Art poetry 4

Tender stalks of love

leaving a gossamer screen

of remembrance

re-membering your arms

holding fragile

love-longing

 

Art poetry 3

Aching dark bleeding hooves racing

toward midnight hurdles

jumping

slicing stomachs -

birthing wild eagles into

the star lit night.

Grasping your brown grassing fields

of wide eyed summer

aching, bleeding desire

heart on heart

sister brother maker mine

shifting shaping loves liver.

Ageless summer night

glowing moon

silver bodies

swooning flesh soaked in

wanting longing love's arms.

Art poetry 2

I am your star ship of mud
caked in sludge, fish and frog spawn
to travel with you a short time
befriending the journey of lifetimes
manifesting between us in oceans like hannah.
Opals in oyster cleaners,
pearls in shitholes
birthing firework dreams
cresting in the sky
bursting on clear moon nights.
Looking up from the shore into starry night
we see ourselves reflected and wonder,
could this be me?

Art poetry

I hear you in the shooshing leaves

blown into stardust

trees alight with life,

bowing in prayer,

caressing bats and butterflies -

all love surround.

Upside down cake blue glass jarred

and labelled - 

Life Now!

Babe breasted and milked

swathed and swatched in cream soft

skin.

The butcher knows where place the knife

carve the Sunday

Into Life!

All celebrate a birth in blood

first time and last breath wonder.

Feeding from toe and tortoise

cricket and lotus yellow,

we dive up and swallow life whole

arms breaching

broken waves reaching

head first body surfing into

our first breath.

Trauma Fiction

The Dream Life Of Debris - A Journey From Trauma To Healing

‘everything will flourish at the edge’

—Jacques Derrida, La verite en peinture (1978)

Twelve-year-old Paul loves to walk the train tracks of suburban Adelaide. One day as he’s walking with his faithful Jack Russell, he witnesses something he doesn’t understand. He buries the memory deep in his subconscious, choosing instead to dwell on dreams.As an adult, his memory comes rushing back and Paul has to confront the demons of his past, as he relives memories of how the principal of his school took special care of him, loving him in a way that his distant father never had. But that love turned out to be far more sinister.Can Paul reveal these memories to the investigative team? Can he expose his wounds to his wife and fix their marriage? Will remembering the secrets heal him?

Extract

Chapter 1

September 1982—Paul (aged 12) sees a hanging

On hot days Paul took Barry for long, cool walks up the Australian interstate line from the suburb of Church where he lived to Blackstone, about two kilometres away. The gum trees lining the edges of the rail corridor were filled with magpies and currawongs fighting over territories. In the shrubs beneath the canopy, foreigners like sparrows and Indian minor birds fought it out with tiny fire tails and butcherbirds. It seemed the migrants did as well as Paul did in surviving their new homes in totally different climates. They all had a sense that the world provided everything they needed. They seemed not to look back or forward but just to be in the now.

On those days when he knew his father, Charles, would be late home, Paul would hang out on the railway lines until nightfall. He didn’t need a torch or a leash. Barry the Jack Russel led the way. These were the backstreets of their home, where the only gangs were of birds and the occasional fox that would rumble their territories. The three tunnels between Church and Blackstone could take a long time to walk, as both boy and dog turned over the chuck-outs from trains. 

Once, Paul found a watch, not with a globe engraved on its back like the flat steel one Charles had bought from a pawn shop, but a gold one with an inscription ‘Rosetangle 1915’. Its glass face was cracked. Further up the track he found a leather satchel with letters embossed with the owner’s address in Adelaide. Mostly he found boxes of matches, books, key chains, coins and notes, pens and rubber sheaths filled with glue, which he later understood to be partly desiccated semen. 

