April 2024

It has been a busy year since my last post here. Not all my busyness was with these art works. I seem to need to do a certain amount of physical work; building and gardening and maintenance to keep fit and mentally balanced…and I go for a bit of a run nearly every day.

There are nine paintings to deal with since my last post.

I started three large jobs more or less together and worked on them pretty frenetically for several months. Then came the summer which necessitates that I move my studio downstairs to the kitchen in the cool where I started three not-so-large jobs. I thought the big ones upstairs were more or less finished.

As the days shortened and mornings got a bit cool I could return to my upstairs studio.

There I found to my horror that the three big ones were absolutely awful.

(Oh Shit! And I’d been showing them to visitors as “finished”! How embarrassing)

So out with (metaphorical) scalpel, angle grinder, chainsaw, crowbar for severe alterations and repairs….

And those paintings are the last three to appear here, after their awesome rejuvenation.

Silver Lining Glimpsed.

Oils on canvas 3ft 6 inches x 4ft 6 inches

This more or less coincides with the Israel/ Gaza conflict and of course the ongoing horrorshow in Ukraine. Looking for a sign of hope; even daring to hope for some long term GOOD happening as a result of all this unrepentant, shameless evil carrying on unrestrained.

So the silvergrey dead logs (looking like they just might be coming back to life) glimpsed through blackish, yet discreetly coloured tree trunks seem to sum up my feelings… and not forgetting the ongoing background of ever more fossil fuels being mined and burned; extinctions, deforestation, desertification and all the galloping degradations that humans are inflicting on our poor planet… And in November an election in USA with a possible disaster looming…

And further now with AI the final nail in the coffin of truth.

Silver Lining anywhere?

Big Bush Midday Midsummer with a visit from our Indian Cousins

Oils on canvas 3ft 6 inches x 4ft 6 inches

Another shot at one of my more challenging, recurring themes: to get that summer midday feeling of heat and downward dazzling light in Big Bush (where I live). Emphasising the dry crackly textures of bark, leaf litter, twigs and sclerophyll foliage.

 But I came across a photo of some large stone elephants in India (in a photo gallery online) and thought: “Hey I could use a few of them in my current painting!” (as one does) and so I shoved a few in.

  A lot of time was then spent marching and shuffling these imponderables around; finding a bit of Indian and Mughal architecture and textiles and insinuating them in too. The overall effect, which I didn’t really intend, but don’t really mind, is of a circus coming to town.

And so the effect of downward hot light got left out of the limelight, and here I go:

 “Well I can have another shot at it, and next time I will stay focussed!”(?)

Ex Isfahan

Oils on canvas 48”x36”

Maybe ten years ago I did a painting of a grey box tree trunk towards the light and as I played around with the patterns in the bark I managed to create an illusion of the far side of the tree coming through, as if the tree trunk was made of clear glass.

So this painting began as an attempt to do that again, but make something really surreal appear inside the glass.

I began with something like the façade of the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque in Isfahan (as one does) but after a lot of time trying to make it look, um, unpretentious and non-silly, I began to insert and overlay elements of steel architecture like the Eiffel tower perhaps… and contrived to give the textured bark a kind of illumination from within?

 And the Isfahan Mosque postponed for another day…

Silly Pines

Oils on canvas 36” x 24”

A bit smaller than most of my jobs.

Just a quick study really, of a clump of black cypress (native) pines Callitris endlicheri, growing near Big Bush Homestead. In a certain light this sharp diagonal edge appears.

Pine Forest with Slanting Light

Oils on canvas 30” x 40”

This was another quick “study” wherein I was trying to make a painting out of simple alphabe-like  shapes or calligraphic dashes and squiggles

No actual “drawing” to describe a scene. Just a juxtaposition of squiggles, straight and bent lines thrown together. But stand back and voila!

I finished this job after three sittings over two and a half days.

While working on this job I was looking at lots of Islamic calligraphy and ceramic decoration from very early Mesopotamian ceramics from Google Images (as one does) but it doesn’t really show in the final study…

However…

I Dreamed of Ancient Ceramics in Big Bush

Oils on canvas 24” x 36”

…After all that Ancient Persian stuff I was looking at, I had a dream wherein …

Well, here’s what I was seeing in the dream…

Another quick study which took three days.  Interesting that I can churn out these little jobs like a sausage machine.

Bark Thesis

Oils on Canvas 48” x 60”.

A biggish job.

Hey this one took many months and many revisions, rebirths, brutal slaughters, loving repairs; being loved and hated multiple times: Days and nights of despair and bliss.

