BLUE PERIOD

Three of my paintings, including Recollection, 2021, have been selected for BLUE PERIOD, an upcoming exhibition at One Star Gallery curated by Katy Beale and Mariella Del Conte. 

Scroll down for your invitation to BLUE PERIOD. Click on the invitation for a clearer view..

Exhibiting artists:

Amanda Florence, Andrée Van Schaik, Ann Holt, Anne Algar, Astrid Munday, Camilla Gold, Camille Hannah, Clare Larman, Deborah Amon-Cotter, Deborah Klein, Deborah Walker, Jane Burton, Jaqui Stockdale, Jessica Kritzer, Katrina Beale, Linda Gibbs, Lisa Barmby, Lisa Walker, Marion Harper, Melody Woodnutt, Mimi Kelly, Mina Young, Moya Delany, Rhonda Dredge, Sarah Faulkner, Sonia Payes, Tina Douglas, Tiffany Titshall, Victoria Hartcup, Wendy Morrissey, Xanthe Waite. 

BLUE PERIOD

OPENING FRIDAY DEC 1st 6-9 pm

One Star Gallery

301-303 Victoria Street

West Melbourne 3003

Exhibition dates:

November 30 - December 17

Hours: Th-Fri 3-7 pm, Sat 1-7pm, Sun 1-5 pm

Or by appointment ph. 0432 357537

Pictured top: Recollection, 2021, diptych, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 15 cm (top panel); 17.5 x 12.5 cm (bottom panel).

Primavera I

 

Primavera I, 2021, diptych, acrylic on canvas, 37 x 15 cm, recently debuted in Rückenfigur at Queenscliff Gallery. It’s one of several paintings in the show that take their inspiration from my late Auntie Eileen’s doily collection. This group of works are particularly close to my heart and will be the focus of a forthcoming post. 

For those unable to catch Rückenfigur IRL, you can view it in 3D HERE.

Photo credit: Tim Gresham.

Lady in Waiting

Lady in Waiting, 2022, diptych, acrylic on canvas, 55.5 x 22.5 cm

Photo credit: Tim Gresham 

Many years ago, I inherited a swag of vintage doilies from my late aunt, Eileen Klein. I had no real use for them, but didn’t have the heart to take them to the thrift shop. For as many years again, they languished in various drawers and cupboards in the flats and houses I’ve inhabited over the decades. Lately, however, they’ve taken on a new life. In Lady in Waiting, 2022 (pictured top) and several other paintings in Rückenfigur, my upcoming solo show at Queenscliff Gallery, they’ve become the basis for my protagonists’ decorative collars and shawls. 

A couple of developmental views are below:

Lady in Waiting nearing completion, May 2022

Progress view of Lady in Waiting with doily and Hans Holbein postcards, April 2022

Images on the postcards pictured above: A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling, Jane Seymour and Portrait of a Woman from Southern Germany by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543). Holbein’s work has been a source of inspiration since my late teens when my mother presented me with a book of his drawings as a birthday gift.

Rückenfigur opens at Queenscliff Gallery on June 23 and runs to July 10, 2022.

The Opening Event is on Sunday June 26 from 2 - 4 pm.

Queenscliff Gallery 

P 03 4202 0942 | A 81 Hesse Street Queenscliff VIC 3225 

For further information, including an invitation to Rückenfigur, scroll down to my previous post.

Your invitation to RÜCKENFIGUR

  

Attached is an invitation to Rückenfigur, my upcoming solo show at Queenscliff Gallery.

The representation of the feminine personae has long been a subject of art history. The female visage has featured in various depictions in this history – obscured, averted, deformed, glorified, domesticised, dehumanised. In her latest exhibition, artist Deborah Klein builds on this artistic canon of the feminine, offering us the idea of Rückenfigur – "the figure seen from behind.”

Weaving together sewing iconography derived primarily from handmade doilies inherited from her late Aunt Eileen, and motifs of knots and braids, Klein stitches together a story that is as complex as the knots that she depicts; a story of the perpetual outsider where our current state of disconnection – from ourselves, each other and the natural world – is rendered palpable.

