My
Heart is in Paint...
This is a painting
about painting and the act of painting. In this case it takes the form
of a triptych in 4 parts. Go Figure.net.au. At every point the subject,
the process, and the various
resultant artworks are interchangeable elements of the one idea:
portrait painting.
At its most
basic level painting is about colour and tone. This work explores both
at several levels. In addition to likenesses the best portraits are
also psychological exposures. Here sensitivity tempers irony and
humour, inner fears and stony determination.
This picture is very personal. It is the lot of the artist to lay on
the vivisector's block and feel the cuts that somehow attempt to embalm
a touch of life in paint, or dance, or poems, or digitally.
Sometimes someone understands the fear of self revelation inevitable in
the act of creation. More often it is a cruel cut
Colour and Nakedness...
Painting is about
colour. This painting is about colour. Colour that reveals on the one
hand, yet cloaks in theatricality on the other. Colour that turns a
likeness into the staged presentation appropriate to the Archibald
Prize.
Shakespeare had a habit of getting to the truth; we are but players he
said. No less so artist aspirants, but the label 'actor' implies a far
more audacious role than reality seems to allow.
Is
there a hint of of puppeteers strings in the liney brushstrokes of the
picture? Perhaps there should be, at times life feels like that.
And
meanwhile courage and fear chase each others tails as I prepare for
another judgement.
Artists
are not supposed to talk this way. They are supposed to be humble
seekers of truth denying greeds for intellectual recognition. They have
to be acceptably serious, acceptably inventive and acceptably
adventurous. Art, for me is not so complex, nor so simple. It is about
nakedness. Here I stand before you, despite the evidence of clothes, as
naked as I was born, exposed in all my strengths and weaknesses.
The stage is set, the spotlight is on, the
player has stepped up to the plate, and
for this picture, the curtain is about to rise.
A Portrait Conundrum...
The Archibald
Prize is always the conundrum; how to reconcile conflicting
requirements. Archibald himself was a study in contradictions, and he
allowed those to continue in his Prize. He audaciously gave a prize for
portrait painting, yet declined to be painted himself. He wanted to
encourage contemporary artists, yet seemed rooted in a solid
traditional base.
For
the artist it is always a problem. To paint a portrait is never easy,
to be adventurous enough to be the best infinitely more so. There is a
certain level of traditional painting skills implicate in the concept
of a portrait painted from life; yet the best artists are likely to
push the boundaries of those limitations in the qualitative struggles.
It is very easy to cross the
line to the point where meaningful connections to Archibald's intent
cease to exist.
GoFigure.net.au is both rooted
in the centuries old discipline of panel painting, yet at the same time
makes a leap into a cyber world that daily grows more relevant to the
practice of being an artist. This digitalization interacts
synergistically with the paint, forming an integral dialogue in which
questions and answers are embedded as much in electricity as paint.
Many questions are inherently conundrums which is why they outnumber
the answers. Like an artists life really.
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