Small Paintings

Paint Games

Ever since my first solo exhibition in Adelaide in 1968 there has usually been a parallel stream of smaller paintings or drawings to complement the better known large oil landscapes.

Sometimes it took the form of a series of ink or conté drawings while at others it was a group of small acrylic canvasses. To begin with the latter were lyrical abstracts, exploring the evocative effects of loose acrylic washes. Similar washes were also used as the starting point of many larger oils at that time. These paintings were then encouraged to develop according to whatever concepts presented themselves through the vagaries of these spontaneous forms. This method of beginning a new painting persisted until work started on the Extreme Landforms Project in 1984.

The turning point came when we visited Iceland for the first time in 1982 and I realised that a real landscape could be just as surreal than any that could be produced from my imagination. This required a different approach, getting it right through careful preliminary drawing and research. It was no longer just a free and open dialogue between me and the painting, as an obligation to the source material now needed to be factored in.

Thus followed many years of semi-documentary painting, usually based on my own photographs and sketches of the extraordinary places which we have been fortunate enough to visit. These photographs provided their own challenges as, contrary to popular belief, a photograph is never capable of providing all the information needed and must be taken far further using a kind of forensic process, and this requires a lot of extra research.

Giving an 'impression' of a subject has rarely been my intention. Instead it needed to be taken apart in order to understand its structure and properties and then reassembled minus any unnecessary bits. This process makes it appear more or less, but never quite, real. This was satisfying in some ways but became too predictable, with not enough energising surprises. It was also slow. The true creativity that is possible with painting was missing, with its dramatic ability to evolve and change from one brushstroke to the next.

Thus the small oils being shown here have a direct link to my earliest professional working practice as they too are generally based on spontaneous or even accidental marks which are then encouraged to develop freely into whatever concept best suits them. This can require many separate layers and reinventions, each of which adds its own components to the sequence until the image is finally resolved.

They are refreshing, being relatively quick, unlike the large paintings. They form a kind of visual diary as they reflect whatever was going on at the time, where we have been travelling, books, current affairs, or something else entirely. They use the visual language of my era and can be traced back to Russian Constructivism and the teachings of the Bauhaus in Germany. Both were highly influential in the early 20th century, where the abstract composition of the work provides its 'body language' and establishes the emotional mood of the painting.

Many aspects of late modernism such as 'systems' painting, 'hard-edge', and grids are visible, as are quotes from other artists' work and from my own earlier work. At the time these styles were all but invisible but become obvious in retrospect. All form part of my visual history and are thus autobiographical.

Materials also play a part, with real cobalt-based pigment used in Fukushima Cobalt. Saturated blues have been used exclusively in some images and under these circumstances create their own distorted spectrum, warm (violet) blues through to cool (green) blues forming the entire range. Reds are used similarly in a later series. Because of the inherent nature of blues these images tend towards concepts involving water, ice or open sky. The reds similarly tend towards ideas related to the body, warmth and enclosure.

Scale is also a factor. Small size allows exotic materials and pigments to be used, as the areas of each are tiny. A very small work can get away with metallic, iridescent, or pearl pigments as it is read by one viewer at a time rather like an illustrated book, at half-arm's length. These pigments bring added light and life into very small works thus giving them emphasis and presence. Any little painting requires an excellent surface finish as it must withstand close scrutiny.

Structures such as nets are important, having evolved from the grids and the process of 'systems' drawing, where predetermined rules are put in place. These small paintings, being relatively quick, allow for rapid evolution, and many variations and configurations can then be explored.

This particular group of miniature oils is only part of a much larger body of work. Each begins as a challenge, a puzzle to be solved. None of this aspect is usually evident in the final product, but they represent a journey of the mind, having taken me far and wide before arriving at their often unexpected destination.

Small Red Paintings

Having worked predominantly with landscapes for years I was familiar with blues but rarely had cause to focus on the possibilities of reds. However there are a range of exquisite nuanced pinks and reds available for the figure painting market, and I was ignorant of the capabilities of most of them.

The red paintings utilise a range of reds and pinks, some soft and delicate and others saturated and assertive. It was no surprise that their subject matter came to reflect medical issues, some threatening, some microscopic, and others dealing with the interface between the natural organic forms and functions of the body and human technological intervention. But no matter what, they always dealt with warm and living enclosed spaces and substances.

These paintings contrast the organic language of the body with the geometry of the manufactured grid, in particular the triangle grids of previous small paintings and a reference to my time in Melbourne in the late 70's when grids ruled supreme.

Most of these paintings have been allowed to evolve slowly over some considerable time, often through many layers, with each layer suggesting the next. The end result is usually unrecognizable compared to the starting point.

All oils on canvas-board or wooden panels.

‘Interface 2’, completed July ’17, 305x406mm.

