Painting at Curtin

How Maurice Utrillo pushed me into a modern painting

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 22:35:00 +0000

VART2026 In the Footsteps of the Impressionists

"I got it into my head that only plaster – real plaster – would give

marvellous results. But it cracked, cracked too quickly.

I had such a search for truth that I wanted to stick real things

to my picture, like the leaves of a tree.”

Maurice Utrillo, 1914

I started 2014 with a standard and acceptable History of Art course and followed that up with a unit called In the Footsteps of the Impressionists. This was a two-week study tour actually in Paris. I spent hours in the Louvre as well as chasing after Impressionist painters. I spent some time experimenting with pen and wash.

Le Dome Café

Pont Neuf

pl Charles Dullin

Monet's Waterlillies


Montmartre Cemetery

I actually did the first pen and wash on an afternoon in Montmartre when, exhausted, I sank onto a café chair and did my first pen and wash, just the scene in front of me:

The next day in the Musée de l’Orangerie I discovered a painting of the exact same scene. It was made by Maurice Utrillo one hundred years before:

Utrillo said of his work, “I got it into my head that only plaster – real plaster – would give marvellous results. But it cracked, cracked too quickly. I had such a search for truth that I wanted to stick real things to my picture, like the leaves of a tree.” In 1914 that wouldn’t have been considered extremely avant garde, but in 2014 it's quite old hat. So, for the tour exhibition, I produced another interpretation of Saint Pierre de Montmartre and the Sacred Heart. I tested plaster-of-Paris, sand, leaves, shells, sticks and natural pigments: with PVA glue to stop it all cracking:

I decided to simplify my composition and started with lots of small thumbnail drawings:

I tried a larger version of the coloured one with oil pastels:

Then I took to acrylics I and changed it a bit a bit; the three green circles on the left were cut-outs I used to experiment wit bushes:

I asked friends for feedback and one supplied me with a simplification, which I liked. I cropped it down to a small area in the centre:

I did another acrylic study, which I rather wish I'd kept:

I finally picked up my "real" materials and produced a textured version with plaster and dried leaves as Utrillo wanted. I used sand, shells and coffee grounds to vary the textures when I found I couldn't move the plaster into the brush rhythms of the acrylic version:

Going through this process taught me a lot about developing an artwork rather than just jumping in. I wonder what Utrillo would have thought of my version. I'm sure he would have been happy about the plaster-of-Paris and real leaves.

Printmaking Without a Press, a Book without Covers

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 06:05:00 +0000

VSW11 Printmaking: Materials and Methods

I chose to study printmaking only to avoid doing sculpture. What a rollercoaster! Equipped with a Study Guide that said there were some very good videos on YouTube, I found myself googling how to make a linocut and new things like monotype and collograph. This was definitely new territory.

My Homemade Foot Press

We had to choose a single theme and stick with it for twelve weeks. I decided to respond to the decay process of a mallard duck that had the misfortune to die in my garden.

Monoprint: Live Duck

Monoprint: Dead Duck

Linocut: Duck

By the end of the unit the concept had to be presented in the form of a non-conventional artist book. I pushed my response to the decaying duck to reflect on the inevitability of death.

Collograph

Finally I printed the motifs I'd been working with onto strings of prayer flags and installed them in a star formation over the duck's resting place.

Prayer Flags

I began documenting the decay of the flags, which echoed that of the duck as vegetation grew over them all.

Prayer Flag Remains

It was an unconventional introduction to printing perhaps, but it enthused me to the extent that I have replaced my original foot press with a real one.

An Impact on my Environment

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 23:52:00 +0000

VSW14 Painting: Materials and Methods (3)

Plein Air painting? Not exactly. But this project was so much fun! We were told: "work within your own environment to create a new tension or dynamic using colour". There was an area outside my studio where nothing would grow and edged by a horrible fence:

I decided to do something quite bold with the fence:

I was charmed when my granddaughter contributed some extra stones to complement my Zen effect:

The light plays on our new space in quite different ways depending on the time of day and the weather:

This was the "Before" condition:

Lighting it up in Colour

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 23:08:00 +0000

VSW14 Painting: Materials and Methods (2)

Finally we were allowed to play with colour ... as long as we followed the instructions carefully.