Sometimes he found dolls and teddy bears, likely thrown out in a fight between siblings. They lay close together discarded like unwanted children from unrelated families, as if they had found homes in each other’s arms. Occasionally, Barry would find sandwich ends, biscuits and lunch wraps with mayonnaise or mouldy tomato sauce remains or a cat hunting inside the tunnel. That would bring on a furious chase. Sometimes the interstate roared through the tunnel at the same time. Paul would close his eyes, block his ears with his hands and hold Barry awkwardly between his elbows, as he pressed against the side of the tunnel.

It was on one of these summery days that Paul reached Blackstone around twilight, and the usual group of men were standing around waiting. No suburban train was ever due at this time of day and the goods train came through long after dark. It wasn’t the first occasion that he had seen them. Sometimes one would be holding a boy by the arm as the group walked toward the stationmaster’s office. 

To avoid being seen, Paul had learned to approach Blackstone station by crawling on all fours via the hillside track made by the wallabies and formed into a low tunnel through the scrub. Barry would dart between his hands and legs and lick his face as he passed underneath, as if at last Paul understood how the world worked. 

Paul sensed danger in the groups of men without knowing why. When there was a boy with them, the group would disappear into the office and lights would go on behind the frosted glass, on which the name ‘Blackstone’ was etched in the shape of an arch. He would hear muffled sounds as he sat and waited for them to leave. As night settled, lights would come on in the washroom behind the office. Paul could see the men and the boy moving around the basins and toilets. There was a mirror against one of the walls and from his view above the station he could see a procession of the backs of heads and occasionally a side of face. Mostly the men combed their hair and adjusted their clothing. Rarely would he see the boy adjusting his.

You can purchase my novel from these sources:



Kindle: https://www.amazon.com.au/Dream-Life-Debris-Journey-Healing-ebook/dp/B077M681W4



Apple: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/au/book/the-dream-life-of-debris/id1315493734?mt=11



Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/the-dream-life-of-debris



Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=mlU_DwAAQBAJ

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Portrait

I have started playing with water soluble oils. This quick portrait was inspired by another artist's winning Archibald. Mine is just the head and shoulders on a small canvas. The under paint is burnt umber and french ultramarine. I used a chalk grid to get the proportions of the original reasonably accurate.

Here's a link to more information about this media and another to working with water soluble oils.

New work since June

I have been working away at these images since returning from a holiday in July - ink and crayon, each A3 size. Some I will work up into a larger painting. You may notice the shadowing on the right hand side - it is of me holding my mobile phone taking these photos.

Some of these are images hanging with friends at the back of Mullumbimby and some on Heron Island. The second one below is the boy and I taking the screws out of the camper door from a cupboard that was completely smashed by robbers in a break in. My camera was stolen and I haven't replaced it, hence I'm using the 2 mega pixel phone camera reflected in the water below.




































The family images are from photos taken at Wilson's creek with my Panasonic Lumix - oh waht a lovely travelling camera that was.

Some of these images I will work up into large paintings, when I get a straight run of time committed to the process. But first I am itching to get going on a painting of the kids in a boat at Brunswick Heads.

Foetal work

Over the two month break I began working on my own experience, rather than painting family members in the landscape.

I started with my birth and this one is the second version, with references to both Bacon and Picasso but finally in a language of my own. It's about 6'x4' and took me an afternoon to do, it is both beautiful and horrifying and I can now hardly bare to look at it.

This was the first version with the giant forceps below, about 6'x4', seemed to take forever and still it looks too pre-meditated, and has none of the 'ouch' that the one above gives me.














Out of this process I started to form this poignant image of a new born in a sky of black on a 2'x2' sized canvas. And that is my next step - to work out how to make my blacks more luminous and then put this little figure at the bottom of a huge canvas.

Captivating seascape

Some work to do on the distant edge of the sea, feathering the edge will do it. Otherwise good work.

Recent work

Final version of Archie with a better photo of the canvas.















Influence of Picasso's Beach figures on Francis Bacon's work. That's Bacon with the beach figure both in the background and curling around his right hand. Both figures are reaching for a ball, in the background the ball is in the corner of the door, and on his hand between index and middle finger. I've made a number of other quotations of Bacon's signature devices. The great man is having a retrospective at the Tate late 2008, moving to Moma in 2009.