- Queenscliff Gallery

The Opening Event is on Sunday June 26 from 2 - 4 pm. I do hope you can join us.

Rückenfigur runs from Jun 23 – Jul 10, 2022.

Gallery hours: 10 am - 4 pm. Closed Tuesdays.

Queenscliff Gallery 

P 03 4202 0942 | A 81 Hesse Street Queenscliff VIC 3225 

Home Thoughts

Home Thoughts, 2022, diptych, acrylic on MDF, 10 x 10 cm (each panel).

Further to Blog Post Wednesday, March 2, here is my completed painting for the upcoming One Hundred Faces exhibition at Playing in the Attic. 

The work has since acquired a name: Home Thoughts, extracted from the title of Robert Browning’s poem, Home Thoughts, from Abroad (1845), the one that begins:

O, to be in England 

Now that April’s there…

You can read the poem HERE.

Home Thoughts, 2022 (detail, panel 1 of 2)

In recent years, swans have become emblematic of home. I grew up in Melbourne in the 1950s and 60s and well remember visits with my parents to its lush Royal Botanic Gardens. Feeding the black swans that inhabit the ornamental lakes (an activity now frowned upon) became something of a ritual. 

Home Thoughts, 2022 (detail, panel 2 of 2)

In the 1970s I lived for several years in the UK. The swans in London‘s public parks, including elegant Regent’s Park, were a glorious, gleaming white, the stuff of my childhood fairy tales. But the black swans of Australia were never far from my thoughts, and in 1980 I returned to Melbourne.

From 2011, I began dividing my time between Melbourne and Ballarat. Since moving full time to the latter in 2019, I’ve become increasingly drawn to the black swans on Lake Wendouree and visit them frequently. I now call Ballarat home, yet the white swans of England remain fixed in my memories. Home, they say, is where the heart is and mine, it seems, will always be divided in two. 

Playing in the Attic

13 Ballaarat Street

Talbot VIC 3371

Opening hours: Friday - Monday, 10 am - 4 pm

One Hundred Faces is held in conjunction with the Tiny Towns Arts Trail on Anzac Day long weekend, Friday 22 April - Monday 26 April, and continues for a further six weeks. 

Photography by Tim Gresham.

New Year’s Greetings from my Ballarat studio

Directly above is the painting on my studio workable at year’s end. Near completion and as yet untitled, the diptych is acrylic on canvas and measures 37.5 x 15 cm. The work will be part of my solo show, Rückenfigur, at Queenscliff Gallery, running from June 23 - July 17, 2022. 

Meanwhile, behind me as I worked was this: 

Pictured above: Alice, devoted studio cat and Muse.

As always, thanks for finding time to visit my Art Blog, especially during the extremely challenging year that was 2021. Wishing you all a safe and happy 2022.

On the table easel

 

Pictured above: my present work in progress, followed by earlier developmental views. The lace collar was initially sketched in with a white watercolour pencil, enabling marks to be easily erased and altered during the drawing process. As yet untitled, the diptych is acrylic on canvas and measures 35 x 12.5 cm.  

Current work

Pictured above and below are a series of progress views of my current painting, a diptych, acrylic on canvas, 55 x 20 cm. The work is intended for Rückenfigur, my solo show at Queenscliff Gallery. An update on the exhibition will be posted shortly.

In the top view, the work is all but complete, save for some tweaking here and there and an appropriate title - something that doesn’t always come easy. The lace pattern in the second panel is loosely based on a vintage collar in one of several reference books I’ve accumulated through the years. It was drawn on the canvas freehand. This can sometimes do my head in, but in this instance, I found the entire process surprisingly meditative, particularly when it came to adding the areas of fine detail. 

Click on images to enlarge. 

Primavera II

  

Pictured above: Primavera II, acrylic on two canvases, 37.5 x 15 cm. The vintage embroidery on the left by my late Aunt, Eileen Klein, was the basis for the motif on the subject’s collar. The painting is near completion, save some minor tweaking. 

