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Featuring:
About Jean $ 1, 250
acrylic and graphite on canvas
49.5 x 44cm
After Fire II $ 1, 250
acrylic and graphite on canvas
49.5 x 44cm
After Fire III $ 1, 250
acrylic and graphite on canvas
49.5 x 44cm
After Fire IV $ 1, 250
acrylic and graphite on canvas
49.5 x 44cm
After Fire V $ 1, 250
acrylic and graphite on canvas
49.5 x 44cm
Allotment $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Beguile $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Cardenio $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Cloud $ 1, 250
acrylic and graphite on canvas
49.5 x 44cm
Cycle $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Garden I $ 3, 000
acrylic and graphite on canvas
86.5 x 78cm
Garden II $ 3, 000
acrylic and graphite on canvas
86.5 x 78cm
Kapulu $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Illawarra $ 2, 750
acrylic and graphite on canvas
68 x 79cm
Phaistos $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Rectify $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Red Letter $ 1, 250
acrylic and graphite on canvas
49.5 x 44cm
Sappho And Eumetis $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Studio List $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Sur $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Temple $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Text $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Three Summers $ 2, 750
acrylic and graphite on canvas
68 x 79cm
Two Lists $ 2, 500
acrylic and graphite on canvas
70.5 x 64cm
Notes on Paintings
The general area that I’ve been addressing in the studio over the last year or so has been the eternal vulnerability of documents and cultural information. We live in an age of false news, conspiracy theories, the reckless disposal of valuable material and a general awareness that previously trusted platforms can no longer be relied upon to present accurate facts but I started thinking more deeply about historical aspects of this as I read Irene Vallejo’s book Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World.
These are paintings about erasure, palimpsests, cultural loss and the human impulse to reconfigure reality. Based on contemporaneous studio notes here are some indications of what was in my mind as I worked on specific paintings:
Beguile, 2024
I was reading about Sulpicia, a bold Roman female writer in the time of Augustus whose work survived because her poems became mixed up with the work of a male author. Only 6 poems (40 lines) by her remain but that is more than there is for a host of other female writers from that time.
Cardenio, 2024
There is continual debate about the extent of William Shakespeare’s output but there is no doubt at all that the play The History of Cardenio was written by Shakespeare and John Fletcher, that it was performed in London in 1613 and that it was printed, but no copies have survived. It is believed to have been based on a character in Cervantes’ Don Quixote who goes mad and lives in the mountains. That’s a play I’d like to see.
Rectify, 2024
This is about the ways in which things are changed – very deliberately, casually, haptically, accidentally…
Sappho and Eumetis, 2024
Sappho is of course one of the most revered of archaic Greek writers, “The 10th Muse”, but as a result of her work going out of fashion and then being proscribed much later by the Catholic church only around 650 lines of poetry survive, including just one complete poem. Eumetis was a Greek poet who was active around the beginning of the 6th Century BC. A daughter of one of the Greek Sages, she was apparently an intelligent, audacious woman, well known in her time, but only scraps of her work survive, and three riddles.
Two Lists, 2024
Sei Shonagon was a tenth century Japanese court lady and writer who produced the ever popular The Pillow Book. This contains an accumulation of observations, thoughts and 164 intriguing lists. I fantasized about my own versions of “Things that make the heart beat faster” and “Things that lose by being painted.”
Temple, 2024
One night in 356BC a man named Herostratus crept into the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus and burnt it down. This building was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and Herostratus thought that by destroying it he could gain fame. He was caught and executed, and his name was banned from ever being mentioned, but he did achieve his objective and his name lives on. There is a lesson in this.
Allotment, 2024
In June I visited my son and his family who live in Sweden, and I was taken to see their garden allotment. I’ve been there a few times and I’m always fascinated by the evolving landscape. All the plots are individualized and there is an impression of relentless evolution driven by changing seasons, new plot owners, personal taste and what people want to eat.
