First post. Intro
This first post is a “sticky post” and stays at the top
To see my most recent post please scroll down to the bottom of this post. (or click the top one to the right here)
“Why bother?” I ask myself.
This website is for:
family and friends,
people who own my paintings,
people who still remember me,
people who don’t know me,
For self promotion (reluctantly)
To tell my story
and explain my absence from the art scene for all those years.
To attempt to explain my paintings,
To update what I’m working on (using video?)
To air my beliefs…
My works
When required I have been calling my painting style “Ecological surrealism”
The notion that I have to have a “Style”, or that it has to have a name is simplistic and journalistic.
Every painting creates its own path as I work on it.
One of the motivations that drives me is avoiding repetition, cliches.
Boredom is my best helper. If I am getting bored its probably unoriginal, unimaginative; I have to stretch my ideas to the brink of absurdity, impossibility, otherwise I am squandering my precious time.
Mostly I begin with an idea; sometimes just a shape that will fill or grow inside the canvas. Sometimes (mostly) its the colours and tones of a place, which may exist in my mind, or perhaps out there. These colours usually find shapes for themselves, or even allow me to draw them. I like to have something happening; and lately I like it to be implausible, with prospects of being taken as an allegory or analogy. I would like to create a pseudomyth with the painting. Eventually an image begins to happen and sometimes it wants to be quite realistic. Sometimes the idea prefers to remain ambiguous and vague
Just lately I like to be not too serious.
I like to do fairly big paintings…anything smaller than 3′ by 4′ isn’t worth the effort. About 4′ by 5′ is spacious and about right, but anything up to about 6′ by 9′ is fine.
I spend several months on each painting. Its always hard work. I love to push my imagination, technical skills, endurance and perfectionism to extremes. Anything less would kill me with boredom.
My History; very briefly.
Born 1942 in Temora District hospital. I had a brother aged two, and nine years later along came a sister.
We lived on a farm. My father; the author E.O. Schlunke (Eric) preferred to be seen as a grazier and never overcropped his land. He was probably manic depressive. Had despotic mood swings.
My mother (Olga) came from a rural background, went to Presbyterian Ladies College and passionately loved/hated the farm. (She was bipolar too) She wrote poetry, and was published.
Classical music was always playing in the home: On 78s when I was little, and LPs when I was about 7 or 8.
Eric and Olga hated sport, popular music, commercial radio stations, vulgar people, drunks (!!?!!)
They loved Nature, scintillating conversation, the arts, elegance.
Eric wanted me to go to university, mostly because his father (who died before I was born, and seems to have been a religious zealot who abused the Bible to manipulate/terrorise his kids) wouldn’t let Eric go to Unversity. I started at University of New England and dropped out at the beginning of term 2 because of harassment from certain other students.
I went to stay with Arthur Murch and family, and stayed for about seven years.
Arthur took me on as a kind of apprentice. His wife Ria showed incredible forbearance and kindness.
Arthur got the contract to do the Mural in the Overseas Passenger Terminal at Circular Quay and I was one of his helpers (Along with Helga Lanzendorfer and Julian Halls) Helga and I were allowed to paint bits of it, but poor Julian was not.
I began exhibiting and in 1963 won the Rural Bank Art Prize at the Royal Easter Show. I was 21.
Naturally at that age I became convinced that I knew it all and there began subtly, my decline.
I want to write more about my past, my parents, my mistakes…
OK, here are some of my pickies, with comments…
“George Lambert and Arthur Murch and me”
This was my unhung entry to this years Archibald.
It began as a fantasy wherein George and Arthur are in Big Bush (where I live) working on projects. Arthur had a large block of sandstone, into which he was carving a thirty foot high jumping spider.
George was doing some kind of environmental sculpture; using bush materials.
As the painting proceeded Arthur’s spider became the fibreglass arthropod he had often wished he could do and I had him sandpapering its leg in preparation for gluing on hairs, of which he had a tangled bundle. George’s bark and petal sculpture acquired a praying mantis. As work proceeded Arthur’s spider legs and George’s petals insinuated themselves into the entire big bush background. Arthur’s plaster cast teaching aids (he was a passionate teacher) came along to keep us company.
My reason for doing the painting became clearer as work proceeded. At first it was just the fact that Arthur was an assistant to George, and I was an assistant to Arthur. (This first idea was suggested to me by my dear friend Jeanette.)
Quite soon I began wondering how my life works compared to those of A and G. So I gave myself some insects too, but not very big, but probably live, not sculptures. Eventually I took the look of embarrassment off my face and tried to make it say: “Hey aren’t we having a jolly time being creative…”
“…And The Rainforest Will Return to the Desert…”
This was a finalist in the Essential Energy Art prize, called “Countryscapes” and now terminated.
I wanted to do another painting about the Chewings Range. Maybe I drove past them on the way to Hermansburg Mission way back in 1962. I didn’t stop for any drawings or photos because the person I was traveling with was having a mini nervous breakdown. I used the grey dry corrugated landforms with violet shadows in a previous painting, “Western Macs circa 2084”.
But this time it had to be more than just a view.
(I feel views are dreary and unjustifiable these days for me. Boring too. A good folio of photos or a video pan, or best still, visiting the place and looking at it is the best thing you can do with a view.)
So I put something implausible in the foreground; a clump of rainforest trees, and more rainforest beginning to grow over the corrugated hills. Some of the bluegreyviolet hills were growing a green canopy. The idea excited me, but upon reflection I realised that most people would not understand.
The painting needed some kind of explanation, and that had to go into the title, like a caption. This was one time when I really wanted the painting to be readily understood. Not enigmatic this time.
I could not call it Chewings Range, nor even Western Macs, nor even Western Macdonnell Ranges because virtually nobody knows where they are, and that they are very dry and could not support rainforest.
I don’t often make concessions for people’s ignorance, but I had to change the wording to “Desert”, and then it sounded biblical, (Revelations) so I prefixed the “…And” and set it in the future.
I enjoyed creating a kind of Mosque dome with bright lights in the big fig tree; and a storm coming across the rainforest. Very Romantic. It was a very difficult painting, but not for a minute unenjoyable. I love extremely hard work.
“An Eiffel Tower in Big Bush”
Juxtaposing preposterous ideas.
Its one of the ingredients of surrealism.
The ideas have to be very personal for me to generate any enthusiasm. We had recently been to Paris. Big Bush is where I live.
The tower seemed to fit best upside down. Most of the time on this painting was intuitive frigging around. Not much intellect in this one. It was fun and not terribly difficult. I don’t care if people can see the Eiffel tower or not. It looks intriguing, and thats all I wanted.
“Sculpture Garden”
Near Port Macquarie is a little patch of rainforest that runs down to the beach, called Sea Acres. There are many palm trees that have shed their fronds and they get caught up in the trees below, looking like sculptures. And there you have it. Once I had the concept that some or all of what I am depicting here is sculptures placed in a garden setting the thing galloped away on a white stallion… Shortly the earth and sky became part of the sculpture. By then I was not depicting an imaginary scene, but dragging rough ideas from my frenetic brain. I want to do more of these. I love to gallop away on the white stallion of extremes.
April 2023
April 2023
So the optimism that was lurking in the dense foliage all along, ventures out into view as yet another election result seems to confirm Australia’s distaste for the carcinogenic and depressing neoliberalism that was engulfing us in a stinking brown fluid.
Its been a fecund and joyous end of summer/autumn this year in Big Bush.
I hope it shows in the recent paintings.