Glorious national parks, this one at Shark's beach with one member of a commercial fishing crew on watch up the ladder. On this day the ice maker in town was broken and so the crew behind the figures on the beach, had to wait for the ice to come before casting their nets.












The pool portrait from last year, latest version almost right.

Brighter archie

I have begun to add the highlights and shadow inlcuding that of his legs. Rain clouds are now over the coastline of France and rain squals beneath and up near his right shoulder. He now looks back lit and appears bolder within the scene, better contrasts. Many thanks to Orlando for his vision.

Archie tryptich

These images are in post-production, not yet (if ever) fine enough for the archibald.

The middle one (1500X1000 mm) is the subjects' early life story on the Island of Jersey. On his left is the west coast of France. The little beach and village that appears there is in fact St Helliers, which lies on the green island behind his pelvis - located between his legs. He holds a beer glass toward the beach, even though he doesn't drink beer but referring him to Australia, where he emigrated in his 30's. His right foot is settled in the area related to Saint Marlo, France and his left foot is close to where Mont St Michel would be on a map of France.



On his right side is the circular formation representing Gorey Castle (located near his left trouser pocket on Jersey) and the harbour around it (with the implication of the very high tides there - two little boats at the bottom), and also it represents the cyclotron (the particle accelorator) he designed (one built in the US and the other in switzerland). Coming up from there is the main sailing boat and it carries many stories he tells of his youth in Jersey and learning about the power of those fast, huge tides and of the joys of fishing. I have lit the top of his head as if from the light behind the clouds or the sea to his right and given the impression of a head like a planet. The distortions of his body have given him a midesection of a youth, a head of a man both viewed directly but his legs appear to have been observed looking up at him. He now walks with a stick. There is more to do in bringing that source of light down his face and hands, behind his body and into shadows of his figure on the ground.


The panel on his right (1200X900 mm) is a whimsical portrait of him with his eyes cast up to the boat, whilst in his right hand is a fork holding a sliver of fried tomato that he was having for breakfast when I took the photo which inspired the portrait. I have used the same colors for his face that are in the middle panel and the underlying wash or underpainting is common to these two panels, though mostly obscured by the dense coverage of paint in the middle panel. It is as if he is still emerging out of his background, with that ever present humor and wit that comes from being a theoretical physicist whose work was a 'life of contemplation' he said. He claims to have been an 'unsuccesful bady' but I am not so sure, he remains a charming man.


The third panel on his left is the impression I have of him after I can no longer see him, the lingering sense of him as he recedes, like the spirit of this gentle creature who fathered my beloved wife. In the rich greens blues and oranges of the right side of this panel you can see lighter back colouring which suggest an elongated image of him as if the image of him in memory were fading out in both direction top and bottom. Reading from the viewers left to right it is as if he is fading out, with the orange and purple zip like a first and last breath - and then there is quiet space of a purple wash. The light on the bottom right hand corner is sunlight from where it is hung - not a feature of the paint. I may completely rework this one to produce a richer texture in the paint.

The middle painitng is somewhat flat, lacking vibrant contrasts from a consistent source of light. However, they are getting near to how I want them - rough hewn and a narrative within and between the three. One of my frustrations, evident in the unfinished quality of these three, is that I remain a dabbler after months of casual work on the images, yet each one has enough inherent interest to call for more.

Archibald next step

I like this one a lot. My dilemma is whether to take a photo of this version, make a slide and project it onto the canvas, draw the outline and then begin painting. Or as I usually do just go straight to the canvas and build another image.

Happy 2007

I'm reading 'The Tears Of Things' by Peter Schwenger. Here is a selection from Chapter 2.

'It is objects that look at us. Things look at me yet I see them. The picture is certainly in my eye. But I am not in the picture. Where am I then? If I am anywhere it is in the form of the screen. Not a cinema screen but one more like a Victorian fire screen positioned in such a way as to block out light and heat considered excessive for the complexion. The function of the screen is to erase the (object's) gaze from the world. How can we distinguish that which is screen from that which is not, if all we know is what we see, and we see only what we have been taught to know.

