FUGITIVE PIECES

This is my studio – full of blank canvases. I’ve had a six-month hiatus from painting which I probably needed but now I need to paint more than ever. I have been preparing these canvases for the past few months… itching to slash through all that purity.

I’ve started working in design again and while I love the engagement of the office environment, it will suck my soul right out of me if I am not vigilant. This sounds very dramatic I know, however, I am exhausted when I get home and my ‘portal’ to the office from my home computer blinks at me at all hours of my home life… I have to draw a line. Mmmm, I can draw a line...

On days in the studio when I feel the muses circling, I pick up old novels and pick a chapter to read, wondering where the goddesses will lead me.

I reached for this one the other day and was so moved by this section I thought I’d include it in this post. It comes from the novel Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, the voice is of a young man who has escaped the utter devastation of war, if only physically.

 “One evening I walked up Grace Street, a summer tunnel of long shadows, the breeze from the lake a cool finger slipping gently under my damp shirt, the tumult of the market left blocks behind. In the new coolness, and new quiet, a thread of memory clung to a thought. Suddenly an overheard word fastened on to a melody; a song of my mother’s that was always accompanied by the sound brush bristles pulling through Bella’s hair, my mother’s arm drawing with the beat. The words stumbled out of my mouth, a whisper, then louder, until I was mumbling whatever I remembered. “What good is the mazurka, my heart is not carefree; what good’s the girl from Vurka, if she does not love me…” “Black cherries are gathered, the green are left on the tree…” All the way through to the opening verses of “Come to me, Philosopher” and “How does the Czar Drink his tea?”

I looked around. The houses were dark, the street safely empty. I raised my voice. “Foolish one, don’t be so dense, don’t you have any common sense? Smoke is taller than a house, a cat is faster than a mouse…”

Up Grace, along Henderson, up Manning to Harbord I whimpered; my spirit shape finally in familiar clothes and, with abandon, flinging its arms to the stars.

But the street wasn’t as empty as I thought. Startled, I saw that the blackness was perforated with dozens of faces. A forest of eyes, of Italian and Portuguese and Greek ears; whole families sitting silently on lawn chairs and front steps. On dark verandas, a huge invisible audience, cooling down from their small, hot houses, the lights kept off to keep away the bugs.

There was nothing for it but to raise my foreign song and feel understood.”

The truth is that I could have opened that book at any page and found a similarly beautiful section. It’s just that this passage is about connection: that connection, elusive and momentary that I seek. That moment that I feel whole. I think, maybe, we all long for it but I am not knowledgeable enough to make that assumption. I wonder if the power of memory lies in the fact that there, safely catalogued in the past, those moments are sitting ducks - easy to isolate, and own. In the flux of daily life it is much more difficult.

Odyssey

From my perch on top of the dunes, I watched the clouds contrive to trap the light. Their strategy was clear... divide and conquer. Half went to designing a parapet, a great wall of scallops, thick and profound, while the other half launched as a fine organza across the sky. Irresistible to touch, the clever clouds named their device Rapture and set it. And the light fell for it. Caressing the vapours and falling through the weave, the lustre found its end on the billows below. The ocean had no issue on this particular day having laboured through the dark to trap the night sky... and in mock submission brought tray after tray of soft foam littered with stars to offer the shore. I have witnessed a victory for the sky and the sea - a formidable collaboration.

In The Odyssey, Homer tells a tale about the Gates of Ivory and the Gates of Horn: portals through which our dreams stream and present themselves to us as truths (whether they are true or not). The very notion of a gate implies a separation between ourselves and our thoughts and memories, as though our dreams exist independently of us.

This is an ancient tale. What we seek is always just out of reach yet we are certain that when we find it we will recognise it immediately, as home. Perhaps this is because we possessed it once, and knew it intimately and have lost it.

I am drawn to this story and wonder whether this separation and loss and longing to be united/reunited with a realm of dreams, is like a quest to come home. For home, what longing is keener? I navigate to apprehend something I may never know... a destination that can only be reached across the landscape of a life. The world is full of comedies and tragedies, of odes and elegies, of promises and endings, of beauty and light; all terrain to be traversed in the odyssey.

And like the light, I am seeking. And like the ocean, I am hunting. And like the clouds, I make my plans. I am compelled to express this, and when words fall short, I need a good ship... and some paint.