Merope
Oils on canvas 92 x 122cm
Most years we see the Common Brown butterfly: Heteronympha merope merope in the bush and gardens. Regular rainfall keeps native grasses growing and the larvae of H. merope feed upon these grasses and pupate and emerge as adult butterflies. This year there is a great abundance of these butterflies. They spring up and fly very close to my face as if trying to communicate something.
So I wonder if they could be um, spirits or ghosts???
Of What or Whom???
And what would they be wanting to communicate?
Having introverted misanthropic Asperger’s tendencies my first sympathies always go to the megafauna and habitats that preceded humans.
But then, around January 26th every year I feel uncomfortable about “owning” Big Bush; aware that the previous human “owners” were probably murdered.
The ultimate truth telling can be found in “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Hariri. It should be compulsory reading for all humans.
We need to know what humans have done to this planet. It’s complex and uncomfortable to assimilate.
So maybe the Merope butterflies are trying to say:
“Thanks for noticing us.
Actually we non-humans were around for millions of years before you humans with your, um, cleverness came along.
Maybe some of you realise now that you have made a bit of a mess of the planet.
And maybe it’s too late already to do much about it…But good luck anyway…”
Yellow Cloud
Oils on canvas 92 x 122cm
I keep a kind of journal in my studio.
Multi purpose: Sometimes to remind myself of something I want to proceed with next session. Sometimes “Important pronouncements” that come into my mind as I work (which are probably more smartarse than profound). Sometimes remarks to go into this blog; Sometimes remarks that may be helpful for aspiring young artists(?) Some are obscure, nay, unhinged.
So here is a sample of notes I made while working on Yellow Cloud:
28th. Now what about this:?? The way the profile along the top of the cloud seems to be presenting a theme: A Beethovenian skeletal melody that contains germs, secrets, seeds; that have awesome implications. Its offering me a challenge to make something of this throughout the painting. (Hint: It’s to do with spacing, shapes, size (of shapes) shapes (of shapes) repetition, rhythm) but don’t lose its insistence!
“Yellow Cloud” in one word: “Whoosh”
Big Bush Mimics Shipton’s Flat.
Oils on canvas 122 x 92cm
Shipton’s Flat is a place near Cooktown and it is one of my favourite places. Where the rainforest grows with great energy, beauty and imagination. Magic music of rainforest, creeks and mountain.
After another rainy summer Big Bush is growing upwards and outwards with great density and optimism, like the forest at Shipton’s flat. I was trying to make eucalypts and casuarinas and callitris’s look like rainforest.
From the journal:
Feb 8th After a few days away from this job doing projects down at My Darling’s and tootling around in our new Atto 3… when I glanced at this job my first thought is: “Don’t be too precious. Do something fearless and reckless.”
10th Feb. The finishing game goes on doesn’t it! When certain tonal, colour and design tricks co-ordinate nicely the word “joyous” becomes applicable? Not a word I use much, nor a thing I often aim for. But it’s nice when it comes and perches, like an uncommon honeyeater.
A shower of finishing dots and dashes and a couple of “new” colours…this final extra finishing is esoteric, but it’s terribly important.
There’s a certain careless lumpiness (in shape and colour) in the ¾” scale range that I like.
Februarial Flourish
Oils on canvas 92 x 122cm
It began with an aging Quandong tree that overhangs the path between my place and my darling Jeanette’s place.
It’s really about the beginning of autumn when certain bush characters are finishing off their summer jobs and slowing down for the cooler months. The Merope butterflies are getting careless and ending up in spider webs; and the spiders in turn are being taken by wasps…who in turn have just about filled their mud nests with paralysed spiders and wasp eggs.
18th Feb: It’s moving forwards without any mistakes. Gratifying; but beware Old Slunk! Behind every gumleaf lurks facile dreariness. Without struggle and mistakes and going back and smearing and scraping and reworking and maybe some cussing there can be no satisfaction!?!
Eventually this one was more or less finished in about 14 days. That’s quick for me.
Pastels: on Canson paper, about 50 x 75cm
Coachwood
I found some photos I took up on Dorrigo Plateau a few years ago in the “Coachwood” forest.
Rather un-Australian looking trees and shadow patterns. Good enough for a pastel or two.
Python
Carpet and Diamond Pythons still turning up everywhere.
And then this one
Grey Box Blossom
Oils on canvas 152 x 122cm
I can usually manage to do a painting of a natural phenomenon in such a way as to emphasise the impact it makes on me; convey it to my imaginary viewers… Maybe this one works OK but the finishing process went on and on. Twice I decided to abandon it (something I almost never do) but next time I saw it I simply had to proceed…
This one is about the extraordinarily profuse blossoms on the grey box trees of Big Bush at the moment.
Maybe this is the last straight landscape I will do for a while. I’m back into sculptural architectural shapes in my current painting which should appear on my next post here.
Newspaper clipping.
From Temora Independent.
The event was very enjoyable. Lovely response from the citizens of Temora.
Big thanks to those who organised it. It was exceptionally well organised.
We bought an Atto 3. That’s an electric car. It’s delightful to tootle around in, but really some of the “features” are not entirely necessary, gimmicky and even downright silly. But loveable.
And yes, it accelerates like a hypersonic missile.
We can charge it from the afternoon surplus of Jeanette’s off- grid solar power system or run into Temora and charge it at the NRMA fast charger, currently free!!
So we have been driving around for months now, absolutely free. And no carbon emissions.
Yes, there are times when the charger in Temora is not working; or a petrol vehicle has parked in front of the charger (“ICEholes”) and once or twice several days of rain or heavy cloud limit the surplus from the solar panels and make a trip to the NRMA charger more necessary.
It’s very important for all towns to install multiple fast chargers to cope with the numbers of EVs coming. Soon they will be cheaper than fossil fuel cars and everyone will want one. Including hardcore petrolheads.
January 2023
January 2023
One year since my last post.
I turned 80 this year.
In February I did a trip to my son James’ place at Wallagoot near Tathra on the south coast. It rained quite a bit which provided opportunities to do lots of drawings and photos of drenched treetops. There were fine days too.
The biggest difference between Big Bush (where I live) and Wallagoot is the height of the trees. South coast trees are at least twice the height of Big Bush trees.
Back in my studio paintings began manifesting…
Top Half
Oils on canvas 122 x 92cm
At first I believed I could somehow fold up the tree trunks so we could behold their tops overhead and the insertion point of trunk with earth, and all in between without compromising the literal breathtakingness of the tallness of the trees.
I tried several tricks on paper but so far I have not contrived it. (Neither has anyone else to my knowledge, but I still believe one day I will do it.) (Maybe William Robinson has come close.)
So for the first painting I simply did the top half. The point directly overhead the viewer is top centre, a bitdown from the top edge of the painting. From this point the leaves (appear to) hang outwards; up, down, left, right.
Then you have to remember that the trunks extend the same length beyond the bottom edge of the painting before they reach and burrow their roots yet many more metres into the soil.
This painting took quite a long time and I wrote many pages of notes in my studio diary; a sample or two follow:
“…The scale of the foliage presents diverse opportunities to play exquisite tricks. Ie not a “problem” Only losers have problems…”
“…20,000+gumleaves hanging down. Too much detail? Only if I cannot handle it. If they are all part of my system, that unifies them into one entity. Eventually there is only one entity and that is the Cosmos…”
Cirrus and Crowns
Oils on canvas 122 x 92cm
This one has cirrus clouds behind the leaves overhead. Trying to make things difficult for myself I suppose.(Showing off?) This one can be hung vertically or horizontally to the left. Two paintings in one.
Spotted Gums in the rain.