The screen, to an eye that is simulatneously overtaught and ignorant, seems invisible: we are not aware of its existence because its existence is all that we have ever been aware of. In a painting, however, the screen is palpably present in the form of the canvas. In this way a human being "isolates the function of the screen and plays with it" (quoting from Lacan's Seminar XI).

Objects may be depicted on the canvas, but they are preseen, as it were; this is one way in which their gaze is tamed.'

Archibald entrant

At the same time as I am doing the thailand portrait below I am also working on an entry to the Archibald with this distingished Australian physicist. I have tried to capture the very different qualities of the man in each of the drawings. he is an excellent sitter so no need for photographs, except perhaps for the final stages of the painting.

The plan is to put him up on a 1 metre by one and a half metre canvas that will convey the range of this man's personality and abilities. I will add developments in this one as they happen in the lead up to next year's or the year after's competition.





It's clear from the two color pencil drawings that this is a man with two dominant aspects - strong analytical and clearly announced yet, behind that a sense of tenderness, retreat, of keeping himself back, of kindness.

The two ink and pen drawings bring another colouration to those aspects - one pointed with those exquisite beak-like Gallic features in nose, lips, jaw and hands. Yet he is all tangled up like a frightenned mess in the second one. For sure as I develop the figure in paint it will loose some of this raw honesty and become a bit pretty. I notice thatsome other painters lose that freshness as the work develops from early drawings/sketches up to the final brush stroke.

The excitement of surfing the moment when its time to leave it alone, is part of working in this medium - will I bugger it up by working it any more. The maxim of one of my teachers is 'for god's sake don't ever finish a painting'.

Portrait of young woman in Thailand

A few readers have commented on their interest in watchng earlier paintings develop, so I thought I would blog this project somewhat in real time, and add the painting as it develops. I started with a photo (cropped her so you get an ieea of the colors). I know the person quite well so am in part working from memory of her vibrant personality and inner calm.





Preparatory stages;

I did a very quick ink and pen drawing outlining the shapes.










Then I did a more careful work up with pen, ink and color pencils. The distortions of neck and head matter little at this stage.



Then I traced an outline of the actual size of the canvas (18" x 24") onto paper and used charcoal to draw the persepctive lines and the figure and ceramic vases.


Then I went over that with brush and ink and finally roughly painted with gouache.

This is looking pretty good, so I felt confident enough to put it onto the canvas with a charcoal outline. About a days work so far.



























Stage 1

The painting below is at the beginning of describing the landscape with acrylic paint. It's hot in Canberra at the moment and so I am adding a drying retarder to give me a bit of time. Usually acrylic in the summer will dry within minutes of application but with a little retarder I may have 20 and with a lot or retarder hours. It then moves around the canvas like oil paint.

The sky and clouds I am happy with and the perspective is great. I will continue in the next stage down into the swimming pool behind the figure and the large ceramic pots in the water.



















Stage 2:
The next paintings begin building up the figure.

Already I have changed the roof color from warm ochre to cool grey and the area behind her face from a custard to a milky blue. I am intending to bring the figure forward by playing with warm reds and cool blues. If I had pre-planned it meticulously I may have anticipated that decision in stage 1. Or if I were to paint with a habit of playing off warm and cold like Mary Cassatt did in many of her domestic scenes, Imay have saved myself some time. But each step is a discovery for me and that is part of the excitement. If I plan too much I find that I tighten up and the figure then looks tight.

As you can see from the disproportion of her head, I am going to have to move the area of her eyes higher up toward the hair line in order to get the inflection of the head. In the full photo her head is lifted and angled back somewhat, giving an impression of a statement like, 'I'm here! Check out the pool behind me'.




