Three Summers, 2024
In my childhood I spent a lot of time at a family home on the edge of Lake Illawarra, looking out towards the lake’s entrance and the sea. I often think about it – the lake, the movement of water, the sandy landscape, constant wind and in those days the non-urban ambiance. As I worked on this I was reminiscing about three particular summers.
Illawarra, 2024
See above. This conjures up my memories of the movement of water in the shallow, sandy lake.
Garden I, 2024
This year we were in London, staying with friends in Islington at the time of the National Garden Scheme Open Garden Day on June 2nd, in which our hosts participated. We helped out and I visited other open gardens in Hackney, which were all very different. There was a lot of discussion about how gardens were developing, gardeners’ new plans, seasonal factors and so on.
Garden II, 2024
See above.
Kapulu, 2023
Some people visited my studio as I was working on a series of red paintings and the word ‘lava’ was mention. The conversation rambled into discussion of the loss of homes built near an erupting volcano. I the 1980s I had spent a few months as an artist in residence at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and I’d visited the volcano Kilauea, which was active at the time. In following years housing developments got closer and closer to this and eventually many were destroyed by lava flows. I was astonished by the news reports – I can understand Roman people living in Pompeii because before Vesuvius erupted it was dormant and apparently they didn’t understand what a volcano was, but this was an entirely different matter. ‘Kapulu’ is the Hawaiian word for careless.
Sur, 2024
Jorge Luis Borges wrote an extremely scathing review (“pointless banality”) of Orson Well’s film Citizen Kane (1941) which was published in the journal Sur. It is said that as the film’s reputation grew and grew, Borge began denying that had written the review. Borge’s eyesight was very poor, but still?
Phaistos, 2024
In 1908 the archaeologist Luigi Pernier discovered an interesting clay disk (now known as the Phaistos Disk) in an excavation in Crete. This contains a spiral of impressed symbols which have never been convincingly interpreted, and the disk is the subject of fevered study and debate. I’m not so much interested in the disk itself as I am with people’s fascination with objects like this.
Text, 2024
Quintus Caecilius Epirota was a Roman teacher who lived in the 1st Century BC. He made the decision to discuss and teach about the works of living writers, the most famous of whom was Virgil. Remembering that to continue existing through the years literary works had to survive the transitions from tablets to scrolls to books and the vicissitudes of centuries, this was momentous development.
Cycle, 2024
I was thinking about the fragility of papyrus, scrolls, books, library fires and the loss of manuscripts over time. Heraclitis, a philosopher who lived in Ephesus (see Temple above) thought that fire was the fundamental stuff of creation, and that it cyclically annihilates and constructs the world, but fire is the enemy of books.
Studio List, 2024
The oldest surviving texts seem to be lists of basic things like food, taxes and inventories. I’m a big list maker myself, I admit, and I was meditating about that as I worked on this. A great book I’d recommend: Liza Kirwin’s Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.
Red Letter, 2024
As I worked on a series of red paintings I was wondering about my full set of reasons for concentrating so much on this particular colour. Actually, I’m still thinking about that. In the time of the Roman Republic and later in illustrated manuscripts they used red letters to indicate the importance of things – names, dates and so on. That’s where the saying “a red letter day” come from.
About Jean, 20224
I’ve always liked the work of the French 20th Century artist Jean Dubuffet, and when I hear people talking about the reality of people’s works versus their characters, my mind defaults to him. He came from a family of wine merchants, and during WWII he gave up art for a while and focused on selling wine to the German Wehrmacht. He boasted about this, considering it a clever way to make a lot of money.
After Fire II, III, IV, V, 2023
We have a cabin in the bush near Tenterfield in northern NSW, and in November 2023 a bad fire tore through our property and the surrounding countryside. Luckily our cabin survived, but the surrounding landscape was burnt and blackened. As I cleared debris I saw that around our spring fed dam water and ash had combined to create fascinating areas of glistening black mud. These small paintings were made plein air on site.