Introduction
In this chapter I discuss the development of my work over 2014 and early 2015. During this time my methodology changed from making small paintings based on found images from the Internet, to developing a daily drawing practice and experimenting with monotypes based on my own photographs. This change occurred as a direct response to my experience at the Hill End Artist in Residence program. I will describe how this residency influenced my studio approach and chart my reasoning behind these changes.
I will outline my experimentation with oil and water-based monotype processes, and my rationale for adopting the water-based method as a preferred technique. I reflect on the work of contemporary artists Mamma Andersson and Peter Doig as the impetus for this change in approach. In an art historical context, I consider the monotypes of Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin as additional influences on my own studio research. Additionally, I will examine the significance of pattern and texture within my monotypes. I will discuss this in direct relationship to the work of Mamma Andersson, David Brown Milne and Édouard Vuillard as a way to renegotiate spatial relations between figure and ground.
Hill End
Up to early 2014, my research had primarily consisted of experiments and studies. In May 2014, I was offered a residency at Murray’s Cottage in Hill End, NSW. My intention for the residency was to apply the knowledge I had gained from initial studio research to produce more resolved works. I began by incorporating resin and interference colours into my oil paintings. I had originally thought to use these materials to pursue ways I might reference the shifting surface of the computer screen from which I was gleaning most of my source material. I also wanted to investigate how these materials could affect a viewer’s perception of space. However, despite all the shimmer and gloss this produced, I found the results static and unsatisfying. I would start one painting then, disappointed in my efforts, put it aside after a couple of days. I would start another, only for it to be relegated to a rapidly growing collection of rejects. The weight of expectation I had for the residency seemed to be overwhelming. I felt the echoes of the artists that had gone before me. Under my feet lay an Ikat rug, faded from use and spotted with old paint, a gift to Donald Friend from Margaret Olley. Standing in their footsteps only reinforced my frustration.
In an attempt to break out of my slump, I went for a drive, a one-hour car trip from Hill End to Bathurst. Once there, I spent a few hours wandering around town. Autumn was deepening and as the day lengthened the light started to expand into a rich orange. I had been increasing aware of the quality of light in Hill End, which seemed to intensify as autumn advanced. The colours it threw were quite startling. I had observed it every afternoon at the cottage. It reminded me of evenings I had experienced in Northern Europe where the light approaching winter became a rich alizarin. With the afternoon fading, I started the drive back to the village. The road began to wind through a landscape of low, rolling green hills. At the top of a rise, my foot lifted off the accelerator. My eyes widened, and I pulled over. I turned off the engine and slowly stepped out of the car.
Somehow, I had driven out of the afternoon and into a painting. If I had a choice of paintings into which to magically teleport myself, this one would not have sprung to mind. It seemed I had stepped into Sydney Long’s painting, Flamingoes,(minus the pink birds and naked nymphs) (Figure 1). Long, a figure predominately affiliated with Australian Impressionism could equally
be seen as an Australian Symbolist115 transforming the landscape into a dream or visionary
experience. Long’s crimson light stained the pastoral scene before me blood red. While this painting is far from being a favourite, it is memorable. The red surface has arrested my gaze many times on trips to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as the red light in it is strangely transfixing. Here, outside Hill End, the setting sun cast a dark, scarlet light over the landscape. The hills, grass and trees became uncanny in their cloak of translucent vermillion and my clothes and skin were glazed in rose.
Surprisingly, I didn’t take out my phone for a photograph, perhaps because I knew that my basic point-and-shoot photographic skills could not capture the scene. No one would ever believe it anyway. It looked too unreal, too fabricated. Instead, I just stood on the ridge, with the minutes seeming to stretch out for hours. Somehow, in this red-rimmed world, my perception of time and space ceased to obey the normal rules. I watched until the light faded to pink and then evaporated from sight. The vision ceased. The whirring chirrups of tiny critters brought me back to myself as evening was creeping across the fields. As I walked back to the car I thought about why the scene was so striking. One thought I had was that the everyday could be made unreal or curious by the slightest change to our regular perception. I determined that I would start afresh in the studio the next day, with that thought in mind.