All in Artist Residencies
Have you ever felt your ideas have sprung from ‘out of the blue’? Yet the colours, processes and themes which have caught your interest along the way have all pointed you in your current direction. That is what I have discovered about my abiding love for the colour blue and the joy of cyanotype printmaking.
When you finally face what’s holding you back, it’s liberating. My paint brushes and paints are back on my studio bench, there’s a canvas on my easel and I’m painting. Fifty years of not feeling that I could paint has meant I didn’t even try. But I’ve had years of practising as an artist to get to this point. Now I’m excitement to see what’s next.
What are the most important ideas to include in an artist statement about your artwork? After my artist residency in Oatlands, I wrote how the architectural features in the town and its houses became time portals I used to enter colonial thinking. Peeling back the fragments of layered wallpapers hinted at what my paintings were about and how they responded to this historical town.
Composition can be a tricky skill to master. Sometimes no matter what you do the elements of a piece won’t sit together on the paper. Do you tear it up and start again or persevere until things fall into place? Both actions require courage and both can be a way to resolve the trickiest of challenges.
You need to be bold when you commit to your line drawing. Especially when it is drawn up in ink. I’ve needed to feel bold when committing to adding motifs of lights and lamps to shine a light on the history of Tasmania with its wars and period of martial law. Cracks in the edifices allows the light to shine in and is the first step in truth telling.
What views did the colonists want to create in their newly invaded and possessed land? Most held ideas about what ‘civilisation’ and ‘society’ meant and so forever changed the landscape to conform to this point of view. My preoccupation has been how to find a gentle way into post colonial viewpoints using windows as portals. To mourn what was lost and hold a vision for the future.
There are so many reasons to feel despondent, especially if you are staying in a place which has a violent history. Yet after two days of drawing murky black ink shapes, I knew I had to find a way through to the other side of despair. Enter Dr Bob Brown and his rallying call to action and keeping hope alive.
Stones, nails, lines of history. The past lives on in the buildings in colonial settler towns like Oatlands where I am an artist in residence. I think of the way we had to write out lines for misdemeanours at school. Now I am thinking of the lines responding to this place that I will make and write while I am in residence here.
The annual raft race at Porthleven harbour was a great finish to my time in Cornwall where I could reflect on my last artist residency in the UK. Now my challenge will be to return to Australia to bring this experience into my final project to complete the Masters Arts & Place program.
Creatures of myth and imagination can call to you from the strangest of places. I am attracted to taking pictures of the strangest things, like rusted wire, abandoned buildings and patterns in the asphalt. They inspire me to tell their stories.
