Painting an egg to see what hatches

 HATCHING

Hatching oil on canvas 84 cm x 184 cm 

Laid perfect, smooth, fragile, mysterious, the immaculate egg is torn apart in a second birth and a new being emerges. This creature has some arrangement of feathers, skin, carapace, scales, legs, wings, fins, beak, teeth, mandibles, eyes, gills or pretty much anything else you can imagine. And that's just an ordinary egg. Once you get into its symbolic meaning you find everything from the creation of the Cosmos to a losing score in tennis.

If you are looking for symbolism there is plenty here – birds as messengers, embodied souls of the dead, symbols of light, peace, freedom and joy. An owl or two for darkness and wisdom. Ducks and chickens for domesticity and happiness. And, of course, the two famous questions: Why did the chicken cross the road? Why is a raven like a writing desk?

You may or may not find answers in this exhibition, but you will find plenty of eggs and poultry. And the odd – very odd – Raven.

Welcome to the world of bewildered Robot and encouraging Raven, reconstituted Thylacine, the terrifying Catcher, and a host of minor characters absorbed in their own esoteric activities and rituals. Animals and birds as beloved pet, exploited automaton, learned guide, fantasy companion. Watching over all is the enigmatic White Bird, which has appeared in several paintings in the past and will turn up again because I like it.

Help me explore the relationship between people and animals in a peculiar world that almost looks familiar, where the boundaries between animal, mineral and vegetable blur. A world of infinite potential where wonderful things could happen and meaning is whatever you make it.

On With The Show    oil on canvas 50 cm x 60 cm

Morning at the Dog Park    oil on canvas 61 cm x 75 cm

Off to the Races    oil on canvas 61 cm x 92 cm 

Landscape with Figures    oil on canvas board 50 cm x 60 cm

Catching the Egg    oil on canvas 102 cm x 66 cm 

Gift    oil on canvas 50 cm x 60 cm

Heggler    oil on canvas 61 cm x 45 cm

Fledglings    oil on canvas oil on canvas 50 cm x 60 cm

Ritual Birdbath     oil on canvas 75 cm x 60 cm 

Chickens in a Taxi    oil on canvas 122 cm x 91 cm 

Stone Chickens  oil on canvas  60 cm x 50 cm

Personally, the symbolism I'm going for here is creation, rebirth, optimism and joy. 

Inaugural dAda mUse Surrealist Art Prize

At the museum in Stanley I found a photograph of an early 20th century tinker, by all accounts a colourful character, who travelled with her horse and cart around north west Tasmania selling kitchenware made from recycled kerosene tins.  While drawing I thought about her life and the things she made and somehow this figure emerged from my subconscious, in the best surrealist tradition. So I painted it. 

Tinker's Child - acrylic on canvas, 36 cm x 46 cm

Last night was the opening of the inaugural dAda mUse Surrealist Art Prize exhibition, and Tinker's Child won first prize.

dAda mUse is a new gallery housed in a nicely restored heritage building in Launceston. It has on permanent display Australia's largest collection of works on paper by Salvador Dali, and actively promotes community interest in the arts, especially surrealism.  This is an acquisitive award so she will be hanging up there in the gallery among the Dali works. Chuffed? You bet!

The finalists exhibition can be seen at dAda mUse, 121 Cimitiere St, Launceston (the 1842 Johnstone and Wilmot building) until Sunday, 17 December 2023.

Update 18 Dec 2023: Stephanie Burbury, of the Oatlands History Room, kindly sent me this photograph of old Mother Brown, a.k.a. Mrs Tin-eye Brown, who inspired this painting

Why I painted the Yellow Vase

One of the questions I am most frequently asked is “where do you get your ideas?” This is not always easy to answer as there are so many reasons to make a painting. Sometimes I hear a chance phrase in a conversation or on the radio that sounds like a good title. Other times I decide, for whatever reason, that I’d really like to paint a specific subject. And sometimes I have a blank canvas – and a mind to match. 

When that happens, I remember the advice I used to give my painting students: “Look out the window”. This was one of those occasions. Here is the view from my studio window. I should have washed the window before I took the photo.

My father used to hoard stuff; there is a lot more of it lying around than is obvious here. 

I began blocking out a design, and once I started putting paint on canvas ideas began to form.

I decided I wanted a sense of space and distance and I needed some figures. The blue thing on top of the pile of rusting junk is an industrial-size light shade from some long-forgotten factory, so a slightly differently shaped light shade and a splash of blue got into the picture. Some bright yellow was needed to provide a point of contrast, then it was a case of adjusting shapes and colours until I was happy with the way they worked together. And quite a long time later this was the result.

Yellow Vase  oil on canvas 84 cm x 84 cm completed 20 October 2023

This afternoon I delivered it to Nolan Art Gallery in the Salamanca Arts Centre, where you can see it for the next month or so.

A HALLOWEEN TALE

 

The Devil's head rests on a riverbank rock.

A precipitous path winds down the face of honeycombed cliffs. Unseen marsupials and mysterious serpents have left tracks in the sand where flesh-eating beasts retire to their lairs. Cockatoos the colour of death perch in dry branches. Through a break in the forest canopy far below you catch a glimpse of water. 

The rock wall to your left is eroded and crumbling. For millennia onslaughts of water and wind have weathered the soft, golden sandstone into extravagant caverns and hollows, creating a fantastic place of wonder. Shapes shift with the shadows, becoming faces, giant figures, impossible animals. 

