Blog no 6 Lost in the tributaries (started mid-March)
Looking back over the last couple of months I have often thought about the mixed blessing raised by living in retreat. The long silence since the last posting in February has been filled with journeys along many tributaries of thought and it has also led me into a great deal of self-recrimination.
While living beyond a mainstream life of crowded days offers plenty of uninterrupted thinking time, without the usual structures that force one to get organised, I can put off delivering a final product for far too long. ‘Why not revise it one more time’ I say to myself, or why not wait until I find the right word to explain an idea, and then finish it off . . . what does another day matter?’.
While sometimes a delay allows for a much needed revision of a poem, I started doing a blog because I wanted it to be a space for recording spontaneous thought, so obviously I should take the self imposed deadline of a blog a month – at least – more seriously.
The first step however is to post the collection of fragments that have been collecting on my keyboard by way of being a journal recording various happenings, thoughts, conversations and readings etcetera.
March started off with the exciting Hiarts Exhibition in the newly renovated Highlands Hall. In the words of the president Stuart Reid, ‘What started off ( a few years ago) as a modest attempt to give exposure to a number of local artists and craftspeople had grown into a significant regional event’.
Artists working in all styles and all media from traditional oils to recycled materials and videotape included professionals, part timers, retired farmers. Young and emerging artists were also highlighted.
The Edge Collective exhibited Palimpsests again and Susan’s exhibited textiles from her Palimpsests in Translation collection, first exhibited at the Yarra Sculpture Gallery in March 2007.
Palimpsests in Translation is based on Fell-McLean’s experience and observations of the way the passage of time and events of history have shaped the Australian desert, Gooram Gooram Gong and the Italian cities Prato and Herculaneum. While completing her Masters Degree, Susan worked at Palazzo Vaj at the Monash Study Centre in Prato in September and October 2006. With editor and executive director Janet De Boer’s permission I have attached an article titled Intent and Impact Textiles as contemporary sculpture I wrote for Textile Fibre Forum No 88, 2007 on Fell McLean’s work.
I should note at this point however that although Peter Ward has photographed much of Susan’s work, the photographs in the article are wrongly attributed to him. ****
The Hiarts motto is "Exploring Art and Ideas" and the annual exhibition is part of an ongoing community dialogue, which brings artists and others together to reflect on their art and its implications for society. Susan and myself took part in a Saturday seminar in August of last year when artists Philip Wischer and Linda Robertson talked about their art practice and their influences.
I enjoyed that day so much, that afterwards I wrote two poems with Philip and Linda’s work as my inspiration. I have often been inspired in the past to write poems in response to paintings, but this is the first time I’ve actually been able to talk with the artists as part of the writing process. Linda and Philip have given me some feedback and generously agreed to my publishing them. I should follow that comment up by saying that the second and third of the Landscape group Postmodern Nude and The Portrait are still in a state of flux (This is what should happen in a blog, isn’t it? ) so I’m particularly interested to hear from anyone on the issue of what it’s like to read a poem without having seen the painting referred to. Here they are as of May 11/05/08 and I hope I’ve done the paintings at least some degree of the justice they deserve.
Landscapes
For Philip Wischer
Highlands
A deep valley carved into the curve of the hills
suspended between dawn and dusk
in milky viscous blues of oils and light
buckles and escapes its frame
floats out of the hall
into its own universe
Postmodern Nude
In earthy pigments
she reclines
then arranges the contours
of her buxom torso
on a canvas stretched
over a frame
fashioned from
boughs of eucalypt
and becomes
our ancient continent
The Portrait
When the artist paints the poet
I think in my image
Warm tones
of her terra cotta scarf
surround her unsmiling face
Pale amber and the translucent blue
of the wintry sky behind her
chills to an almost icy green
In her journal she strives
to craft some distant
landscape
out of words
Finding Ghosts
For Linda Robertson
There is wizardry
in her sleight of hand,
when she covers the ground
to bring figures dancing
out of the shadows
until one or more
comes forward
takes on a more solid shape
in the same way the potter
brings the storyteller
out of the clay
to sing you
her story
When you are ready
to see or listen
imagination
speaks up
It’s all about risk
and trust
The Edge Collective will meet again with the Hiarts group later in the year to expand on our ideas about the way we see the links between our art and the community.
With the 2008 exhibition over, the real work goes on in for the artists in their studios and workshops, and for the community, all of whom must now move on to their next venture . . .
To keep in touch with Hiarts, visit www.hiarts.org
Blog no 7: “All that is wild is winged – life, mind, language”
After the Exhibition the fierce summer heat returned and continued well into the March, and reading Wild An Elemental Journey by Jay Griffiths became a wonderful way to spend uncomfortable afternoon hours.
Wild is a wonderful book. For seven years Griffiths travelled literally and metaphorically through ‘the wild’. She travelled through remote deserts, forests and mountains to live amongst shamans, sea gypsies, nomads and cannibals, and consulted a wide array of academically trained experts and texts. ‘In looking for wilderness’, she says, ‘I was not looking for miles of landscape to be nicely photographed and neatly framed, but for the quality of wildness, which – like art, sex and all the other intoxicants – has a rising swing ringing through it.’