‘Malignant 1’, Aug ’14 to Jan ’16, 229x305mm

‘Malignant 2’, Aug ’14 to Jan ’16, 229x305mm

‘Red Interior’, completed Jan ’16, 305x406mm

Office Works

The first task when working on a topic like this is to develop a specific visual language to deal with the concepts involved. It then becomes possible to illuminate abstract ideas that would otherwise have been almost unattainable. Therefore I would like to provide a short-cut, a key, so that interested viewers can interpret these images and make sense of them.

Colours :- these colours started out as pure and brilliant hues, including cadmiums (yellow, red and orange), cobalt blue, phthalocyanine green and dioxazine violet, before they were deliberately muted with a dull grey mixed from black and white, the latter representing the sum of all colours. This is in reference to the state of entropy, the final point at which everything becomes the same. Through this means I suggest that we all enter the workplace as individuals but over time tend to become more similar to each other, taking on the collective identity of the institution. Thus grey areas could indicate staff who have been with the organisation for so long that they have become submerged within it.

Lines and shapes:-
The lines indicate the quickest pathway between individual workers, electronic communication. Emails are sent in 'packets' of information using binary code, on and off, therefore hot and cold, thus depicted using orange and blue as a kind of short-hand. This device became the fundamental basis of this group of paintings.

Lost emails, (14×10”), oil on canvas board 2018

Ever wondered where those emails that never arrived ended up, and how they got there? Electronic communication lines diverge from their logical pathways or become detached entirely, swirling aimlessly — Lost emails, (14×10”), oil on canvas board 2018 Ever wondered where those emails that never arrived ended up, and how they got there? Electronic communication lines diverge from their logical pathways or become detached entirely, swirling aimlessly in an illogical space of concrete, heat, and the smell of electricity.

Interdepartmental communication, (16×20”), oil on canvas board, 2018

Loosely based on a real Cluster Graph which shows who talks to who within the larger organisation, with only one or two managers responsible for communicating between departments. — Interdepartmental communication, (16×20”), oil on canvas board, 2018 Loosely based on a real Cluster Graph which shows who talks to who within the larger organisation, with only one or two managers responsible for communicating between departments.

Electronic Architecture, (12×10”), oil on canvas board, 2018

The working office. Conforms to the support, echoing the shape of its canvas board. A simple and predictable rectangle, restricting and containing, yet with a great deal of energy bouncing — Electronic Architecture, (12×10”), oil on canvas board, 2018 The working office. Conforms to the support, echoing the shape of its canvas board. A simple and predictable rectangle, restricting and containing, yet with a great deal of energy bouncing within its boundaries, always seeking a short and efficient path.

Xeno-Toys Series

'Xeno' - relating to foreigners, other, different in origin, stranger. (Ancient Greek)

NCCA Gallery, Darwin,
Opening October 17th, 2019.

We are comfortable with other living creatures that relate to our own familiar air-breathing life form. We take for granted our scale, our vision, and our structure, with its internal skeleton and soft exterior musculature, and wrongly assume that we are the centre of the world. Anything else is 'other', the outsider, the stranger, 'xeno' in Ancient Greek.

Naturally our children's toys reflect our anthropocentric parameters. But what about amusing playthings for other entities, those which are much smaller, or who can see in the ultra-violet, or those with hard exoskeletons? Or, for that matter, those who spend their lives hidden in the oceanic abyss? No need for soft, rounded corners here, so there is plenty of opportunity to experiment with barbs and spikes, with bioluminescence, with the senses and abilities valued by the 'other'.

The basic premise of the Xeno-toys series is that these living forms will be alien to most humans. All of them are real, living their lives in parallel with ours. But we are unlikely to be aware of them because they are microscopic - and hence undetectable with the naked eye, or aquatic - living in a different medium. Or both.

The theme of this exhibition, Playtime, offers a vast range of stimulating possibilities for the artist. For this brief I concentrated on those aspects of art-making that give me the most pleasure. These are: the planning that goes into the selection of the topic, the research that delves deeper into the topic, and the experimentation with materials and format that end up in the final production. Thus by far the bulk of the effort goes into the unseen but essential preparation before actual production begins.

And what fun that turned out to be, playing with luminescent Duochrome pigments which light up in unexpected ways on their black underpainting, and using beautiful watercolour paper. Extensive experimentation with these pigments soon suggested the possibility of seeing through the eyes of other species, such as insects or mantis shrimps, who utilise a wider visual spectrum than ours, including ultraviolet light. How different their world must look!

These works seem deceptively simple, but there was a great deal of fascinating and esoteric information to be learned along the way. For instance, did you know that dinoflagellates are responsible for both the blue-green bioluminescence in the sea, and poisonous 'red tides'? Or that radiolarians thrive near underwater volcanoes because they require dissolved silica from volcanic glass to construct their exquisite skeletons? These skeletons are found in deep deposits in extreme environments such as Iceland, which are excavated to make the grit you are probably using to scour your stainless steel pots and pans.

All works are acrylic gouache and luminescent watercolour on Arches paper, 310x410mm