122 x 153cm Acrylics on canvas
A large job. 4ft by 5ft.
James took me to a forest of Spotted Gums; Corymbia maculata in Mimosa Rocks National Park. It rained very heavily all day. Difficult to get out my sketch book but I managed to get some shots with my phone straight up from under my trusty umbrella. Somehow.
There was a 2 or 3mm film of bubbly water running down the spotted tree trunks and showering in jets from the leaf tips. Looking straight up the water seemed to be spurting outwards in all directions.
Back in my studio I spent months on this one, and sometimes got pretty cranky with it, and myself…
“…Aug 1st. Another look at Spotties. Its pretty shitty. Perhaps scale of spots and dots. The slightly larger shapes are unrelated and sketchy…”
“…3rd Aug. So far mostly it has been “drawing” ie making it look “real” ie recognisable for what it is; what I experienced there.
Now comes designing, which is more a matter of manipulating and choreographing shapes, dynamics, colours, tones, gradations, textures in an abstract sense to convey what I want this painting to communicate…”
“…Intuition is revealing its shortcomings: Whereas nutted-out mechanical procedures seem to get a bit closer to how I remember that event with the pouring rain coming down in streams. Its esoteric, elusive: I cannot say it in words (like nearly everything I do or try to explain)…”
The painting ended up looking unlike anything I’d done before. I still get a bit of a shock when I behold it.
Then came a trip to Bendigo (and Woodend) to get my left eye lens implant, to match the already done right eye “cataract” surgery.
Successful! Now I don’t need spectacles except for reading and closeups.
While at Woodend we visited Hanging Rock but got turned back by a downpour. Nonetheless a painting was generated by this event.
Hanging Rock or Somewhere…passing shower.
122 x 92cm Oils on canvas (started in acrylics)
8th Aug.”… Still frigging around with acrylics trying to discover something I want to get involved in.
So it’s a bunch of asparagus with rain retreating and sunlight catching a few details.
I’m expanding the rock surface right to the bottom edge RHS and a bit of a cave (for that little picnic girl to disappear into).”
“….I’m finding effects and sensations that I want to play with. A semantic approximation would be finding closer and closer similarities and relationships between cloud, sky, rocks, moss, foliage bracken…as suggested by the Buddha and quantum physics.”
Eucalypt crowns in the rain.
Oils on canvas 122 x 92cm
“21st Sept : One of the traps of early days is the neat broad impasto brushstrokes that can carelessly occur and they may even look good and raise one’s spirits and encourage energetic application etc.
However the time comes when these bright optimistic invincible brushstrokes must be superseded by more thoughtful deeper processes. So I leave them as markers for as long as I can; but eventually I am using sideways circular motions with runnier paint (for example) that is nearer to the heart’s desire… so Adios bold beginning! Here come progress…and annihilation…”
10th Oct. “…What’s this? LAZINESS??!!
I am getting messages:
“Keep this one as a study”
“Finish it off soon.”
The urge to “finish” (abandon) comes when one’s own limitations are becoming evident.
Incompetence is peeping at me over the fence.
Fatigue happens. We have to cope. A cup of tea is good.
“Give it a miss!”
“Don’t waste any more time on it”
“Less is best”
This is the devil speaking.
The devil is a laziness inciter.
Towards the end of this job I went back to the pencil drawings I did on James’ verandah in the rain. Sometimes what inspired the original artwork gets supplanted by an adventure between me and the painting. The original idea may or may not make a comeback in the closing sessions. Doesn’t matter whatever way.
Myall Creek Cape Tribulation
Oils on canvas 122 x 92cm
One of the many little creeks that crosses the road to Cape Tribulation. You can always stand on a bridge or crossing for a good view up or down these creeks, but watch out for Jolly Swagman 4WD tourist buses.
Gap Creek Conversation
Oils on canvas 122 x 92cm
Gap Creek runs for a few km beside the road from Bloomfield to Cooktown. Steep rainforested hillsides. Mt Finnigan to the south and the coastal range behind Cedar Bay to the NE.
Sacred land. Rapid waters. Lots of boulders.
28th Oct: “…Dialogue between all the components: Rocks (above and below water), ripples, foliage overhanging creek, Maybe eventually they will sing like opera.”
3rd Nov. “…so I’ve just been making a few points ultra clear; that were a bit vague before. I think its finished.
Pieter Botte above Gap Creek.
Oils on Canvas 122 x 92cm
Ngalba-bulal or Alpaboolal was called Mt Pieter Botte by Captain Owen Stanley comparatively recently.
Probably best to go to Google images of “Mt Pieter Botte Queensland” to check that I’m not being vulgar here.
You get doubletake glimpses of this confronting geological spire travelling around the Cape Tribulation/ Bloomfield area in north Queensland.
I am glimpsing it here above Gap Creek in a Turnerised landscape.
Mt Sorrow Cassowary.
Pastels on Canson paper 75 x 55cm
“… I’m working on a pastel now – a Cassowary with a plum in its beak and forest characters straining this way and that way as if constipated. I don’t always enjoy pastels, especially in the beginning, but they always come good with a bit of persistence…”
Pastels should be, for me, an adventure; or at very least a “venture”. Something unusual, enlightening, “beautiful” that snatches the attention away from mundane pre-occupations.
It can be simply a realistic rendition of something that benefits from interpretive close scrutiny. It might only depend on tonal rendition that goes a little deeper. Or it might clash together unlikely images or ideas. Or anything else.
Above all, pastels deposit their pigment on paper, especially tinted paper, in a way that is alluring and compelling.
Gap Creek boulders and foliage
Pastels on Canson Paper 70 x 50cm
Demonstrating how exquisitely soft pastel pigment performs on tinted paper.
Gap Creek Torrent
Pastels on Canson paper 55 x 75cm
Boulders above and below rippled water.
Gap Creek Tributary
Pastels on Canson Paper 75 x 55cm
Little soaks coming out of the hillsides to feed Gap Creek.
Gap Creek Scribble
Pastels on Canson paper 75 x 55cm
The devil kept whispering: “Less is Best” so I left a bit of scribble on the RHS
And so, dear blog perusers, we emerge out of 2022. It was an exciting year for me, and one event in particular fills me with hope for the possible future of this country and this planet and its lovely creatures and plants; and the humans too, I suppose, now that they seem to be recognising certain problems that we have to deal with…
January 2022
January 2022
Looks like only 5 paintings since my last post here.
“This Very Moment” Oils Canvas 92cm x 122cm
This one is a celebration of Jeanette’s house that I have been building for her over the last 25 or so years.
The idea of painting a moment came early when I was experimenting with making a lot of the brushstrokes end with an upward flick, a kind of optimistic flourish which seemed to unite everything in a shared happy moment. There were several views from the walk down to Jeanette’s place that I put together like a comic strip, but not boxed in.
Somehow I kept thinking about Godfrey Miller’s works that often seem to be unfinished and indeed unfinishable…an ongoing process that would be killed if “finished”.
A stretched moment.
“Origins and Deviations” Acrylics on canvas 122cm x 152cm
A big one. Working from photos taken at Cape Tribulation.
I wrote quite a few pages of notes while on this one.
Here are (just) a few:
15th June…the photos are full of exquisite stuff and so far I can only “copy” ideas … looking for deviations and red herrings. The scribbles and loops are Dufy-esque.
22 June. Had my Astra zeneca #2 yesterday. So here I am, alive.
The Architecture of “Origins”: The cave and folds and foliar textures and deco-botany…Make it clear, but be always vigilant against dreariness. This applies especially to the deco-botanico fetish: Revel in it but make sure it sings. Like Gottschalk. Like a fucking canary, Nothing less !