Griffiths is an intrepid and well-researched traveller and what makes the book so refreshing is the way she engages with and celebrates the people she meets. In expanding her own universe, she also expands ours. She is a creative risk taker and a faithful, disturbing recorder of the many injustices, instances of abused land and disenfranchisement of people she witnesses.
With great insight, Griffiths reflects on her ‘tamed’ Western background in light of the wisdom she finds amongst people who live in harmony with land, sea and ice. To quote her again, ‘I wrote notes by the light of a firefly; anchored a boat to an iceberg where polar bears have slept . . . . ‘. She writes of all her adventures and understandings with precision and clarity. She addresses her readers in a liberated language based on experience rather than theories. As my friend Alex said when she recommenced it to me, ‘Every poet will love this book, and everyone, particularly all politicians and leaders should be made to read it.
Blog No 8: Turner to Monet Landscape Art at the National Gallery. Canberra
In April, in Canberra on one of my regular family visits, I set aside some time to go to the National Gallery. In all the years I have been going there, I have never been disappointed. After reading Sebastian Smee’s review in Weekend Australian Review March 22-23 [and it is on the web], I was particularly looking forward to Turner to Monet The Triumph of Landscape.
Apart from seeing or should I say experiencing some great paintings, I was hoping for some new insights into why painted landscapes continue to have such a profound influence on me. I have yet to find a way of articulating my feelings adequately.
Smee starts his review with a quote from V.S. Naipaul’s novel The Enigma of Arrival. ‘Land is not land alone, something that is simply itself. Land partakes of what we breathe into it, is touched by our moods and memories.’
Walking into the first of six rooms where classical and picturesque paintings were displayed, I am almost ashamed to say that for a moment I felt a little let down to find that most of the paintings were traditional favourites, and already well-known to me.
However, I soon recovered. Why? As promised, the scope of the exhibition is so vast, one’s horizons – excuse the pun – are suddenly and dramatically widened. As Director Ron Radford explains, the exhibition ‘adds other strains –[to themes explored in earlier exhibitions] to show the full impact of the rise of landscape painting in Europe and the New World in the nineteenth century’. The exhibition includes for example some early English watercolours, and some superb paintings by Friederich and other German Romantic masters, that have not previously been shown in Australia.’
The other, and for me the most exciting aspect is that the exhibition places Australian landscapes within the European scope rather than outside it as if it were some aberration, thus bringing the Australian landscape painting, and the landscape itself back into focus where it retains both its unique and aesthetic qualities. Viewed thus, it is no longer an alien place that can be as easily dismissed and even blamed for being harsh on its inhabitants.
Actually what happened at the time of my actual viewing was that several paintings - Casper David Freiderich’s Dolmen in the Snow, Von Kobell’s Country Lane, Van Gogh’s Tree Trunks in Grrass, Von Guerard’s North-east view from Mount Kosiusko, and Monet’s Water Lilies all made an immediate and powerful visual impact on me, while I left other worthy paintings unappreciated. There were just so many good works, the show really deserves hours of viewing.
The other thing that happened immediately afterwards was that the impressions I brought away with me sharpened my awareness of my immediate surroundings, and as a writer, I now feel happier about exploring the qualities of landscape that always make it so much more than ‘land alone’ because ‘Land partakes of what we breathe into it, is touched by our moods and memories.’
Post Script.
I am now continuing investigations into landscape painting by viewing Ocean to Outback which covers the period from 1850 to 1950. This exhibition is now on touring, but the images, with commentaries are on the web. Its not the same of course as seeing the real thing, but it is still worthwhile.
Blog no 9: On Monet
Once when I was visiting the Museum of Modern Art[MOMA] in New York, I ran out of a room full of Monet’s water lilies because it was about to close and I was desperate to find something by my all time favourite artist - Georgia O’Keeffe. However this time, when I stood in front of Monet I was happy to stay there for a long time, and this was not because there wasn’t any of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work in the exhibition.
While in MOMA there was a whole room full of waterlilies, in Canberra, there was just one large [181.0x201.6 cm] painting – Waterlilies [Nympheas], hanging on a wall all by itself. It breathed serenity into the room. Since it was painted was c 1914-17, I am now wondering what reaction it received at that time.
After I left the exhibition and went back to the catalogue another of his paintings, Port Goulphar, Belle-Île and the description of it written by Virginia Spate caught my attention. Belle-Île is just off the Atlantic Coast of Brittany and Monet described it as ‘superb in its savagery, piles of terrible rocks and a seas of incredible colours. . .’ the text continues, ‘He painted three versions of this view, part of a group of thirty-six paintings of cliffs rocks and sea, which initiated his series of paintings of the same motif under different conditions of light and weather.’
While reading Monet’s comment today raises some questions about the role of photography in art,[ that is a subject I want to look at closely later on] I think that the next quote of Monet’s points to the critical factor for all landscape artists: “to paint the sea[or any place] truly, one must see it every day at every hour, and at the same spot, to understand its life at that spot. . .”
It may seem odd to stop a blog at this point, but I certainly want to talk to Peter further about photography as art, and to Susan more about her views on how the traditions of landscape painting have influenced contemporary practice in Australia, and it is about time we got back to a critical part of our practice – the dialogue.