Colour Cube - primary colours, 12 x 12 x 12 cm

Colour Cube - secondary colours, 12 x 12 x 12 cm

In this cube we started from each of the primary and secondary colours and then vary saturation, tone and hue. We moved on to a still life, which we used to investigate complementary colour, tint and pointillism.

Apples, oil on canvas paper, A4

Pointillist Apples, oil on canvas paper, A4

The final studio task was to transform a familiar space. I chose my garden and my kitchen.

Garden Transformed, Oil on canvas, 92 x 62 cm

Cook Under Pressure, Acrylic on canvas board, 92 x 62 cm

Doing it in Black and White

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 22:27:00 +0000

VSW14: Painting, Materials and Methods (1).

The first half of the course was completely black and white. That was a requirement. The giraffe, on the other hand, was optional. Somehow I couldn't get away from him; I hadn't realised that one exercise would lead to another. Suffice it to say that he isn't in two of the following eight pictures.

Acrylic on primed paper, A1

Acrylic on canvas paper, A4

Encaustic over plaster of Paris on board, A4

Acrylic on canvas paper, A4

Oil on canvas paper, A4

Drawing on the Other Side of the Brain

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 11:01:00 +0000

VAR11 Visual Arts Research: Introduction to Drawing.

So, an introduction: we covered line, tone and perspective. We drew in black and colour and we also made collages in white. We investigated the use of text in drawing. We collaged some more. Above all we learned that the modern drawing is not just putting line or shading on paper. Drawing extends beyond mark making into conceptual areas such as the drawing together of ideas and the possibility of using a variety of media to create three-dimensional works that can be considered drawings. ... Mmmm! I had some difficulty with this as a definition and created a test question about a 'drawing' from an exhibition that the New York Times reviewed on April 7th, 2013.

Image: Judith Scott, Untitled, 2002. Found textiles, dimensions unknown. (Reproduced from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/nyregion/a-review-of-extreme-drawing-at-the-aldrich-contemporary-art-museum.html?_r=2&)

Here are some more traditional drawings that I made during the unit.

Three Boxes. On A4 paper.

Black Still Life. On A1 paper.

My Dresser. Drawn with a cockatoo quill on A3 paper.

'Have you got a light?' On A1 paper.

Détournement

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Sat, 25 May 2013 11:25:00 +0000

Can we poke the finger at something by turning it back on itself?

Détournement involves the reuse of some cultural item – be it text, picture, sculpture, film or sound – in the creation of a new cultural item. Like plagiarism and quotation it involves the reworking of something already made by somebody else, but it is neither. French tourner is cognate with English turn (meaning both turn and express). Unlike plagiarism and quotation, détournement reuses elements to turn them back upon themselves in order to undermine or critique the source or meaning of the original. In the visual arts it is most closely associated with the Situationists. The irrational dream-based combinations of images of the Surrealistists may - to some degree - evoke similar associations.

In VSW100 we were required to produce detourned collages and novel combinations. Below are two images of Margaret Thatcher and three works assembled around pieces of my aunt's china duck ornament.

The Humble Cardboard Box

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Mon, 06 May 2013 03:01:00 +0000

VSW100 Art and Creativity is a sort of foundation unit in the Fine Arts Degree.

It’s about process rather than product; it emphasises lateral thinking and surprising yourself. The first section was called “The Creative Mix” and was all about the cardboard box. Last year they did plastic buckets. We had to draw, photograph, brainstorm, demolish, reconstruct … all with no particular goal in mind. Boy, did I learn a lot!

Here are a few of the scores of things I was forced to think of:

Another Demon

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 23:34:00 +0000

Doesn't presenting the same image in a different medium change the atmosphere?

I had my first experience of solar etching this weekend. Here's the result:

Untitled. 2013. Print on paper.

The process is like sunbaking. You cover the parts on a photopolymer plate that you don't want to burn with absolutely anything at all. Those parts become the raised surface of the plate, from which you can print hundreds of copies.

I drew my Balinese guardian onto a transparent plastic sheet with a greasy crayon, clamped that to the plate, then put them in the sun for 45 seconds. After a couple of minutes of washing and drying I was able to print. That simple!