Clarity can sneakily copulate with dreariness. I don’t quite know why. Perhaps innovation and invention are always needed; a big squeeze of each. And mystery. Not quite knowing.
12 July
Getting involved in scale and complexity VS simplification in places to get the “melody” going.
I’m learning a lot on this job. I wonder how much I will remember?
21st July
The “finished” effect begins to peep. I think I need to amalgamate and infiltrate some zoophyte shapes, but not “Wheres-Wallys”.
Not this time.
Consciousness: In humans this is a greatly enlarged and dictatorial array of tinted lenses and misguided prompts, discriminating against reality.
Then came two more Western Macs jobs.
“Askew” (“Notforgetting Gruner”) Oils on canvas 122cm x 152cm
“….I should have another shot at that range near Ormiston Gorge, but with some ½ tone and fully lit stuff on that range in the middle.- Gruneresque as I can get it!! 4’ x 5’”
1st Sept. My method of drawing or rendering is “accumulative approximations” Especially with these hills. Going over and over: layer upon layer of refinement. I want a kind of photo-realism but importantly, with a sensual colour/shape abstract delight. No wonder it takes me so long.
And it would be nice if the realism is playing the believe me: don’t believe me game.
Surrealism
Keep pushing the believeability and then push the incredible to unbelievable level…its quite a trick.
A confidence trick. I have to make the beholder’s brain dither between yes ???and no???
I call it “Askew” because the RHS has been pulled down out of horizontality. Never ask why.
“Canned Western Macs” Oils on Canvas 92cm x 122cm
This one made me think of Turner.
“…3rd Nov. (Cleo-found-day) Its getting Turneresque. I have to hypothesise colour like a physicist using maths to cook up the Higg’s Bosun.
You won’t see this view out in the Western Macs. I chopped out a few of my favourite bits and stuck them in a can. Its a bit sketchy, but it was that sort of idea…
“La Nina in Big Bush” Oils on canvas 122cm x 92cm
Wet springs/summers in Big Bush are very uplifting. This is more or less the view from my upstairs equinox (Spring and Autumn) studio, looking down into the front garden during heavy rain.
During this time I was also working on the beginnings of another steel sculpture in the form of a Conservatory.
That’s just me being pretentious again.
Its really a potting shed, and when it’s a bit further advanced I will post a photo or two. But it helps explain the not-so-many-paintings since March.
I wonder what the world will be like by the time of my next post?
Let’s keep smiling anyway. You can still see smiles in the eyes above the masks.
Cheers
love
David
March 2021
March 2021
I have only two paintings and one sculpture to show this time.
“Portico for my Darling”
Welded galvanised steel and corrugated iron and polycarbonate.
11 x 4 x 3.7 m.
I have been doing quite a bit of sculpture for a few weeks on an ongoing job…Its out of welded galvanised steel. I like my sculptures to have a function. This one will be used as a portico and to that end I have constructed it on the front (north-facing) end of my darling lady friend’s house.
It will have roofing added in the next week or so.
“Jubilee Creek Swing”
Oils on canvas; two panels
91.5 x 440cm
The first painting “Jubilee Creek Swing” began as a 3ft x 4ft job, (91.5 x 220 cm) but as work proceeded I was wishing I could add a couple of inches (51mm) to the RHS. Finally I got a fresh 3ft x 4ft canvas and attached it to the RHS and proceeded..
You can see the division line down the centre.
With all that extra area I was able to make a humanoid fig tree. And finally the swing.
When my kiddies were quite small we went for a hike with Charlie Roberts up Jubilee Creek at Shipton’s Flat in North Queensland. We did find and swing on quite a few swings.
“Moombooldool Reclaimed”
Oils on canvas 91 x 220cm
The other painting; “Moombooldool Reclaimed” celebrates one of those roadside relics of an ecosystem that once covered all the local countryside, but now is all that was left after the land clearing by our heroic pioneers.
On behalf of the non-human living creatures I like to hope that one day the humans will pack up and depart from this planet for another; bigger and more pristine planet; and the true owners will return.
The mallee will sprawl over the road.
Absent creatures will come out of the woodwork of extinction. And life will resume as in pre-human times, as if after a hiccup.
Well dear blog-readers, I hope you will all be getting your vaccinations so that the human race will overcome the covid menace and continue to dominate and exploit this planet of ours; for the time being anyway…until a more nurturing, compassionate practice prevails.
cheers
love
David
September 2020: Covid Paintings
I made notes as I worked on these 5 recent paintings.
The first was a big one; based on my photos and sketches from Cape Tribulation, Myall Creek, and other people’s photos from Downey Creek North Queensland; and tentatively I called the painting “Interdependence” but later renamed it “Myall Creek Cosmic Microcosm”
At this time our main cause for concern was the galloping climate dysfunction (being denied by the neo liberals and their fossil fuel masters), in the form of prolonged drought, high temperatures, enormous bushfires to the east; and awakening several mornings to near blackness from the smoke.
But there were reports of a strange corona shaped virus discovered in China…
“Myall Creek Cosmic Microcosm”
Oils on canvas. 122 x 178cm (big)
I wrote notes to myself every few days like:
Now about this interdependence:
Firstly its similarity and kinship with music enthuses me. Then there’s the cosmos.
Then:
Reflections don’t have to reflect exactly, literally. But just enough to say (possibly) “reflections here and there”. Look first at the squiggles. This job requires “right concentration”
24th Feb. Trying to marry interdependence with anarchic invention…The conglomerates of spirochaetes/squiggles are growing.
There is a story going from left to right. Its like a tune…
6 Mar. Today I seem to be working with semi-tones and some tentative edges (Edges should be semi-permeable)…
10 mar. Giving a little rein to Mother Intuition, but under scrutiny – mindful intuition.
12 Mar. First job today was achieving better tonal authenticity. Then ghostlike opportunities – more abstract shapes than sculptural, just for the moment…
Getting it coherent, but not rational (please not!)
And then on 18th Mar:
Several days of non-work; unable to concentrate with the virus approaching. Looks like more tonal work will help.
31 Mar. Getting difficult to concentrate with the covid threat but it seems that seeking out pointers to sculptural/architectural shapes emerging- is a way forward in difficult times.
3 April. I’m harmonizing and improvising “shapes” and thinking of Monet’s Nympheas
10th April. Some interesting wraithlike vapours arising with prospects.
At this point I put Myall Creek aside and began a new job which I called at first: “Looking for the Silver Lining”
but later changed to: “The Silver Lining; Where is it?”
A page with a couple of spidery sketches and caption; “Big Bush in the rain.”
29th April. 3rd day on Silver Lining. The Habit Rabbit and Gunny are there.
This one is dictating its abstract needs and I follow, searching the photos for something that “fits”
So I should be doing also with the previous unfinished (unfinishable??)”Myall Creek”.
12th May. Spirochaetes. What are they?
Not decoration
not calligraphy
more like: Vessels, nerves, organic wiring, stitching of interbeing.
Sometimes they aggregate to resemble (via accident or assisted accident) mouth parts, beaks, feathers, claws, insect legs and wings, butterfly patterns, stipples of moss and bark and venation-
Where do they come from?
I spend most of my time in bush and garden looking at them. As well as photos, videos, books which I collect.
I like to think these aggregations can expand to embrace the cosmos.
19th May. Still alive! Back on “Myall creek”. Get the large light aggregations echoing one another…
Its coming together nicely I just have to make the birds sing…
Some bits are a bit too well drawn (heavy) Some bits a little too dithery.
