Geelong Grammar School Residency: Week 1

Pictured in these views is the spacious, light filled artist-in-residence studio at Geelong Grammar School soon after I’d finished setting it up, with much appreciated advice and assistance from Rupert the technician and department head, Peter Bajer.

The intention was to demonstrate the technical and thematic trajectory of my work over the past 40 or so years through a selection of paintings, relief prints, experimental digital prints and book art. A range of lino blocks, proofs and working drawings are also on show. The two earliest works, a still life and self-portrait, both made in 1982 during my first year at art school, are displayed on easels. 

On the table easel by the far window (see following two views) are my three most recent paintings, still in progress, but now very near completion.

The wooden table directly opposite the painting station (see below) is my printmaking table. Not shown in this view is another work in progress, a small linocut intended for a group show in 2023, now drawn up and ready to begin carving. 

It has been a busy but immensely productive week, filled with work and lively conversations with students, teachers and visitors. The first of my two weeks long residency has flown by. It is a pleasure and a privilege to be here. 

Studio shelves

We've done so much around the house in the last few months (most notably, hanging over 470 pictures, according to Shane Jones's calculations) that I never got around to posting about the bookshelves the exceedingly clever Shane built in my studio some weeks back. Here they are in all their cluttered glory. 

The shelves are set into a deep alcove that was originally an inbuilt dressing table (see below), so that they not only hold heaps of books, but also double as storage/display for other favourite things, including a tunnel book by Paul Compton (above, top shelf, third from right) and an artist book by Deborah McMillion (above, middle shelf, far right).

The following 'Before' photos document the process:

Thanks to these and the equally impressive shelves Shane has built in his own studio, we've finally been able to get the last of our books out of storage.

A Repository of Memories

Step inside my studio, if you will.

This is the view from the work table. My works on the opposite wall span well over three decades. Like all the walls in the new studio, it’s a repository of carefully selected memories. The oldest by far are the undergraduate self-portrait, circa 1982, (upper left hand corner), posted previously, and another student work, the still-life painting on its right. Some pictures have been stored away for decades. I’ve a tendency to feel ambivalent about older work, seeing nothing but its flaws. For the first time, it’s occurred to me that I might actually learn something from it. Nevertheless, it’s somewhat disconcerting to be eyeballed by a younger version of myself on a daily basis.

Directly below the self-portrait is a poster of one of my favourite paintings, Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia Von Harden, 1926, by Otto Dix. I discovered the original work on a visit to the Pompidou Centre in 1993 and still recall the colossal impact of that first sighting. The poster was purchased in the museum shop soon afterwards and it’s been one of my most treasured possessions ever since. For a short biography of Von Harden, go HERE.

The oil pastel drawing in the bottom corner, far right, dates from the same period and is another work that hasn’t seen the light of day for many a long year. It was made at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where I was undertaking a three-month long Australia Council residency.

During this happy and productive time, Shane Jones, who I’d met the year before, joined me for several weeks and produced a substantial number of oil sketches. A selection of these, including a couple of portraits of me, as well as an exquisite, and (viewed in the light of recent events), poignant drawing of Notre Dame Cathedral, now hang in our Ballarat house. They too had been in storage, due to lack of wall space. It’s quite moving to be reunited with these fragments of our shared history after so many years. To view Shane's drawing of Notre Dame, visit his Instagram Page HERE and scroll down to his post of 10 June 2019.

NB: Since this was posted, Shane has published his drawing of Notre Dame Cathedral on his art blog. You can view it HERE.

Reclamation

In the wake of our departure from Melbourne, my studio in Ballarat was requisitioned for extra storage. It was a sorry sight, becoming so overfull that gaining entry was all but impossible. Recently we rented an additional storage pod and over the last few days I've reclaimed my old space and restored it to something of its former glory.

At last, the transformation was completed. But even as I paused to savour the reinstatement of order and serenity, Alice barged in, dragging Shane behind her. He declared the space has never looked better and Alice, who’s not usually fussed about the studio, took it upon herself to investigate every nook and cranny, with a particular focus on the new plan cabinet. Eventually, however, the lure of the garden proved too strong, and she withdrew, followed by the hapless Shane.

Interim Studio

In the last few weeks, many of our possessions have made their way from Abbotsford to Ballarat prior to the big move in October - yet it feels as if we have barely scratched the surface. 

We’ve just changed storage firms (don’t ask) and it’s highly likely my studio will be requisitioned as a backup storage area before too long. In anticipation of this, l've converted the third bedroom of my Ballarat house into a makeshift studio. It was remarkably straightforward to set up a simple, functional workstation and even make up for some of the precious time already lost during this extremely disruptive period. In fact, the same room served as a temporary work space before my studio was completed several years ago. No doubt this has made it much easier to settle in and get straight down to it.

Before I had a chance to resume work, however, Alice gave the room a quick once over, dashed out and returned with her favourite toy mouse, a seal of approval if ever there was one. In the top view, she checks out Ecdysis, acrylic on linen, 40.5 x 30.5 cm, a work in progress. Like the lone traveller on the dust jacket of Norbert Wolf's Caspar David Friedrich: 'The Wanderer above a Sea of Mist', c.1818 (above left) it still has a long way to go. 