At Camp Creative

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:59:00 +0000

Bellingen, 2013

Our brief was to choose an artist and a subject of our own and to connect the two: not to make a slavish copy but to use the artist's style as a springboard and to see where it took us. We had a lot of Impressionists in the class, especially Cezannes. I was taken by Matisse's simplification and his pattern motifs, especially as I'd read that he used to work towards them on top of skilful representational paintings. I took along a collage of photographs from my visit to Bali last year; I thought I could assemble them onto a patterned canvas. My work is not finished so I'm only showing a detail. I can see that Matisse encouraged me to simplify and to crowd my composition, but I'm not certain that his influence is obvious.

Balinese Guardian. 2013. Oil on canvas, detail of unfinished work.

The best part of the camp was spending five continuous days with other people who enjoy painting as much as I do. Here is the class of '13:

I am fourth from the right, standing, holding a very incomplete canvas.

Back to Camp Creative

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:53:00 +0000

Bellingen, NSW

Camp Creative is the mix of music, circus, literary and visual arts tuition which I attended for the first time last year (I wrote about it in my travel blog.) Sydney artist Chris Wilson presented the course “Still Life and Portraiture in Oils” and this is our class of 2012:

(Chris is third from the left holding a bunch of paintbrushes;

I am beside her with my 'Orange Lady' painting.)

Six of the students in this picture have come back for Chris’s new theme, “Exploring Styles and Techniques in Oils.” She told us to prepare by choosing a couple of artists whose styles we would like to explore, and to bring examples of their work, together with some photographs we can interpret in the style of our chosen artists. Hopefully my attempts at following Matisse and Robert Hannaford will be worth presenting after the end of the camp. If I get finished early I’m going to go all Picasso.

Is knowledge important in responding to art?

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:10:00 +0000

Yes … and There’s also Raw Emotion, Life Experience and World View.

According to our course tutor there’s no point in looking and just liking or not liking. She often pushes us to see that our emotional response to a work depends on our personal worldview, and that knowledge about the artist and the context of his work can change that view. My first essay was to interpret Painting (1946). by the British artist Francis Bacon. After a while I saw what she meant.

Francis Bacon, Painting, 1946.

Oil and pastel on linen, 197.8cm x 132.1cm.

Museum of Modern Art, New York.

When I first googled it up, my emotional response was "What a horrible picture - hate it!" But I decided to write about it anyway since I had the chance to go to the Bacon exhibition in Sydney.

I fell to thinking about the date of the picture and the way the essay question pointed us to war symbolism. I remembered the aftermath of the war in London: bomb sites, bad food, men in suits (all our fathers dressed like the figure in the painting); I noticed the umbrella and remembered the furled umbrellas that were often carried by politicians in newspaper photographs of the time. So I used this life experience and started googling stuff around politicians and umbrellas. Within an hour I'd built up an amazing plot involving Winston Churchill, the British intelligence service and the severe bombing of Coventry)!!!!

That may all reflect my warped world view, but when I got to see the exhibition and to read material about Francis Bacon the new knowledge I picked up showed me how wrong I was. I found out that when it was exhibited in 1946 the public took it to be a comment on the war that had ended the year before. I also found out other stuff about Bacon that showed Painting could be interpreted in other ways (Freudian for example). So I decided to write about how Painting can have different interpretations, how it's ambiguous.

Doing that reflects another aspect of my world view: I love puzzles and subtlety and I often find it hard to commit to a single interpretation of something. And I should add that, while I still wouldn't put a print of Painting (1946) on my wall, my appreciation of the work, as well as my respect for Bacon, grew all the time I was working on the essay.

Has a Random Advertisement on Facebook Changed my Life?

noreply@blogger.com (Gillian Perrett) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0000

… I hope so.

I always loved paintings (noun) and painting (verb), but somehow managed to sideline what could have been a life-long passion. One evening my computer screen flashed up the question “Have you thought about studying online for a BA in Fine Arts and Visual Culture?”

No I hadn’t. But I filled in my name and phone number anyway, and went away for a week. I was still sleeping off my journey when the phone rang and an Open University councillor persuaded me to sign up.

I’ve started my first two units: Internet Communications and Issues in Contemporary Art. They are taught out of Curtin University, on the other side of the continent, and I don’t even have to leave my living room.

This blog is going to focus on what I encounter in my Fine Arts courses. I plan no agenda, no destination: just a journey of discovery as I meander among Old Masters and Modern Geniuses, creating some of my own art along the way.