20th May. I can hear some clicking noises but it ain’t birdsong yet. The various sections are making sense and beginning to converse but a bit false just yet. There are some invertebrate spirochaetes.
May 21. Now the larger aggregates begin to shuffle about and reach out- no social distancing here! Getting close to “finish”
26th May. The aggregations are becoming units – little sculptural pendants. I must not let them become nonsensical. Or even relevant.
28th May: Today I am that other fellow who likes his paintings to look like something and I’ve been inserting such things. I have come back via another route, if “back” is where I want to go..My brain has been addled by coronavirus fear. I have to remember that the chance of stroke or heart failure is, and always has been greater. Enjoy Bach, Gottschalk and Nino Rota and get on with it.
Ist June. I simply must have another go at it.
It had got too misty airyfairy and no fucking guts so I am trying to get more intestines and bollocks into it… Chopin’s Ballades and Impromptus showing the way.
24 June. After a spell away I am firming in this and that. Insect parts, decorations, pulling together pseudo entities (spirochaetes). Its looking good and it may be finished.
“The Silver lining:Where is it?”
122 x 92 cm
Oils on Canvas
Somewhere here I finished Silver Lining without further comment.
Then I began another which I called “5 Aggregates” simply because my Buddhism studies have been revealing to me infinite excruciatingly delicious concepts all at once. The sort of feelings that I get walking through the bush and thinking that the living part of planet earth is where it all starts, and still depends. That humans are the ones who can almost sense it, can almost articulate it, but then always(?) forget or dismiss it.
As well as trying not to think about dying from covid.
“5 Aggregates”
122 x 92 cm
Oils on Canvas
And so to my notes again:
5 aggregates: an allegory.
Body
Feelings
Mental formations
Perceptions
Consciousness…
Impermanence
Interbeing
Non self.
22 June. Never mind the characters just yet. Just get the stage sorted.
24th June. Who are the characters and whom the props? Entities and near-entities and the disentitying process. Where a patch of colour can reach its maximum intensity in a blob: Thats almost an entity. But nothing quite makes it to a complete isolatable entity. The global inter-connections are stronger. Like molecular physics, ecology, astronomy. Everything. This seems terribly important to me.
3 July. Beginning to notice major shapes (tonal and colour) and taking them seriously. Some nice homespun bigbushy things happening.
Then another page with a very light sketch and caption : “Idea of a bridge/keyhole”
“Tunnel to the Pre-covid Times”
122 x 92cm
Oils on Canvas
22.7.20. Still alive and starting anothery. BB with bridge, keyhole, domes whatever.
I’m trying to be a bit mathematical at this stage ie choosing which lines to emphasize etc…
29.7.20 Its possible these might be my last paintings. If covid takes me to her bosom in the next few months I would like to have done a few things I’ve not yet done.
Using richer colours and being utterly insouciant about it.
31st July delineating volumeable spirochaetes.
5th. Poking around desperately, when a suggestion of illumination appears its a godsend (!?!)
Movement of light becomes a narrator.
Starting sinkhole in wrong colours.
The weasels and spirochaetes are lurking already. There is a stork and a toucan lining up for immortalisation.
13th Aug. When I am unstimulated by a current painting here is what I can do:
Look for things that are almost pleasing me and work on improving them.
These things might be:
1 Pictorial depth
2 Colour combinations: co-stimulations
3 Interbeing of dynamics, shapes, textures. Edge-to-edge body language.
4 Crescendos and hierarchies of light/illumination (remember Rembrandt)
List incomplete.
And suddenly its finished.
Then I was able to begin a job I had been eagerly wanting to begin for a few weeks.
Its obvious that in this covid era I will not be able to travel overseas for maybe years; and being 78 years old I’m wondering if I will still be spry enough to travel when I’m over 80.
So I have to somehow receive imaginary postcards from all the places I still want to visit.
This time it is Bhutan.
Cards from Bhutan depicting the butterfly, the tragopan, the drongo, the sandgrouse are pinned up in a wintry Big Bush painting.
“Postcards from Never”
122 x 92 cm
Oils on canvas.
Please be careful everybody; the covid wolf is still out there.
Summer 2019/2020
Summer 2019/2020
After the last two summers I should be saying something here about climate change and men wearing suits and ties, but I will leave it for next time; if we are still here.
And so to my recent paintings. A mixed batch…
The Peacock Spider (that changed everything).
What do we know about Peacock Spiders?
Tiny jumping spiders. Not much bigger than a lentil.
The males have a tail like a peacock, which it will erect, when stimulated (by a lady of his species) Please look it up in Google images. Well worth the effort.
My son James sent me photos of his first Peacock Spider encounter when I was just beginning this painting.
Its a Big Bush painting, summertime. Leathery eucalyptus leaves, bark, dry leaf litter…
I am happy to accept serendipitous offerings, especially if there is a momentary lack of inspiration; so in went a Peacock Spider.
It was supposed to integrate with modesty; but instead it took centre stage.
Grotto
The pinnacle revisited, and Aunty Reta’s sculptures re-invoked. This time a brontosomething with glass baubles, LEDs etc along the ridge, and a few godawful creatures suckling…and more Peacock spiders cavorting amongst the vegetation. Oh deah.
Nonself
Juxtaposing trunks, leaves ground, horizon etc.
Each “thing” has identifiable properties but these do not qualify or require it to have a self, a name, a sign to distinguish it from everything else. The cosmos is one harmonious system, including us…So how to get everything merging into everything else without sacrificing diversity, and generally ballsing it all up?
It was an intriguing experience and I’m happy with the result, but did I manage to demonstrate Nonself?
Dingley Dell.
A Shipton’s Flat job.
I was trying to flood a patch of beautiful rainforest with sunbeams coming from the left. A fig tree compelled me to invest it with reptilian, nay, dinosaurian qualities.
Cape Tribulation tree trunks: Anxiety
The Pied Monarch (top right corner) fluffed up with rage and anxiety in response to me imitating his territorial call seemed to fill this painting with his anxiety. Maybe it was my own anxiety as I worked on and onward with no satisfaction for many weeks. Eventually it came good, I think. The main point of the painting was to do a closeup of encrusted rainforest tree trunks, but kind of opening it up in places to glimpse inside, another dimension. Why?
Never ask me why.
Cape Tribulation tree trunks: Serenity
Another tree trunk job; but this one painted itself. It was a joy to work on this one. It lost its edges so cheerfully when I suggested, and allowed a little translucency and ambiguity here and there… (and that glimpse of another dimension)
Why isn’t all of life like that?
Silly boy! it IS!
Box and Acacia.
I wanted to do a Summer in Big Bush painting; like the Peacock Spider job, before the Peacock Spider ruined it.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
I hope we all survive covid 19.
Its one of those situations where the future is quite unimaginable; and its futile and upsetting trying to probe.
So let us take the Buddha’s advice and live deeply in the present.
cheers
love
David
June 2019
Shiptons Flat again.
We went back to Shiptons Flat last October.
Shiptons Flat is just south of Cooktown. An exquisite place.
Tucked up against Mt Finnigan,
and intermeandered by the sprightly Parrot Creek,
after it tumbles down from Finnigan.
When I was much younger I spent a bit of time in North Qld particularly at Shiptons Flat.
I was doing art works as usual but also making a 16mm film, very low budget; about Tropical Rainforest.
We made friends with the Roberts family at Shiptons Flat during these visits.
The last visit was in 1989 when my kiddies were quite young.