Stage 3

This is six days into the work. I have lifted her eyes, reshaped the hair and forehead and begun to create a frame using the windows behind, which have curtains drawn. I have sharpenned the focus on her features and on the area around her. I painted her swimming gear hanging on the railling in the same colors as the blue vases and was surprised how effective it was. It seems to have brought life to the picture, creating a lovely triangular foundation, which connects the vases and the swim wear, bringing the figure forward of the picture plane. Emphasising the diagonals of the building, the swimming pool edge and now the imaginary triangle of vase and costume, and playing the warm and cold colors off each other, has projected the figure forward.

I will sit and look at it for quite some time before making a decision about the water. That will probably come as I start to bring out the features of her face and make small corrections in the background. It's tempting to follow the photograph and make the water a feature, which clearly in the architecture it is intended to be. A maxim of one of my teachers comes to mind: 'never become a slave to the photograph'.













Stage 4

It was a struggle to get here late in the afternoon and on a hot day. Yesterday's work I tightened up the background and removed glaring errors but I made such a mess of the figure that I was embarrassed to put a photo of that day's work on the web.

Today I have recovered the figure and solved the problem of the dress and the water.

Only last night did I get the idea that a red skirt would do it - this is a mixture of permanent alzaran crimson, ultramarine blue and dioxine purple with titanium white. The shirt is cadmium yellow deep, titanium white and a bit of alzaran crimson. I used a lot of retarder and after nearly an hour the paint was still wet - I hope I can keep my two year olds hands off it until tomorrow. he is free towander into the studio/garage where he has his own easel.

Finally today I have begun to deal with the weight of grey on the roof by putting a glaze of ochre, pthalo blue with titanium white. The next step will complete the face.

Canberra landscape diptych

This is a variation on the larger triptych discussed in October.

Each panel 12" x 16" and originally it was to be a triptych in those smaller panels, but I knicked one of the panels for the portrait of the 4 year old. As it turned out the two panels were exactly right for what I had in mind and quick to do. They took about three hours, and without preparatory drawings, only a rough charcoal outline on the canvas. Whereas the larger triptych seems to have taken months of planning - photos, the working drawings and draft paintings and finally to paint over maybe over a four weeks period. Probably took two months over all.

Given the ease of this I think I will produce a few more Canberra landscapes on this theme and experiment with paint application. In this one it is not clear to someone unfamiliar with the landscape that Lake Burley Griffin is in the middle ground, Lake George in the background and Black Mountain Tower on the little hill at the far top left of the first panel.

Portrait of 4 year old

Another family christmas present. This one began as a photo, then to ink drawings, then ink and colored pencils and finally into acrylics. Titled 'The Entrance' but really it should be 'red shoes', since that was her comment abut the painting when she openned it befpore christmas - I like the shoes'.

The photo was taken at the front entrance to their house and this girl is making a large entrance into life. Dimensions:12" X 16".

Portrait of our 2 year old and the aunt

The final product is 18" x 18".



I found this one difficult to finish knowing that it was to go to a member of the family for Xmas present. The aunt is also not well at the moment, her rich olive skin looks a bit pale. I intially put too much white on her skin, and recoloured after her sister noticed she looked sickly in the portrait. I figure I could go on forever trying to make it look right, so eventually made myself stop.

She has that billowing armchair look when at home in her dressing gown and our lad is snuggled into her looking at his green truck (in fact a white truck, but I didn't want it to stand out in his hands).

I found this one more challenging than the landscape below, which I did entirely for my own satisfaction. Commissioned portraits must be hell. A sitter can be very vain - not so in this case as I worked from a photograph.

Landscape complete & interpreted

Each panel 2 foot wide by 3 foot high.

Can you see the shadow of a bicyclist in the middle panel on the bottom left of the bike path, behind the prominent cyclist. This symbolic element can be read as the shadow of our journeyman-skywalker. The shadow appears black and I wanted that to reflect the haunting of our solo Canberran braving the elements, having stolen this land from the traditional owners and also give the main bike rider a sense of running from his personal, psychological shadow. Over the whole of this manufactured, beautiful landscape there are no people but for our head down rider and the others looking out of their apartment windows. As if each is afraid to put foot on the land. The little picnic area behind him is empty.