A progress view is below.

Primavera II and its companion work, Primavera I, as it’s now titled, were developed in between the films we streamed from the recent Melbourne International Film Festival. 

Primavera I has since been completed, and work on Primavera II proceeded without incident or interruption, with one exception - the takeover of my work chair by Alice (see below). Sucker that I am, I didn’t have the heart to move her. Instead, I rearranged the studio chairs, while Alice steadfastly refused to vacate “her” seat. In my small, cluttered space, it was a lot more complicated than it looks. Alice was not impressed. Her expression (third photo below) says it all. 

Visit Spring is here, Blog Post Wednesday, September 1, to see the then-untitled Primavera I and developmental views of both works.

Spring is here

Pictured above: a new work for a new season, as yet untitled and not quite finished in time for the first day of spring, but close to it. 

The work is acrylic on two canvases and its dimensions are 37.5 x 15 cm. The vintage needlework to its left is by my late aunt, Eileen Elizabeth Klein. I inherited many of her doilies and placemats (but sadly, not her sewing skills) and have incorporated design motifs from several of them into recent works. One of them is HERE. These and other related paintings will be exhibited at Queenscliff Gallery in the near future. 

A series of progress views of the diptych follow directly. They include its sister work (also currently untitled and considerably further away from resolution).

My MIFF 2021

On the morning after the Melbourne International Film Festival ended, Alice can’t control her excitement, as our attention will once again be focused completely on her. We find her attitude very shallow, while in her turn, she thinks we’re philistines for viewing all the MIFF 69 films on my iPad. But needs must - we couldn’t figure out how to stream them via our projector or even through our TV. After a few futile attempts came to nothing, rather than fight a war with technology we knew we couldn’t win, we decided to work with what we had. 

Shane and I enjoyed our annual MIFF experience immensely, small screen notwithstanding. We saw 32 films by the festival’s end. There were many standouts, high among them, Hopper/Welles, 2020, Orson Welles (see above), a cineaste’s dream come true and a wonderful potential companion piece to Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind, 2018, which we were fortunate to see at a private screening a couple of years ago. 

Meanwhile, in my temporary studio in our adjoining dining room, progress gradually continues on the two paintings I’ve been developing between MIFF screenings. (See above). The vintage needlework on the left is by my late Aunt Eileen and will form the basis for the bottom panels in the diptychs.

Here are our 32 films:

Bodies in Motion - Movement on Screen: As One, Bonanza!, Multiply, Poleng, The Prelude - Michelle (Short Films, Dance)

Hopper/Welles (2020, Orson Welles)

Sisters With Transistors (2020, Lisa Rovner)

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (2021, Kristina Lindstrom, Kristian Petri)

Set! (2021, Scott Gawlick)

The Village Detective: A Song Cycle (2021, Bill Morrison)

Come Back Anytime (2021, John Daschbach)

Girls I Museum (2020, Shelly Silver)

Topside (2020, Celine Held, Logan George)

Bandaranaike Band (2021, Manijey Hekmat)

Wojnarowicz (2020, Chris McKim)

The Gig is Up (2021, Shannon Walsh)

The Hill Where Lionesses Roar (2021, Luana Bajrami)

Sabaya (2021, Hogir Hirori) 

Nudo Mixteco (2021, Angeles Cruz)

Riders of Justice (2020, Anders Thomas Jensen)

Chess of the Wind (1976, Mohammad Reza Aslani)

The Night (2019, Kourosh Ahari)

Palazzo di Cozzo (2021, Madeleine Martiniello)

Wife of a Spy (2020, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Gaza Mon Amour (2020, Arab Nasser, Tarzan Nasser)

Coda (2020, Sian Heder)

Queen of Glory (2021, Nanah Mensah)

Celts (2021, Milica Tomovic)

My Name is Pauli Murray (2021, Betsy West, Julie Cohen). 