Several times I thought it was nearly finished only to be horrified/nauseated next time I saw it. I kept photos of it in its many phases which are interesting and provoke certain pertinent and impertinent questions/observations.

What I was hoping to do with this job was show Big Bush as it really is: Loveably unglamorous, unpretentious, untidy, shabby and altogether too many dry sticks everywhere.

 I understand how some people struggle with its not-nice-ness.

Yet it is a rich and complex ecosystem; and I find it visually exquisitely “designed”.

Close scrutiny of Big Bush trees, foliage, bark, leaf litter, insect and birdsong generates in me wonderment .

Sunshower Wallagoot

Another shot at the very rainy weather that assailed/entertained me for several days when I was at James’ place at Wallagoot, South coast NSW in 2022.

It became clear to me after struggling for many months with this job that I had to alter the priorities.

First it has to be obvious that it is raining. This took quite a lot of trickery and trial and error.

Whatever else I was hoping to convey just had to wait offstage until I got that rain coming down convincingly. Once I was more or less satisfied with the rain, I wanted to convey wetness of gumleaves.

Also I wanted to get the sunshower glitter of sunlight on wet gum leaves (In the rain)

All of the above was about realism. More technique than creativity.

Then I wondered what else could I try to do with these dramatis personae… I try to avoid saying or thinking “composition” and prefer “design”.

I like to arrange my shapes and colours in a kind of choreography of togetherness: I want to suggest quite obvious relationships that go right across the canvas in all directions edge to edge (and beyond).

Most of my time on a painting involves involving every bit in a kind of frolic with every other bit in all scales . (From elephantsize to antsize!) It takes pretty serious concentration for many hours, days, months!!!

 Every bit of paint is applied tentatively: Just about every bit of paint I apply, however clever and swishy, eventually gets superseded and painted over as the overall design gets more complex/simple/developed.

I am very fussy about this and every day’s work leaves me pretty exhausted.

And forever checking on the visual effect of rain falling etc, that I haven’t buggered it…

(I did damage it several times, and had to keep reworking the rain coming out of clouds; sun shining through, leaves glistening, raindrops in free fall in just the “right” place.)

On top of all that I suffer pretty regularly from the five o’clock rapture where everything I have done today looks absolutely brilliant. (No alcohol is involved)

Beware. It’s an illusion.

 At nine am the next morning reality resumes. Mediocrity is still gawking in the window!

Creekside Probabilities

Oils on Canvas    70” x 48”

Another difficult job that took its time finding itself, concerning a creek up near Cape Tribulation in the Daintree area of north Queensland.

The premise is “What if the creek and rainforest was designed by me wearing my sculptor’s/architect’s hat?”

The sort of thing you might now ask an AI app to do.

Another word I don’t like using is “problems”. I prefer to say: “opportunities for imaginative ventures/adventures”.

This situation kept cropping up: Balancing the opportunities for an architectural space; Multi-storeyed cavernous, with controlled light ingress; and the suggestion of extensive extensions to the left and right of this volume; not unlike a large railway station… Ok, constructing this with the seductive lusciousness of tropical foliage in sculptural bunches and parasols and chandeliers…

It presented two different modes of visual metaphor ;  Can one paint architectural form using foliage and trunk/branch structures. The voice kept telling me; “Yes, you can do it Old Slunk!”

And every day at five pm the rapture was gasping:  ”You’ve done it, Old Slunk!” and next morning the grim stoical scrutiny declared:  “It’s still looking stupid!”

Concurrently there was the business of making all the daubs of paint look pleasing (to me that is) and carrying my message from Buddha that everything in the universe knows about and interacts with every other thing. (So much so that “things” as autonomous entities lose their individuality, nay, their very existence!)

None of this is on a blueprint I can refer to as I go along. I just frig around back and forth until more and more pleasing effects evolve.

In addition my right arm suffered an injury a few years ago when a tendon between biceps and shoulder snapped. Sometimes I have had to use my left arm and hand to do my brushwork. It was quite intriguing; teaching my left arm to manipulate the brushes. It took a couple of days, but now it is quite accomplished and happy to take the reins occasionally…

And so, aged now 81 (same age as poor old Joe Biden!) I plod plod up and down the two flights of stairs to my studio creating opportunities for creative ventures/adventures for myself. Definitely not “problems”.

Back in my boozing days (I am a recovering alcoholic of 28 years now) I believed I would probably die in my fifties (And nearly did). So every day I rejoice that I am still kicking along OK; doing the only thing I seem to do reasonably well…

Thank you for looking.