This is my artist statement from my last show at Charles Hewitt Gallery. The stunning gallery in the heart of Darlinghurst is the latest victim of tough times and will be closing its doors after decades of dedication to the arts in Sydney. I will miss having Charles and Larry about in the traditional gallery setting... although they are not clearing out completely - just morphing into the 21C with online galleries and pop up shows.

Here are some pics of my show at the gallery in November (about bloody time blogger).

From top to bottom:

The Charles Hewitt Gallery, Opening night 'Odyssey', Me, Wendy Littlewood (who's extraordinary dedication to teaching set me firmly on this path) and dear friends, fellow artist, the talented Lucia Hennessy, Petra Timmerman the photographer extraordinaire with Julie Morin, gifted designer 'inky'.

And last but not least, the tirelessly supportive, patient, loving and kind, man of much faith, Tim.

SPRINGTIME

June Hymn

Here's a hymn to welcome in the day

Heralding a summer's early sway
And all the bulbs all coming in
To begin
The thrushes bleating battle with the wrens
Disrupts my reverie again

Pegging clothing on the line
Training jasmine how to vine
Up the arbor to your door
And more
You're standing on the landing with the war
You shouldered all the night before

And once upon it
The yellow bonnets
Garland all the lawn
And you were waking
And day was breaking
A panoply of song
And summer comes to Springville Hill

A barony of ivy in the trees
Expanding out its empire by degrees
And all the branches burst to bloom
In the boom
Heaven sent this cardinal maroon
To decorate our living room

And once upon it
The yellow bonnets
Garland all the lawn
And you were waking
And day was breaking
A panoply of song
And summer comes to Springville Hill

And years from now
When this old light isn't ambling anymore
Will I bring myself to write
"I give my best to Springville Hill"

And once upon it
The yellow bonnets
Garland all the lawn
And you were waking
And day was breaking
A panoply of song
And summer comes to Springville Hill

The Decemberists from their album The King is Dead. Of course the months are all wrong for us in the antipodes... but the day calls for a song. The album cover is from their previous album, Castaways and Cutouts... I just liked it.

EGO TRIP

‘Tis the season for Art Prizes… a time to queue, a time to lug, a time for random success and more frequently random rejection. We hate it but we do it – for ‘profile’. On the upside it’s usually pretty social as you share a laugh at loading docks and beg favours from friends with utes…

Whilst I could round out this little blog with tales of woe and rejection… that would be counter productive to my ego trip so here are a few of the more happy outcomes.

On Friday I attended the Northbridge Art Prize at Gallery 307 (where I have been teaching a few classes) and to my delight found out that I had won the first prize for the works on canvas and board (which was pretty much painting). The work was called Saturn Rule… as he does me. Sydney artist, Wendy Sharpe was the judge. I have no photo to show as I didn’t get around to that. Yay!

Rewinding a bit, in May I had a small painting accepted into the NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize. The prize was judged by Glenn Barkley, Curator of The Museum of Contemporary Art and exhibited at NSW Parliament House in Macquarie St www.pleinair.com.au. My gorgeous friend, Eugenie accompanied me to the opening. We giggled our way through dinner and many speeches. Noel McKenna took out the big prize with his work entitled ‘My Backyard’.

It was a good night and I was thrilled to catch up with two of my favourite teachers from the National Art School and meet some other artists whom I had known only by their work. Some fellow artists from the mountains and beyond were represented including my friend Rowen Matthews who is currently exhibiting his exquisite landscapes in Melbourne, New Paintings: Intimate Portraits of the Cudgegong River www.catherineasquithgallery.com

There was even a bit of press about that:

http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/news/local/news/general/lawson-artist-in-painting-prize-finals/2167091.aspx

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/video-takes-the-prize-for-creativity/story-e6frg8n6-1226063666312

Meanwhile, back up the mountain, The Blackheath Art Society held their Open Winter Exhibition and were fortunate to have Tony Bond OAM, Head Curator, Western Art at the Art Gallery of NSW to judge the works. In addition to the lovely honour of the People’s Choice Award, Mr Bond awarded my small painting a Highly Commended. The title of the painting is East and West Mean Nothing to Us Here and was taken from a line in Homer’s Odyssey (an ongoing theme in my new work). The painting depicts the Anzac Bridge off ramp as you enter into the inner west at dusk. http://www.blackheathart.com/prizewinners/prizewinners.htm

Mr Bond commented, ‘Susie Dureau's work is typical of what I referred to at the start about simple rendering of a special moment. Here in East + West Mean Nothing to Us Here the silhouetted trees against the turbulent night form the stage on which unidentified lights move in the foreground. It is particularly pertinent given the weather we all braved to get to the show.’