Happy New Year

2016 is a leap year, so whatever your resolutions may be, you will have 366 days to realise them. Whether your goals include turning over a new leaf or you decide to stay just as you are, may you rise to every challenge in a year filled with happiness, creativity and good health.

A clear work top ready for the New Year and new beginnings. (My workstation at Abbotsford in Melbourne).

Facelifts Part 2

Part of the first floor of our place at Abbotsford served as my partner Shane Jones’s studio for several years, while I worked on the ground floor. When I took a studio in the Melbourne CBD in late 2007, Shane decided to shift to my old workspace, where he found he could better control the light. The walls in the upstairs area remained hung with his artwork. It looked great, so there was no reason to move it. But when I recently set up in his previous space, I felt a little like a squatter. Shortly after my last post, we spent a solid day hanging a substantial amount of my work on the walls and transferring Shane’s paintings to the walls of his studio below. (At this point, I must shamefacedly confess he’s still storing some stuff from my former occupancy in his area. In my defence, there’s nowhere else to put it, at least until the Ballarat studio is finished.) On balance, the cupboard in my studio contains Shane’s extensive shell collection for much the same reason.

Some pictures by Shane and other artists, including Rona Green and Clare Humphries, slightly overlap my new studio (top left and left of the venetian blind in the photograph directly below.) The remaining wall space of our first floor is covered almost entirely with the works of numerous artists, in the mother of all salon hangs. You can get mighty tired of looking at your own work all day, so I’m grateful to have them all as muses.

Meanwhile, the territory of the atelier is certainly more distinctly marked, and my newly installed work (from the ongoing Myth-entomology series) should be a helpful point of disembarkation for current projects.

Photograph second from top:

Upper LHS: Painting by Shane Jones of my hands at work on the

linocut Rose Tattoos (1996). Next to it is a poster of Portrait of the 
Journalist Sylvia von Harden by Otto Dix (1926). I fell in love with the
original painting at first sighting in the Pompidou Centre in Paris in
1993. It's still one of my favourite pictures in all the world. 

Third and fourth photographs from top:

Studio views including Moth Masks and The Enchanted Hair Ornaments 
linocuts.

Facelifts

As all but the most deplorably inattentive followers of this blog will notice, it has had a major facelift. For the information of first-time visitors, it formerly comprised a black background overlaid with white and red text. Although I must confess to some nostalgia for the more immediate visual impact of the previous design, I was increasingly concerned that it was overpowering the general content, making information harder to locate and absorb.

Since its inception in 2008, the blog has been more than just somewhere to post information about exhibitions and other related events. It has increasingly become an extension of my practice, a place to collect my thoughts, share some of my interests and road-test new work and ideas. As the amount of information on the blog accumulated, I felt it needed to be made easier to read and navigate. It’s still being tweaked (I’m a terminal tweaker) but think it’s nearly there, and hope you do too.

If the blog partly serves as a virtual studio, my actual Melbourne studio has also been undergoing changes and is similarly in the process of being fine-tuned. After relinquishing my workspace in central Melbourne in 2011 (see blog post April 7, 2011) I set up in an idiosyncratic, but somewhat cave-like area of our warehouse apartment in Abbotsford. It soon proved to be way too small and dark. After a considerable amount of strategic planning and rearrangement, I’m now established upstairs in a lighter, airier, more private and infinitely more practicable space. Open-plan buildings have their benefits, flexibility being one of them. But they can present real challenges, especially when it comes to establishing boundaries between domestic and work areas. As an added bonus, our whole apartment feels more spacious, liveable and functional than it’s been since we moved here in 1998 - although it too is a constant work in progress.

Above, from top:

Partition wall of studio

Studio view. The ceramic statuette on the cupboard, top left is by David Pearson. On the far wall is a reproduction of Melody (Musica) c. 1890-1902 by Kate Elizabeth Bunce. To its right is my prized collection of (mostly) vintage combs and hairpins.

The Ghost of Artworks Past

Many moons ago, when my work was hovering uncertainly at a major crossroads, my Postgraduate Supervisor Euan Heng was both encouraging and perceptive. At this stage the new ideas were still mainly in my head; he also cautioned me that if I didn’t bring off what would be a radical change of direction, "Old work can come back to haunt you". For one who frequently suffers the torments of hell when an old work is exhumed, his warning hit home. But I knew I’d come as far as I could with the current imagery. I believed in my new ideas and change was inevitable, no matter what misgivings I might also have.

In fact what eventuated, namely the Pirate Jenny Prints suite of linocuts (1987) became a significant turning point, setting me on the path that, aside from the odd detour (and inevitable dead end) I tread with varying degrees of assurance to this day. I’m still rather proud of them.

