Motivation to paint
Introduction
Explaining the unexplainable
Existence
I think therefore I am
Impressionalism
Visualise the feeling
Self-portraits
Who am I?
Art that I like
Australia
Beauty in the wasteland
Europe
The underbelly
Iconography
Picture writing
Chinese Art
Traditional and modern
Great Australian Art
Culture comes from two main influences; environment and history. Great Australian art blends both. In regards to the environment, the Australian landscape has been brutalised by humans for more than 60,000 years. As a legacy, it resides as a wasteland that is largely inhospitable to humanity. Without top soil, it has been stripped of its fertility, and its rocks lay exposed like some kind of bleached bones. While the lack of fertility is harsh and has resulted in broken dreams, in that desolation there is a sense of peace and beauty.
Arthur Streeton - Fires On
One of my favourite colonial paintings is Fires On by Arthur Streeton. In the painting, I see beauty in destruction. The blue skies give a sense of optimism, and the tumbling boulders give a sense of humanity's power, which is further amplified by depicting the miners in such a minuscule way. The mine carves into the earth, and brings ancient rocks to the surface and with them, subtleties of colour.
When I look at the painting, I am reminded of visiting some of old mines in the Australian highlands. Even after 100 years, the bush had still failed to reclaim the mines, and the abandoned shafts still lingered as reminders of people who had clawed at the earth.
Although a lot of environmentalists hate such sights, for me, they are the remnants of the human struggle and have all the emotion of the remnant rock art of long vanquished people. Sadly, the mines were eventually filled in on government orders, so now it is only through art like Streeton that a window can be opened upon a deceased world.
Down on His Luck
I love Federick McCubbin's ability to capture the loneliness of the Australian bush. Out bush, it is easy to feel isolated from the world. There are no people, and even animals are in short supply. In some ways, there is a feeling of peace; however, in that peace there is also a feeling of harshness. There is a distinct lack of fertility, and it is anything but a Garden of Eden. In that regard, the Australian bush is both a place refuge and a place of punishment. For the character in the painting, he has found a tranquil place, but he has no where to go and so just gazes solemnly into the fire. In a sense, he is a transient product of civilisation residing in a place where civilisation is non-existent.
Man Reading a Paper
Out bush, it is easy to forget the world. Alone with the flies, it is difficult to care whether George Bush invades Iraq or whether the Queen is the Australian Head of State. Drysdale has very cleverly brought that apathy to the surface by having a painting with a touch of absurdity. A man sits on an old stump, his coat hanging in a tree, his home laying in pieces, and he reads about the daily events of civilisation.
Drysdale - The Ruins
Canberra aside, Australia has no major inland cities. Attempts to expand inland culminated with destruction. Drysdale shows the futility of the inland expansion with an Aborigine and his son standing over the remnants of the colonial expansion. The man appears naked from the waste down, and his child seems destined for a life of nudity. In a way, there is a certain peace in the scene. No war between colonists and Aborigines was needed as the colonists were wiped out by the environment before they had the chance to truly encroach upon Aboriginal lands. The twisted iron forms a barrier between the viewer and the Aboriginal man, and seems to indicate that both have destinies in directions different from the other.
Drysdale - Emus in the Landscape
Drysdale's Emu's in the Landscape again captures the beauty of failure. The corrugated iron sheets have fallen, or blown into, a structure that has all the artistic integrity of a sculpture. It represents the failed dreams of people who attempted to build civilisation in the outback. The futility of man is furthermore amplified with Emus passing - as they might have passed for 10,000 generations before. Emus come across as extremely stupid birds, so to have Emus gazing upon humanity's remnants has a sense of a stupid bird appearing in a position of superiority to humanity.
Sidney Nolan - The Trial
Nolan painted in a very rugged, uncaring style. He never seemed to care much about aesthetics, and favoured radically simplified forms. This painting style perhaps gave him the freedom to work more from feeling than planning.
In the tradition of Goya and Picasso, Nolan concerned himself with myths; however, he didn't look to ancient Greece to find them. Instead, he looked to Australia and his messy and uncomplicated style allowed him to represent his subject matter in a way that represented the land and history upon which he worked.
Nolan's most notable work revolve around the bushranger Ned Kelly. Although Ned only wore his famous armour once, in Nolan's paintings, the armour represents the essence of the man. In the trial, the armour masks Kelly except for his eyes. He dominates the scene, dominates the police and even dominates the judge. However, he is still masked, and still hiding his humanity from the world.
Albert Tucker - Metamorphosis of Ned Kelly
I'm a big fan of Tucker. His work seems very evil to me, and so perhaps fits perfectly with the Australian environment. In the Metamorphosis of Ned Kelly, the Australian bushranger rides like a devil on a apocalyptic horse. It brings a sense that Australia was a place of punishment, and in many respects, still is.
Albert Tucker - Apocolyptic Horse
I love Apocalyptic Horse. For me, it is a depiction of the apocalypse that is Australia after a drought. The horse's vacant eyes stare down upon the viewer. Veins pop from its skin. Exposed teeth give a feeling of menace and the yellow background conveys the unrelenting heat.
Pro Hart - Grasshopper
Pro Hart has been forsaken by the institutionalised arts culture of Australia. I think this due to Hart's tendency to depict the outback in a positive way. As Australia changed its identity from being a bush society to a urban society, art institutions in the city wanted to see the outback as a barren womb. They wanted to see Drysdale's ruins, Tucker's apocalyptic horses, and Nolan's conflict. They wanted to see Aborigines being victimised, or at the very least, depictions of Aborigines enjoying themselves before colonists came along and destroyed their lifestyle. The art institutions didn't want to see Hart redeeming the outback with positive scenes. They didn't want to see Hart showing outback miners enjoying themselves playing cards. They didn't want to see Hart championing the bush ethose of egalitarianism with an open air "members" bar open to everyone. Most of all, they didn't to see a community that had struck a balance with the natural environment around it.
While I admire the somberness of Drysdale, and I like being disturbed by Tucker, I like the optimism of Hart. I like the beauty in his scenes, and I like the positive human ideals that he painted. Even more than his cultural scenes, I like his paintings of insects. Not many artists ever paint them, and I guess that is understandable considering insects are intimidating. Perhaps Hart was different as he toiled underground as a miner for 18 years. When he returned to the surface, the little aspects of nature probably seemed extra beautiful to him. For me, his Grasshopper is a work of beauty. Although the creature itself is ugly, the whole scene shows a harmony with nature that rises above the viewer's eye.
Brett Whitely –Self Portrait In the Studio
I am ideologically opposed to artists that use drugs to create. I consider the drugs affect on the mind in a similar way to messing with the television signal. Just because a weird picture is created doesn't mean there is anything insightful to be seen.
Despite my dislike of drugs, I can't help but admire the drug induced works of Brett Whitely. They are so beautiful, warped yet genuinely interesting that I find myself truly engaging with them.
Whitely's self-portrait is the best self-portrait that I have ever seen as it truly captures the feelings of an artist. With one hand, Whitely holds a mirror of his own reflection, while the other hand paints an impression of himself, which is one of the few realitic images in the scene. For Whitely, the motivation to paint was quite simple:
"The fine art of painting, which is the bastard of alchemy, always has been and always will be, a game. The rules of the game are quite simple: in a given arena, on as many psychic fronts as the talent allows, one must visually describe, the centre of the meaning of existence."
Judging Art