned and kept buckets of plastic items retrieved from my local creek, I had the intention of utilizing these objects for subject matter for still life paintings. I intended to make them contemporary vanitas works highlighting the threat of some of our urban habitats due to the plethora of plastics. "Still life ..silt life". I began painting with my usual immediacy, but felt my results were rather poor and inadequate. I looked at many contemporary artists but eventually went back to Matisse's work ...his use of colour, his flattening of the picture plane; and the use of pattern etc. The vanitas theme pushed me further back  in history to the Golden Age of the Dutch masters, and in particular the still life genre..... I was in heaven with the voluptuousness, flamboyance and sheer technical brilliance of these paintings and it was here that I decided to stay.

The paintings I have listed today are the results of my attempts to learn some of the glazing techniques of the Dutch still lifes;  some of the subjects have been appropriated from  small sections of the old works; some from my sketches and photos.


"Roses, tulips and buds"..One of the first of my larger paintings..oil on canvas, 120 x 90cm



Some of my paintings in my studio...in various stages of completion...the largest is 120 x 90 cm.

Oils on canvas..each 90 x 90cm. The first two are finished but the third is unfinished..will probably morp into something quite different in the end.

Subject is a study of a section of an old Dutch  painting..will have to look up original artist's name (sorry!)

Unfinished work..120 x 90cm..oil on canvas. I will probably paint in an opaque background..just feels too recessive at present.

"Bauhinia"...approx. 60 x 70. oil on board. Completed and painted from photos I took. I incorporated a glazed dark background reminiscent of theDutch painings, and the bee is from a Renaissance woodblock..a reference back to my inspiration.

This smaller painting is still a work on the easel..I took a series of photos at a local nursery. Here I have cut in the background with an opaque salmon colour...gives a much more contemporary feel. Will be putting a bug in somewhere.

A couple of my palettes...love some of the colours. I reuse old corflute offcuts for my palettes as the white background is so good to work on ...also a bit of recycling:)

 I hope you have enjoyed my photos and I will be back sooner than later this time!!

Oils and inks

I have been doing some paintings lately using inks as an initial grounding on the canvas and then overglazing with oil colours. I had done quite a few experiments with the ink on paper first, trying to find a dispersing agent for the ink. Some success with water and detergent but when transferred the process to canvas, it no longer works. I think the absorbent quality of paper renders the results quite different to the smooth canvas surface.

Ink and oil on canvas..90 x 90cm

 The paintings below are destined for a decorator market..florals were requested.
 Inspiration came from photos I had taken, as well as from the repetition of motifs in fabric and wall paper patterning. I particularly love the wall papers of Florence Broadhurst..haven't utilized any direct motifs from her but have maintained a very deliberate 2d look on the canvases.
These have been lots of fun to paint, and quite a holiday from the more cerebral engagement with oils. Now the sun is out again, I am on a quest to photo beautiful flowers, bugs and birds.

Magnolias..ink and oil on canvas..90 x 90cm

Ink and oils..90 x 90cm

Ink an oils..1m x 70cm

Holiday snaps

I haven't been blogging latey as we have had a month in Europe..a wonderful time but I am not going to bore you with all my holiday photos (I went a bit serserk with my i phone)  so am going to list a few  that for one reason or another, I still find appealing. Here goes...

Spices, dried flowers, scent, indigo etc in a Dubai souk. 

Armani and other "designer"bags in the delapidated tenement windows of Indian Dubai.

Roses trailing in Chieti..a very pretty little walled town in Abruzzo Italy..one of the oldest towns in Italy.

Love the window boxes and buttenut paint...Chieti.

     Italian fruit stalls sell direct from the farmer, and I really have to admit
that the taste is phenomenal...and the colours...wonderful

Whilst dining at a sidewalk cafe in Ravenna, there was a bit of a commotion in the piazza opposite..a demonstration against the mafia.
(I am  presently reading the book Gomorrah, an indictment against the present day Camorra in Naples. The author Roberto Saviano subsequently had to go into hiding in his own country, and is under constant police protection...he never sleeps more than two nights in the same place...he is a wanted man by the mafia. This has been his life since the book was published in 2007 when he was only 28...high price to pay for his journalism.)

One of the trabocchi along the Pescara coastline..these are very antiquated fishing houses that
 are found no where else.

Pretty poppies on the way to Venice.

We are all so familiar with the images of Venice, but I caught the bleaker side of this city with
this shot taken a bit down from San Marco's plaza...shades of my local creek.

The walled city of Dubrovnik and the wonderful waters
 of the Adriatic.

The red roofs of Dubrovnik taken through one of the gun openings
 in the rampart walls.

Corfu..my feet in a tank of bacteria eating fish..supposed
 to destroy odours and other unwanted matter from feet.
Tickled!

Katakolon colours..gorgeous.

A Katakolon fishing boat up on land having a new coat of colours.

Parthenon

Acropolis...Lots of dogs, big ones..supposedly to protect the ancient site.

Very lazy and well fed Parthenon pooches!

Mykonos..I love the Cycladic architecture..all white
 washed including patterning on the concrete floors and
footpaths.

This was a prayer wall in Mary's resting place (?) in Ephesus, where the passerby can write their prayer on a piece of paper, tie it to the wall, and after one month, the priest comes along  and blesses them. The papers are then destroyed and the wall made bare for more pleas. My daughter read one prayer which said "I want an ipad"..consumerism collides with spirituality.
Thought this wall would make a great interactive art installation.

Sublime texture on an Ephesus pediment.

Temple wall at Ephesus.

What can I say here..the sign says it all!! Outside Ephesus in Turkey.

Doorway to heaven..Santorini..what an
amazing green..and who said "blue and green
should never be seen"....
Oh yes..an old nun in one of my primary school art classes.

Picture postcard Santorini.

Pompeii...hard to imagine that the intensity of these colours
 have lasted nearly 2,000 years.

These three dogs had great fun lolloping up and down
 the streets of Pompeii..then stopped here for refreshments.

The grandeur of Naples.

Legacy of an illustrious Neopolitan past

Photo taken around the corner from the two above
 photos..rubbish caught between a couple of
 traffic barricades.Naples really does have a garbage problem.

Singapore on the other hand is so pristine and immaculate.

Well what then? Chinatown in Singapore.

And what were these..I think dried grubs of some
 sort..didn't have time to ask the store
 owner inside as our bus was coming.

Ending on a final "pretty" note..a delicate
 orchid in at Raffles Hotel.