With Charlie Roberts we climbed almost to the top of Black Mountain… and also up Mt Finnigan. Charlie also took us for a walk up Jubilee Creek.
Little James at about 3 found lots of hanging vines to swing upon.
Eva must have been 9, and Anna 11.
We all swam in a big pool on the Annan River near our camping spot. Later we were told that Saltwater Crocodiles had been seen there. Ho Hum.
This latest visit, last October was with Jeanette, my darling lady friend.
It was lovely to meet up again with the Roberts family, some of whom are still there: Lewis and his wife Edith, and brother Charlie.
They are still living an idyllic lifestyle, in one of the loveliest locations on earth; with minimal consumerism.
Lewis is a leading botanical artist, currently working on a volume of all the local orchids.
He and Charlie are much respected naturalists; world authorities on North Queensland Flora/fauna.
I was greatly excited to see that the “Red Scrub” (actually an area of lovely tropical rainforest growing on rich red basalt soil) was still there; and the road going through one edge of it, which I call the “Red Scrub Road”.
And here are the first of the paintings (all oils/canvas):
Mt Finnigan and Guinea paddock.
36” x 36”
Mt Finnigan is a high mountain with cloud forest atop. I’ve climbed to the top a few times. Its very close to heaven: whatever, wherever, whenever that is.
I have tilted the Guinea grass paddock somewhat, for some esoteric effect. Dry season. Guinea grass absent.
Red Scrub Road 1: Cauliflorous Figs.
48” x 36”
Lovely to be back. First impression.
Red Scrub Road 2: Emergents
70” x 48” (That’s pretty big.)
I tried to make the foreground squeeze the emergents up into the clouds.
Red Scrub Road 3: Cripta
70” x 48” (Yes yes, big too!)
I keep seeing Gaudi’s Cripta Colonia over-arching the road in this one.
And a few jobs from Cape Tribulation, which we visited on the same trip:
Creekside Architecture; study
36”x 48”
I left this one in a shabby unfinished state. Will do a bigger one one day. Maybe it will look like ruins overgrown.
Cape Trib creek
70”x48” (Big again; what a busy time for me!)
Down the centre of the painting the components are smaller, lighter, brighter and more contrasty. To the left and right; progressively larger, darker components; less contrast. I was listening to Ravel’s excruciating “Gaspard de la Nuit” while doing this one. Infinite refinement and invention is possible.
Oliver Creek downpour
Pastel. 29” x 21.75”
Lovely to get back to see Oliver Creek again. And show my darling Jeanette, who loved it: (as well as Cape Tribulation, and Cooktown, and Shiptons Flat and the Bloomfield Track!?)
Mt Sorrow: Aunty Reta’s Sculpture Memorial to Eric; my dad
48”x 36”
My dad suicided at 54. Reta was his older sister. She said she never quite recovered from his death.
In my imagination I have made Aunty Reta a sculptor who specialises in outdoor installations. Looks like she was using glazed terracotta here for Eric’s portrait and the birdy things.
See Aunty Reta’s Sculptures on the Pinnacle. Click on November 2012 on the right here >>
Mt Sorrow Ridge: Impermanence
48” X 36”
Impermanence, interdependence: from here to the outermost reaches of infinity. Without a break in the continuity.
August 2018
Back to the Centre.
So we did another trip to Central Australia in September/October 2017. This time we took in Uluru and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas). I did a couple of helicopter ascents (and descents; decently graceful).
This temptation to do paintings “of” a view can be quite seductive when one finds oneself addressing remarkable natural forms.
I have to keep reminding myself that I am looking for a twist or a witty quirk at least, if not a message, rather than mere clever rendition of objects seen. There is more to art than just craft.
I like to sermonise blatantly, discretely, sneakily. I need to be challenged, perplexed, amused. Any irrelevant irreverent analogy or myth that may arise is played with.
Boredom must be avoided.
I must not waste my life and talents serving mammon; rather I must preach to the humans the need to abandon greed and preserve our planet. The only way I can see to do this is through my art.
I have managed to keep at my art pretty well all my life, which has involved some hardship and tenacity. (And tolerance and forgiveness from my family!)
However I must confess that I find art itself a bit of a wank; not all that serious…
But better than working for someone else, (damaging the planet);
Better than taking oneself and one’s art Terribly Seriously;
Better than being a careerist con artist or artsausage machine…
but I digress…
Certain facts sometimes confront me: eg that I am not very good at drawing certain things.
Rocks is one such. I am enjoying teaching myself how to make rocks interesting. Textures on a range of scales..from sugar sized granules to bus size blocks, to mountains. And the cracks, crevasses, canyons in between. Making paint emulate, mimic or evoke these new sensations is an adventure… then there is the game of insinuating the cheeky ideas; the message.
Whilst playing with the juxtaposed colours and textures of rocks I even descended to using that horrid instrument of evil vulgarity: the palette knife…just a few times.
Prehuman Architecture.
Oils 91 x 220 cm (3ft X 4ft, as are most of these)
Its almost as if Gaudi made a secret trip to the Western Macs. This is where he did a lot of experimental structures for Park Guell. Many of these are far too large to be accommodated in Barcelona’s expensive Tibidabo hill real estate. So I consider Western Macs to be the Northern Territory extension of Park Guell.
Sonder Enshrouded.
Oils 220 x 76 cm
Not really Mt Sonder any more, just an idea…upward thrust…rock and mist intermingling. Somehow a kind of fairy-tale castle look insinuated itself.
Ian Thompson Memorial: Potoo creating the Amazon forest.
Oils 91 x 220 cm
A creature from my private cosmogony; Potoo, the great ecological architect, sings her greatest idea yet into material form. The painting depicts the moment one hundredth of a second after Potoo exhaled her Big Whoosh. The chaotic elements begin to assemble into the Amazon Forest.
While working on this painting, word came to me that my great friend Ian Thompson had died.
Ian came into my life when I was in my late twenties and had been a friend, helper, fellow conspirator, mischief maker, philosophy debater, boozing companion (until 6th August 1996, when I joined AAs).
And then in my sobriety he was my teacher of good manners, compassion and tolerance that I so much lacked. I am so grateful for the time I had with him.
Botany Clothing Geology.
Oils 91 x 220 cm
We saw this row of hills rising up up up as if to heaven, just after sunset as we were driving to Glen Helen Resort where we stay when in the Western Macs. A few days later we drove back looking for them but they were “gone”.
I had to make do with some drawings of similar hills nearby, but I had to grossly exaggerate the vertical scale.
The resulting painting seems to have started with a contour map; and then an overlay of the surface geology, then another overlay of the flowering plants growing on this sweep of hillocks, or suite of corrugations.
Pastels:
All 55 x 75 cm on Mi tientes paper
Pastels are a good fun way of getting ideas down quickly. Sometimes they are fizzers, but never total failures.
Heavitree Range Right Below.
From a helicopter without a door. Hold tight O safety harness!
Western Mac Caterpillars.
Sediment stratas looping, loping to the horizon.
Gaudi’s Hillside Sculptured Stone Walls.
Perplexing, intriguing masonry: Large areas are traversed with strips of emerging native stratas, but they are just the right height and width to be called “walls”.
Human scale. These are longer than those at Park Guell.
Sometimes I don’t have to elaborate or spruce up natural phenomena. Just a bit of accompaniment.
Diddleump, diddleump.
More Walls.
There are thousands of hectares of these out there.
Capybara Temple Precinct.
From the helicopter the Kata Tjutas look like creatures emerging from the sand. Here we have a couple of capybaras, with temple portals. Etc.
Gaudi’s Walls with Holes for Megafauna; Now Vacant.
