Month: September 2016

Elemental Landforms at Lake Mungo

A larger mixed media about Lake Mungo consists of frottage taken from different surface areas. I folded a large sheet printmaking paper into three sections aiming to capture samples of the various types of terrain. Graphite was used to take a rubbing from a stone (alluding to the Gol Gol formation on top of which the lunette built) seen in the top right of the composition. The middle section consists of traces of clay and sand (alluding to how the lunette built up into dunes) and the top left section now almost obscured retained a stain as this section of the paper buried into darkened places of the dune, where moisture caused possibly by decaying remnant vegetation,  left an imprint.

Once again, I turned the composition up side down where it appeared to read better for me.

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Lake Mungo Overview

IMG_5807.jpgA radical rearrangement as I decided I didn’t like Red Earth Trajectory at Mungo 2 so it I turned it into a horizontal format and turned it upside down. I returned to my first idea about how to indicated to the viewer a state of mind where elements, that stayed in my mind as I left that vicinity and returned to my studio, could find expression as a memory of the essential aspects of the landform.

 

 

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Adventure and Allegory of Painting at Mungo

This small oil on gessoed printmaking paper began as an incomplete intaglio print as underpainting two years ago. During that time when I left it to dry I became dissatisfied with it and put it away for a while.

My mood and colour scheme had changed from lilac to blue. In the first pink/lilac stage I wanted to recapture the vanishing light at Mungo and its subtle flash of a citrine cold yellow before sunset. The blue rendition was a confused attempt to pick up the theme of how environmental conditions affect shape and image construction that morphed into a ‘listening to the land’ theme influenced by a series of collages titled ‘Sounds of Drought’

A recent science programme demonstrated new techniques and equipment that when placed in strategic places in a habitat could monitor particular sounds, types and  numbers of different creatures at a given time. The data created a picture on computer screen of the health of that particular area. A validition of my images with ears reaching into landforms esp. Mungo perhaps?.

 

 

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Self-Portrait as Allegory of Painting (revisited)

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Behind the Mask, 2014

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Behind the Mask, 2014-16, oil on gesso and intaglio, 36×24 cm

Untitled

Lost Mirror Image, 2014, mixed media 35×25 cm

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Lost Mirror Image, 2014-16, mixed media, 35×25 cm

I returned to a small group of self-portraits that were out of sight for two years. The self-portrait image began as an intaglio print which I retained in these compositions. I gessoed the printmaking paper and then applied oil paint as a medium in which to complete the imagery that was about the self-portrait function as an allegory of the painting process. hence images of lights, mirrors, spectacles and imagery that alluded to the presence of absence of light.

I try to create the process of looking because as we turn away from the mirror image  (reverse) the artist ‘carries’ its memory to the brain which then has to be rearranged into something before hand and brush or which ever implement is used, moves. We don’t see ourselves as others see us.