I believe it was the week that wild storms ripped through the Blue Mountains causing widespread damage and power outages… an event of which I was blissfully unaware as it was also the week I moved to the beaches.

The pics at the top of this entry are the work East and West Mean Nothing to Us Here lifted from the BAS website (again I had not the foresight to photograph the work myself) and ME with the table decoration from the dinner at parliament house. I had to be convinced by the caterer to take it and it was only after she assured me that the vase was 'cheap' that I felt obliged to make it mine!

Said and done.

OF CLOUDS

I listened to an interview with Australian author Delia Falconer on the ABC recently. She has written a book on Sydney and concludes that Sydney, with all its sweat and showiness, is a melancholy city at heart. I thought this was an interesting observation… maybe she’s right. Maybe Falconer is melancholy at heart and maybe we see what we want to see. I bought the book and have placed it on top of the large pile of others I will get around to reading one day.

In the meantime I remembered an historical novel she wrote about the Blue Mountains at the turn of the century (20C). I fished it out of the bookshelf and sat down to read a few pages. I forgot all the things I was supposed to be doing. Within a few minutes I had tears running down my cheeks. This woman’s prose and imagery is exquisite. I am touched… I have recently descended from the mountains and hell, I have a thing about clouds.

The novel is called The Service of Clouds and the title comes from John Ruskin (‘Of Modern Landscape’ Modern Painters 1856) ‘… if a general and characteristic name were needed for modern landscape art, none better could be invented than “the service of clouds”.’

Here are a couple of passages (God I want to type out the whole book – don’t know where to start or stop) mmm...

‘The year the Hydro Majestic Hotel failed as a hydropathic institute Harry Kitchings fell in love with the air and stayed. It was a romantic year. Men carried thermometers and dreamed of women struck by lightning. Postmen hauled packets filled with love and human hair. Woman carried notebooks and pressed storms in them like flowers. You could feel our love rising from the mountains tops like steam. At least that is how Harry Kitchings might tell it.

What were we in love with? That is an awkward question. If I were to reply that we loved each other it would be for the sake of expediency and politeness. But it is only a half-truth unsuited to this time in that Blue Mountains town when the clouds at the end of every street were filled with the Grand Dreams of elsewhere. It is more accurate to say that our lives were lived in the service of these clouds which took the forms of our desires. We loved them with a passion that expanded and filled the sky. It was our clouds, for example, which boys carried in photographs to the trenches.

To live in that high land is to lose familiarity with the shape of things. You cannot trust your eyes. In a single day I have witnessed the tremulous birth of the world. I have seen canyons boil. I have watched rain fall upwards from the foot of Mount Solitary. Before my eyes, beneath sliding veils of vapour, trees have formed soft oceans in the depth of valleys dappled by cold blue shadows in which parrots swam like tropical fish. When the mists come, the edges of the cliff blur, rocks melt, chasms close over and streets drop into precipices. Your feet are shod in Lichen. Your hair breathes vapour at the roots. You are walking on clouds. There were days when I have flung coins into the valleys and they have skipped across the billows.

Who can say precisely where love starts? I could tell you that my passion for Harry Kitchings had its origin thousands of years ago when that mighty ridge broke off from the Penrith plains and rose into the air… listen, I will make the clouds rain stories for you.

CUMULUS

“[My mother] had read about this place; where kitchens were built at such high altitudes that the clouds drifted into bread through open windows and made it rise without the use of yeast; where the clouds were always white; where the mountains were so blue that bowerbirds, stunned by concupiscence, dashed their brains against the sapphire cliffs’

CIRRUS

“Ancient peoples, Harry told me, did not speak of ‘weather’. Instead they found their deaths and fortunes in the trailing viscera of clouds… Sometimes, he said, he was afflicted by a certain sadness and had to go into the clouds until he felt himself filled with the bright blue breath of God.”