The megafauna disappeared shortly after the humans arrived.
Yes yes, Gaudi was a human.
Not a great difficulty, just a chronology-transcending postulation.
Uluru 1
Can one do a drawing of Uluru that is not kitschy?
Flaky rock surface, what’s under the flakes?
Trying to see inside; a bit like a Monet Nympheas series.
Uluru is so much older than humanity.
During our one million or so years on this planet humans have done enormous damage:
Exterminated a large percentage of flora/ fauna species in the last few thousand years;
But the universe, including this planet, has been around for billions of years,
and humans, and their gods and superstitions
had fuckall to do with it.
If Uluru blinks, she will have the good and bad fortune to miss completely, the human race:
Its loveliness and horror ;
Its exquisite creativity, its vandalism and self destruction…
And what does the little cloud think?
Uluru 2.
Uluru sheds quite a lot of water when it rains. Where the water accumulates around the base there are patches of quite decently sized bloodwood (Corymbia opaca) trees. Here we have their shadows from the afternoon sun playing games with the rock textures. Calling to me to coax out a lurking pastel.
Protogonius.
One of my favorite Amazon butterflies. Why did I do it, in the middle of a series from the deserts of Central Australia???
I dunno.
And five more paintings
Water and Gravel
Acrylics, then Oils 220 x 91 cm
I began this one in acrylics using some of my old photos.
The aim of the photos was to record information:
Water surface in sunlight and in shade; reflections on the water of sky and trees from the far bank; pebbles at various depths; movement of water (ripples) and distortion of pebbles through rippled water; shadows from trees on this side.
Clever photos.
Easy enough to convey this information in acrylics, but a bit dreary.
When I changed to oils suddenly I was dealing with paint; tone, colour and all those esoteric things without names that oil paint does.
The photographic rendition was forgotten.
The main job became animating and making-lovely the frame full of “unmanageable”stuff.
It became a microcosm of the cosmos.
Thats better!
Good old oilses.
Yellow Y’s
Oils 220 x 91 cm
Sometimes the grey box trees in “Big Bush” (where I live) shed a lot of bark exposing fresh yellow bark below. This goes grey pretty quickly, so I decided to do a painting right away of the yellow tree trunk forks.
Them red dots are quandongs, and there are the Spotted Jezebels (butterflies: Delias arganippe) and their larvae again.
Oliver Creek
Oils 220 x 91 cm
Last time I was at Oliver Creek (north of the Daintree river) was about 27 years ago.
We are planning another trip to Daintree/Cooktown area later this year and I was looking at maps and photos from the last trip. I found the 35mm colour negatives, from the trip, nicely preserved so I digitised and printed off a few enlargements. Enough info here for a painting. Another of those old “I was here! This place exists; its exquisitely beautiful!” jobs.
(Where the humans are supposed to throw up their arms once again and swear to stop destroying nature!) Etc etc.
And that brings me to the Mirkwood Forest jobs.
As a very immature twenty-something-year-old I read the words of a critic of Turner’s time describing Turner’s late paintings as “…paintings of nothing.”
“What a desirable achievement!” I thought.
“If I could make paintings out of nothing I would be, happy, fulfilled, admirable, mystical…”
or whatever immature twenty-something-year-olds most desire.
Subsequently I became familiar with Monet’s Orangerie nympheas (waterlilies) and Rothko and the US abstract Expressionists (the Irascible 18) all making exquisite paintings out of nothing.
I always strove to make abstract shapes and dynamics (“nothing”) underly and structure (discreetly) my picture making.
But the breathtakingness of natural ecosystems still required me to present and preoccupy myself with convincing images (“something”) to the point of trompe l’oeil stuff.
The two have been married most of my career. A stormy marriage but lots of fun.
At thirty something, when I first stood before Velasquez’s painting: “Las Meninas” in the Prado, Madrid; I experienced undescribable feelings.
“So there really is something big and solid in it, this Art thingummy. But What?”
I was thinking.
Velasquez gives a powerful (“unknowable”) push to his lifelike images. Something beyond (but including) the nothing and something.
His play of focus and non-focus has something to do with it…
A while ago I heard Colin Lanceley saying on ABC radio that “Las Meninas” did something similar to him.
Arthur Murch; my teacher and mentor, used to recommend Velasquez and he had prints of his works stuck up on his studio wall, but he never elaborated beyond declaring:
“He did an excellent head.”
When I require a painting of natural things to generate a quivering feeling in the chest cavity (joy, love, humility, awe etc) I think of the “Las Meninas” effect.
This kind of painting can be done with a straightforward rendering of a visible object or view; something I have been shying away from recently.
In April we stayed at Mirkwood Forest on the slopes of Mt Macedon and I did a few drawings and photos.
Lots of grey trunks with glittering leathery gumleaves filling the gaps.
When sunlight rattles through this thicket of diversely textured pillars; patches of luminous colour generate, and I am thinking of Gaudi’s Sagrada Famiglia, as one does.
In the studio back home the greys began to generate semi-transparent spyholes to internal organs and entomological decorations and allusions to extinct megafauna, as they do. And Las Meninas kept coming to mind.
Lots of fun finding a balance. The temptation was to make everything more and more transparent and matrix-like with overwhelming connectedness (“Interdependence co-arising”)
You can stay at Mirkwood Forest Cottages. Just google it.
Mt Macedon 1
Oils 91 x 220 cm
Towards the morning sun. Certain extinct creatures about to become visible.
Mt Macedon 2
Oils 220 x 91 cm
Away from the morning sun. Certain stumps about to become fossils.
Spring 2017
As I pen these lines I am working on new jobs in a sense of “thinking about” rather than “looking at” wherein, for example, the horizon is being de-horizontalised, and the landscape curled up a little like in dreams or memory.
Often something I am putting in a painting makes me think of something else; so maybe I try to include both.
Also I am thinking about hills and rocks as painted by certain other artists; to wit:
Goya: the gravity-taunting bluffs and mountains in some of his outdoor works (the like of which I have seen in real life from train journeys in Spain)
Caspar David Freidrich: He was spellbound by nature and mountains; but mostly couldn’t disentangle the Christian church from it. Still plenty like him around today.
Whiteley: the deliciously unhinged other-planetness of his landscapes.
He could make a landform take your breath away. His infinitely variable scale (from mountainsides to ant’s livers), compelling focus, extra-dimensional dynamics…
G.W. Lambert: The virtuoso brushwork and mental control of his plein air war paintings done in the Middle East, and the idyllic landscapes in which young Australian men are being killed during the landing at the Nek, Gallipoli. He got a buzz out of the trees making dots on distant hillsides.
Cezanne: the grumpy fumbling, groping and caressing after his “petit sensation”. (Not the simplistic, peurile “cube, sphere & cone” that artwriters waffle about.)
I keep thinking of Mt Sainte Victoire (also seen from a bus.)
My Mt Sonder makes me think of Mt Sainte Victoire, except my stuff is pre-human.
Gruner: Like Cezanne he lived on the buzz he got from perceiving and delineating the patches of colour and form in his landscapes. Also the taking-away-of-breath that a delicious expanse of volume gave him (and us). He once declared that earth anatomy was all that interested him (after an aeroplane flight)
Heavitree Range Unfurls
36” x 48” Oils on canvas
A range within the Western Macs. One ridge was in cloud shadow when I beheld it; behind it the more distant Mt Giles is in sunlight. I rolled up the ends just a little; and I enjoyed dehorizontalizing the horizon. I felt Gruner’s gaze upon me a few times.