Above our journeyman flies his spirit symbol a bird, which in close up looks like the local grey and pink bird called a gallah. The word is used as an insult in Australia meaning a real idiot. And here that can be read as the Fool who steps out on the spirit journey; in the Tarot pack's journey and in Shakespeare's plays. The Fool who is redeemed by his child like innocence.

In silent witness is a stand of four ancient olive trees in the middle panel, bottom right hand corner. This appears to be part of an olive grove, with one of the trees incomplete as it meets the third panel. I intentionally created a chrisitan reference with the two crosses formed by the shadow of street lamps accross a path - taking a leaf out of Kandinsky's painting 'Old Town II' of 1902 - a lady on a path crossed by the shadow of a fence. I didn't realise the symbolism of the olive grove until I saw Andrew Denton's critical documentary, 'God On Our Side' about chrisitan broadcasters in the USA.



There is the remains of a morning mist hugging the mountain in the first panel. The time line is left to right, from mornng to late afternoon in the last panel.

In the second, a gallah floats beside a naked tree below, a skeleton of limbs or a burnt out hulk or is it the last tree to come into spring bloom, still with traces of frost or snow on its limbs - like the Oscar Wilde story of the giant's garden. In that story, a little boy befriends a fierce giant in a garden that seems perpetually in winter until the giant's heart melts in caring for the boy who turns out to be terminally ill, leaving our giant transformed and his garden open to all the children around. In my personal psychology all three elements connect - the skeleton of our body from which our spirit soars like a fool on its soul journey. The burnt out hulk of a body, still standing like a eucalypt tree, like a phoenix that regenerates after a fire storm. And the late bloomer. All speak about my view of my own life, soul and body.



How about the ghostly figures walking the plank. I wanted to tell the story of the traditional owners and leave it ambiguous enough for the white folk to be the ones walking the plank into a lake of their own creation. How about people at those 3 windows of the building at far right of this third panel. Inside they appear to live with a structural disconnect from the landscape. This is emphasized by that big swathe of flat cobalt green; by the surreal street light and the avenue seen from above that leads to it, completely out of perspective yet somehow believable. On the top far left corner of the far left panel is a suggestion of a telecom tower on its green hill that we call Black Mountain. The tower appears through the arch on the same panel. It is from the top of the tower that the view of the tree lined avenue in the far right panel derives.



In the middle distance of the middle and right panel is Lake George, a natural lake carved out by glaciers and once an inland sea, which stands on the outskirts of Canberra. Driving in from Sydney and out from Canberra, one has to cross the edge of this lake, completely dry from years of local drought. In the middle of the highway along its dry shore is a toilet convenience and rest area, which marks a memorial of a soldier who won the Victoria Military Cross in WW II. We are not afraid as the desert encroaches Canberra?

And in the far distance of the middle and right panel, faintly held on the horizon are snow covered hills. I'm pointing to the Snowy Mountains about three hours drive from Canberra. They are covered in snow gum and alpinbe heath, and beautiful white crisp snow for a few months of winter. But mountains? I've painted them as gentle hills.

The afternoon light casts a long shadow from the street lamp, suggesting west is to the left and that our cyclist is heading north, the direction of the warm winter sun in the southern hemisphere. He is about to leave the second panel and in the time line suggested by the first panel's early mornng, he is about to enter the last third of his life.

Canberra landscape triptych - first look

A couple of days work and it is looking ready to start the sky. Given the range of elements to unite, the best look will unite the top of the 3.

Canberra landscape triptych - work up

My idea of canberra's edges as a disconnect in this triptych. First begun with a set of photographs taken around the Curtin storm water drain and the southern end of the lake.



Then worked up in color pencil.




And then a first paint up in gouache.



Finally a decision of the triptych divisions.