What We See When We Look at the the Sky (2021, Alexandre Koberidze)

Wasteland (2020, Ahmad Bahrami) 

Dear Comrades (2021, Andrei Konchalovsky, Alisher Usmanov)

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: a History of Folk Horror (2021, Kier-La Janisse)

Night of the Kings (2021, Philippe Lacôte)

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time (2020, Richard Peete, Robert Yapkowitz)

James and Isey (2021, Florian Habicht)

Slow progress

 

Recently I set up a temporary studio in our dining room, as it’s adjacent to the living room where we’ve been screening our selections from this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival. (See Blog Post Thursday, August 12). The paintings shown here will be diptychs. Elements of the designs in the two pieces of needlework, both hand-stitched in the last century (possibly the late 1930s) by my late aunt, Eileen Klein, will be incorporated into the bottom panels. 

Progress on the new work has been slow, partly because we’ve been streaming films all week, but mainly because my chair has been hijacked. The works will be completed in time for Rückenfigur, my upcoming solo show at Queenscliff Gallery, or Alice will have to answer to it.

On the drawing board

Initiating my newly refurbished adjustable drawing board (big thanks to Shane Jones) is the recently completed diptych, Recollection, (2021, acrylic on two canvases, top panel: 20 x 15 cm, bottom panel: 17.5 x 12.5 cm). 

A progress view of the work on the same drawing board prior to today’s makeover, is directly below. I think I’m as pleased with my new improved work surface as I am with the outcome of the painting, the backstory of which will feature in a future post.

Double, double

Pictured above, Double, double (as in toil and trouble*), the little work that’s been by far the biggest challenge of any of the paintings I’ve recently undertaken.

Double, double (2021, acrylic on two canvases, 17.5 x 25 cm) went through so many different stages, none of which remotely met my expectations, that I finally dismissed it as a heroic failure and moved on to other works.

I’ve learnt a great deal during the development of this picture. As it turned out, putting it aside was a good move. It gave me some sorely needed time and distance. Moreover, I was able to take what I gleaned from the making of other paintings in the series and apply some of it here. (In fact, all of the works so far have informed one other to some degree). 

Double, double has also proven frustratingly hard to photograph. At this stage, I’ve decided it is what it is. Nevertheless, the work does look significantly better in the flesh. For starters, there is a more even tonal balance between the two panels than appears here and the colours, built up over multiple layers, are somewhat richer.

I haven’t documented the many stages this painting has been through and wouldn’t inflict them on anyone even if I had. However, a handful of developmental shots are below. At one stage, my twin protagonists were intended to wear matching earrings based on an ornate gold pair I discovered in a catalogue of historic jewellery originating from the Victorian Goldfields (see last two photos). The inclusion of finely detailed, delicate areas of gold was intended to reflect the influence of Tudor portrait miniatures on this work. I laboured over the jewellery for several hours, only to realise it was an enormous distraction that would detract from the rest of the painting, most notably the intricately braided hair that’s central to it. As a result, I abandoned the earrings even before I’d finished painting them. In the end, I went with the relatively simple earrings shown in the finished work above. They are based on a pair I’ve owned for many years, although I’ve changed the gemstones from the original red stones (which I believe are coral) to my birth stone, turquoise.

*Song of the Witches, Macbeth, William Shakespeare, Act IV, Scene I.

Wayfarer

Pictured above: Wayfarer, 2021, diptych, acrylic on canvas, 37.5 x 15 cm overall.

My protagonist’s intricately-patterned lace shawl is based on the even more complex design reproduced in the first image below, a panel of Austrian lace dating from the 19th century. As with all of the lace depicted in my work, rather than making a straight copy, which frankly I’d find extremely tedious, I select elements of a pattern, rearranging and adapting these to fit the format of the image. Until the pattern is resolved and each component has found its place, a watercolour pencil (white works best on a dark background) is a useful tool. Needless to add, a very fine brush is essential.

The well-thumbed reference book is Lace, L’Aventurine, Paris, 1995. English edition: Bookking International, Paris, 1995, English translation by Sue Budden.

A series of progress views follow directly.