Mt Sonder Low Cloud
36”x48” Oils on canvas
On a windy morning with low cloud I did a drawing with the foreground trodia (spinifex) doing etherial swirls; Across the centre of the painting the peaks are in deep shadow but very solid volumes; then the rising cloud takes over again, swirling along the top of the view. Back in the studio, making a painting out of this idea, the spinifex, hills, clouds are becoming zoologique.
This is one of those paintings that doesn’t want me to finish it. (“…don’t finish me off!”)
It seems to live only while I am still working on it.
Old Slunk revisits the Western Macs
36”x48” Oils on canvas.
When all’s said and done I’m really pointing out that certain ridges in the Western Macs look a bit like my old knuckles.
And yes, I am doing a self portrait of my hands…
Geology Sermon
36″x24″ Oils on canvas
The human race needs a kick up the bum.
We are enslaved to consumerist capitalism. Obsessed with self, wants and don’t wants, games, entertainment, material self enrichment. And those who don’t have it, want it.
Anthropocentric arrogance rampant.
The superstition and gullibility of the human race is quite astounding; and it allows manipulation by the more cunning of us; hence the booming consumerist capitalism and our enslavement.
A frightening/depressingly large percentage of people lack the mental capability or stamina or willingness to comprehend even the simplest concept, eg:
How is human-generated CO2 gas affecting the climate?
What does alcohol do to the brain? The family? The community?
Isn’t continual economic and population growth suicidally reckless on a finite, overpopulated, depleted planet?
The education system which is supposed to safeguard us against ignorance, superstition and manipulation, is delivering largely more superstition, make-believe and manipulation.
It seems the only goals worth striving for at school are in sport (which is make believe), and neo-liberal endless accumulation of wealth (which is unsustainable and immoral).
Indeed a large percentage of what people aspire to, and hold up as worthy goals is pure make believe.
Much of the work done in the “work force” is also make believe. Fake productivity. Not to mention environmentally damaging.
So effective is our brainwashing into consumerism; we consider it our right to waste resources in order to appear wealthy and successful.
To be required to conserve resources and control population would be considered an assault on our rights, and an injustice.
Regulations and codes have been put in place (pressure from lobbyists and parasitic industries) to ensure that the public consume wastefully in the name of standards and safety.
We are intimidated by academics, statespersons, religions and even some scientists into not regarding population and economic growth as a threat to the planet and all us creatures who live here.
The sector of the community that realises that the planet and its resources are finite and running out, seems to have no connection with the sector that lives by the superstition of economic growth.
But worst of all, we are encouraged to tell lies. Success comes only to those who tell lies.
Modern society believes nature and the rest of the universe (ie EVERYTHING except humans) is a free resource to be exploited by humans, but otherwise only of entertainment value. Any lingering connection with “nature” is via tv documentaries; but otherwise nature is “out there”, not really part of reality, uncivilised and unhygenic.
Domestic animals; livestock, agricultural plants and (to a lesser extent) garden plants are human artefacts, and false nature.
I offer this painting as a yardstick against which to measure reality:
The first hurdle is the here-and-now trap. Humans have been around for a very brief time. About a million years. Insects for example, have been around many hundreds of millions of years; likewise birds, trees etc… They have been “getting it right” and surviving for hundreds of millions of years. This “knowledge” incorporated in their DNA is worthy of respect and veneration. The natural systems that keep the planet working depend on lots of living creatures, (even in human’s insides!)
Its soil, air, water need trillions of healthy little and big creatures to keep the system working.
And its not all just for us humans.
We are part of it willy nilly. We are the johnny-come-latelys.
Indeed if this information were compiled into some ancient holy book, it could be the basis for a religion with ceremonies, rituals, dancing and singing and the repentence and forgiveness for our sins against the environment.
But being based on fact, this religion could be a cause for goodness and wisdom and compassion, instead of exploitative mischief and nonsensical superstition. But I digress…
In this painting we have a vertical stratum of rock, laid down as horizontal mud sediments on the bottom of a primordial sea hundreds of millions of years ago, compressed and incredibly transformed into rock, then (very slowly) flipped 90 degrees onto its edge, then the surrounding stratae, slightly softer than the central ridge, eroded away, and this ridge is how it looks at this moment.
This took hundreds of millions of years. And during this time Australia moved across the equator, visited the south pole, and more…
During all this time millions of creatures evolved and populated the planet. Some of their dead bodies settled in the mud and became fossils in the rocks here.
And during 99.9999% of this time there were NO HUMANS!
Gaze upon it, dear humans, and try to find some humility…
Western Macs
When I was in my early twenties I drove past the Western Macdonnell Ranges (“Western Macs”- west of Alice Springs) on my way to Hermannsburg Mission. I gave a few art classes there and returned to Sydney. I was intending to spend a few days on the return trip, doing drawings and paintings of the ranges near the road, but the bloke I was traveling with was in a great hurry to get back to Sydney… something to do with the flies as I remember, so I thought; never mind, I would come back later…
Back in those days I was quite happy to “Do a painting of….” That is to say, show what a certain view looks like. The trick lay in the way I painted it.
Now in my mid seventies I need to do more with a painting. For a start the view need not exist; neither geographically, nor in memory. Nor need it be a view; not “out there” anyway.
But when I finally got back to the Western Macs a few months ago I found the scenery to be quite astounding enough for “doing a painting of…” At first anyway.
Actually the first task is to learn how to draw and paint hills and rocks. To some extent these early ones are exercises; and I’m wondering what to do with horizons, which are so insistent in the desert.
Maybe few tweaks…I cannot control my urge to tweak, and if a megafauna seems to become visible; well, I am not one to stand in its way…but the first four paintings I have done are more or less my reactions to the geology, botany and geometry of these strange protruberances from the desert plains. No need at this stage to insinuate any further issues. Unless…
Wattle and Corrugations
October in the Western Macs after a damp winter and wildflowers blooming.
A certain species of wattle played its yellow note in a minor chord of other yellows…ochres, oranges, siennas, pale olives.
While the left hand was playing umbers, violets, dark olives…
And those corrugations going on for miles and miles reverberating through the whole countryside.
All of this dotted with spinifex clumps and blooming bushes. Not of this planet.
Mt Sonder Perentie
Geology. The layers of sediment from the bottom of a sea millions of years ago; compressed into rocks and pushed up …
Drawing hills and rocks. How to make the top look like I’m looking up, and the bottom looking down. How to make the horizon infinite, definite and illusory (all of which it is). How to give the hills and rocks volume and weight; and their relentless, slow dynamics, and the underlying anatomy of the geological skeleton and muscles which need to express feelings and emotions and memories: Thinking of Michelangelo.
How to manipulate paint to create the illusion of rocky texture. How to make rocks look amazing, or at least undreary.
Can one make a painting that recreates the feeling of standing out in the desert beholding this range of hills?, or does one insinuate more (or less) into it?
So I had a lot of stuff on my mind with this job.
And the gigantic goanna that seems to be sunning itself…
Megafauna Shower
Geology…Stratas flipped on edge, eroding unevenly. Waves of rock walls to the horizon in both directions. And billions (not millions) of spinifex tussocks. I found myself (as always) thinking about the landscape as it was in prehuman times.
Wattle and Blue Daubs
I love the dots of mulga and other shrubs on distant hillsides, They are not haphazard. They actually draw the volume of the hill.
Certain stratas on the hill slopes are composed of rocks that make soils that are more compatible to stands of mulga, and at a distance they take on a range of blues, violets…in waves.
Prehuman megafauna appear spontaneously in these landscapes.
David Schlunke 