This is what painting does for me… and when the sadness grips me by the throat… a few hours in the landscape or in the studio can help to free my breath.

Thanks for the beauty Falconer.

FOR THE LOVE OF LOOMSTATE LINEN Part 2

I have a confession to make. It cuts deep into the philosophy of the do-it-yourself stretcher and primer. It is this.... I tried to get someone else to do it. All that stuff about the spirituality of the thing... crap! crap! I was unravelled by a matter of scale.

3 months down the track I have stretched and glued and primed and sanded all the last lot (which I will come back to as it is a more golden moment in my stretching and priming history)... and I decided to work on some larger canvases. They are 138 x 200cm and I've had them professionally stretched. I tried to have them professionally rabbit-skin-glued but the professional reluctance to help out on this score landed my loomstate lovelies back in my studio with lots of work still to be done before painting could commence.

So I'll rewind a bit...

Day 2 - 35 STRETCHING THE LINEN

I don't have any photos of this part of the process which is probably a good thing as I don't recall that there was a single glamourous moment here. Rewarding? Definitely. I built up my biceps over the period of a month (I stretched 30 canvases).

Every person I have ever gleaned any knowledge from on this subject has stressed that you should not pull to hard on the linen as it will tighten up with the glue and because you can damage some of the fibres in the linen. Still, I had to learn this the hard way and did break some fibres. Ideally you want your finished canvas to be tight like a drum but here you need to have faith that that will happen in the next step. Also beware, I thought that if I needed a little more stretch I could spray the linen with a little water. Conversely, it shrunk as the fibres swelled with the water, then stretched out again when it dried.

Day 37 and 38 RABBIT SKIN GLUE

I used Langridge Rabbit Skin Glue which comes in granules and looks a lot like raw sugar. DO NOT LEAVE IN THE TEA CUPBOARD. I left mine on the kitchen bench and there was an incident...

Langridge has clear instructions on the label; mix the granules 1:13 part water and leave to soak for at least two hours (I left mine overnight). Then melt in a double boiler and apply.

Other wisdom suggests a mix of 1:10, melt slowly, leave to set at room temp for a day. It should be the consistency of apple sauce. Then heat again and use warm.

... and the wisdom that came too late for me was from an old text book that says the glue should be applied luke warm as any hotter and it will lose its sealing power. Mine was not boiling but I'd say it was a fair bit warmer than luke. It seems to have sealed well though.

I did two coats over two days. The first is a little more difficult as the glue absorbs into the raw linen. I left the profile (sides) til the second coat. I was very happy when it was done!

FOR THE LOVE OF LOOMSTATE LINEN

Hello out there. It’s been 734 days, or thereabouts, since my last post… so much for new years resolutions. Mmm.

I am returning with a bit to say about stretching, sizing and priming raw linen. I have been on this project for the last three months and it’s a good break from the rigours of painting. I have found the exercise at times laborious, at times fascinating, surprisingly physically demanding but on the whole immensely rewarding.

I explained the process to my neighbour who is a singer, songwriter and patient ear, who heard me out and then commented, ‘I could think of nothing more boring. That would be like me having to make paper on which to write music or having to contructing a guitar before playing’ Fair. But constructing a guitar sounds very cool to me. It’s the spirituality of the thing… however, not everyone’s cup of tea.

On the subject of the spirituality of the thing, it occurred to me during this process that painting and supplies are so simple, yet the array of products out there is immense. Really painters only needed the flax (linseed) plant, from which comes linseed oil and the linen itself, a few pigments (crushed and bound with linseed oil), some wood for stretchers and paintbrushes, a few bunnies for sizing and a handful of hairs from the rare Siberian sable (hog bristle will suffice for the less adventurous).

Day 1 CUTTING AND WASHING THE LINEN

The linen needs to be cut with allowance for pulling around the stretcher and for a little shrinkage. I usually leave about 8cm on each edge. The stuff is so expensive though ($70 - $300 per metre and probably more) that you don’t want to waste it. I used a Belgian linen with a medium tooth.

The pieces then need to be rinsed in luke warm water to remove starches and hung to dry. It’s advised to weight the edges to minimise shrinkage. As I hauled the large pieces from the bathtub to the line I discovered that wet linen can be quite heavy.

Here is a pic of the loomstate lovelies hanging on the line...

I'll have to get back to this later, cheerio.