 1 Pirate Jenny at Luna Park, 1987

 2 Pirate Jenny and Mack the Knife, 1987

3 Pirate Jenny in a Kimono, 1987

Admittedly there are other instances when I don’t feel like crawling under the covers when the Ghost of Artworks Past pays an unsolicited call. But occasionally I’m confronted with some abomination that in some cases would have been better off being humanely destroyed.  I see nothing but glaring imperfections and think how much better the work would be had I made it today.

When I became a Master of Arts candidate in 1995 (once again under Euan Heng’s judicious supervision) my drawing style changed markedly. It was undoubtedly directed by my thesis, namely women in Film Noir and the Woman’s Picture. By mid 1996 the work had become less mannered and stylized as I gradually moved away from previous influences, including German Expressionism. As a result, it is mainly (although not exclusively) the pre-Film Noir and some early works from the series that have, for me at least, ‘dated’ and which have caused me the most grief. But I think it’s also fair to say that rather than existing solely as eternal testaments to my ineptitude, a few of these works have their good points, whether it’s the ideas behind them, or even isolated areas of technical competence.

Above left: 4 The Letter, 1995
Above right: 5 Mildred Pierce on St. Kilda Pier, 1995

A selection of my old pictures, including several from that vexed pre-1996 period, now grace the walls of the house at Ballarat, thus creating some sorely needed space in our storage area in Melbourne. Some deserved to once again see the light of day far more than others, and these were hung soon after we moved in. But those I felt more ambivalent about remained stacked against a wall for nearly a year.  We finally hung them over the Christmas break. Several are in my studio. We are gradually learning to coexist and I realize that I might actually be able to learn something from them. It's starting to feel like it could be a positive place from which to begin a new year and a new body of work.

 6 Studio view, January 2012

7 Studio view 2, January 2012

Pictured above (from top):

1 Pirate Jenny at Luna Park, 1987, linocut, 61.5 x 45.5 cm

2 Pirate Jenny and Mack the Knife, 1987, linocut, 61.5 x 45.5 cm

3 Pirate Jenny in a Kimono, 1987, linocut 61.5 x 46 cm
Pirate Jenny is a character in The Threepenny Opera, by Kurt Weill (music) and Bertolt Brecht (book and lyrics). Ostensibly set in London, its spiritual home was Berlin, where it premiered in 1928. I transplanted its original location to scruffy, pre-gentrified St. Kilda in Melbourne, where I was then living and working. The Pirate Jenny Prints were published by Port Jackson Press, Melbourne and subsequently toured nationally. Euan Heng wrote the introduction to the catalogue that accompanied the tour.

4 and 5 (see below)

6 Studio view, Ballarat, January 2012
Pictures from left:

Untitled, (c 1994) oil pastel, 76 x 56 cm
Unlike most of my work, this image is not connected to a thematically linked series.  This sad but spirited wallflower was inspired by a poignant group of photographs from the 1950s, taken at a high school dance when American film legend James Dean paid a return visit to the small town where he was raised.

Mildred Pierce on St. Kilda Pier*, 1995, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm
The Letter, 1995, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm
These are linked to the Film Noir series of the mid 90s. They are two of the few surviving paintings from that period. As the series progressed, I found that the nocturnal world of film noir was best served by the linocut medium. In fact both images were subsequently developed into linocuts. They were included, along with the linocuts, in my second solo exhibition at Australian Galleries, Melbourne, in 1996. (*For more on Mildred Pierce, see Blog Post February 12, 2011.)

The Red Dress and the White Dress, 1992, oil pastel, 74.5 x 54.5 cm
This drawing takes its points of departure from two of Dorothy Parker’s poems. It was originally part of a 1992 solo exhibition, my first at Australian Galleries in Melbourne. The exhibition focused on the lives and work of writers Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf. The series was also exhibited at Solander Gallery in Canberra.

7 Studio View 2, January 2012
Pictures from left:

Snake Charmer, 1996, linocut, 36 x 37.5 cm
Fairgrounds and circuses often feature in Film Noir. This is one work I’ve always had a certain fondness for.

Night Drivers, 1996, oil pastel, 55 x 75 cm
The danger inherent when anyone gets behind of the wheel of a car was exploited regularly in Film Noir. When researching this work, I derived particular inspiration from the superb Nicholas Ray film In a Lonely Place (1950) and the Bette Davis camp classic Beyond the Forest (dir. King Vidor, 1949, in which she utters the celebrated line, long beloved by Davis impersonators, "What a Dump!") This drawing was transposed into a linocut, which in my opinion worked much better.  Both versions also debuted at Australian Galleries, Melbourne in 1996.

Reunions

Late last year the mysterious Moth Women finally returned to their place of origin after an extensive tour with the Geelong Gallery/NETS Victoria exhibition The enchanted forest - new gothic story tellers during 2008-2009. We have only recently unpacked them and displayed them in a new hang, along with some newer members of the growing Moth Women community.

Pictured below this is a recent studio still life, featuring painted papier mache moth masks completed to date.

On Friday afternoon, February 26, we were also delighted to welcome back to the studio two of our favourite people and artists, Paul Compton and Priscilla Ambrosini.