Nature Walk - oil on canvas 91 cm x 122 cm

When you reach the valley floor it is cool and dark, a tangle of moss-covered boulders, fallen trees, hip-high ferns and trailing lichen, rotting logs, earth-stars and unfamiliar fungi. This is the Bluff River Gorge. Supernatural creatures, spirits of tree and river and rock, haunt this place.

I laid out my canvas on All Hallows Eve, when ancient beings emerge to commune with the owls and microbats and Tasmanian devils, and painted a picture of what I may have seen.

And the Devil's head? I found the little polished ivory skull once as I was crossing the river. After admiring it, I placed it back among the rocks in its bed of soft green moss. On my next visit, months later, skull and moss were gone, washed away in the winter floods.

*High quality limited edition prints of this painting may be ordered from Nolan Art Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart   https://www.nolanart.com.au/

WHALES AND ORCHIDS

 Recently I posted a photo of the first stages of a new painting on Facebook, and several people asked me to show them the step-by-step process from there to a finished painting. This was a bit of a challenge, as I am usually reluctant to show people work in progress, but I agreed. Here is the history of a painting, in ten steps.

Beginning

I wanted to practise painting rocks, so hiked in to Handsome Cave to get some ideas and inspiration.

I spent about an hour sitting and studying these rock formations while I ate my lunch, and by the time I had reached my car for the drive home had a very clear visual image of the shape I wanted for a new painting.

Here it is the beginning; some basic shapes on which I could build - something!

Some more work, adding colours where the design suggested. I'm not thinking about objects at this stage, just putting down a pattern of colours and shapes

Finding objects

Two new words: pareidolia and mimetolithic.   The first is the human propensity to find patterns in random shapes, for example, pictures in the clouds.  Mimetolithic patterns are formed by weathered, broken and eroded rocks whose shapes lend themselves to this by suggesting interesting things. 

In nature, we most frequently find faces. If you look the right way at the photographs I took at Handsome Cave you might find some.

Pareidolia comes into play at this stage of  painting, when I look at what I have on the canvas and begin to find patterns and shapes that I can emphasise and develop. Like this.

Adding more stuff

A landscape is beginning to appear, and it needs figures in it. This is not some arcane aesthetic decree; it's just the way I like to paint. Off I go to rummage in my toybox for a suitable doll to use as a model, and that's when I find out what the painting will be about. 

There are always half-formed notions lurking in corners waiting to be discovered, and every so often two or three fuse into an interesting idea. This happens now. Along with a couple of useful dolls I find a yellow plastic whale. Recently somebody returning from their holiday remarked they saw lots of "flowering orchids and whales". Jokes were made (mostly by me) about flowering whales and somebody else suggested that might be a suitable subject for a painting. So this happens.

Now I have to construct the picture around it. The whale  turns into a rock formation and I sketch in a cluster of rock orchids growing from it. A second figure balances the composition, but then the egg-shape at the top looks odd.  I quite liked it, but it has to go. Similarly, the green bushes on the left were only intended as a "placeholder" until I decide what would finally fill the spot. In fact, I'm not sure what to put in a lot of places.

Homework

At this point things get serious. I spend three days reading about Tasmanian orchids and drawing diagrams of them, while sketching ideas that might or might not solve the problems. Then back into the studio. None of the ideas for the left hand side work so I end up with something completely different, but the rest of the plans look good.

After that, it is just a matter of putting everything in place then fine-tuning and adjusting details until I've absolutely had enough of it. 

The Big Finish

This is the result. 

Whales and Orchids, oil on canvas, 61 cm x 91 cm

FLOCK an exhibition about animals

FLOCK is a joint exhibition of painting, sculpture and ceramics by Elizabeth Barsham, Betty Nolan and Rebecca Watson, three artists who love animals, opening on Friday 7th October, 2022 at Nolan Gallery, Level 1, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart. 

 Animals, or animal-like figures, frequently appear in my work, but I seldom paint pictures specifically about animals. 

When invited to exhibit in this show I was busy painting rocks and exploring industrial archaeology, but I did a painting of a unicorn especially. Then I managed to insert some teddy bears, sea monsters, birds, odd zoomorphic creatures and a stuffed elephant into the other pieces I was doing. 

 Here are the eight paintings I have finished. I'm working on another one with a wombat in it, but might not have it ready in time, so don't hold your breath. I'm sorry if you were expecting puppies and kittens.

Waiting for Instructions 61 cm x 91 cm

At the beginning of this year things seemed confusing and uncertain, what with a lingering pandemic, threats of war, family issues and all the other stuff that was going on. I rather wished there were some wise person who could tell us all what to do next. I feel this way at the beginning of most years and as usual there didn't seem to be any divine guidance forthcoming, so I did a painting instead.

Childhood Dream 82 cm x 66 cm

An adventure in ambiguous architecture. Toys for young and old and an infinite city.

Serenading a Unicorn 61 cm x 76 cm

Betty Nolan has been making gorgeous ceramic horses, and some of them turned into unicorns. I like unicorns, so I painted a few of my own. The Lady in whose lap the Unicorn should be resting its head has been upstaged by a crowd of unruly "musicians". She's not quite sure what to do about it.

Nesting Season 61 cm x 46 cm

There are striated pardelotes nesting under the roof of my studio, as happens about this time every year. It's a rowdy business building nests and raising chicks and they make a lot of noise. Meanwhile, fairy wrens are building their nests in the next-door shed where chicken wire across all the openings ensures they are safe from larger birds. I am not lonely!

Little Friends 30 cm x 61 cm

A happy little dream image, which may be the precursor to a larger painting. Meanwhile, think lollypops and sugar.

Hunting the Wild Agapanthus 84 cm x 91 cm

Agapanthus grow everywhere around my studio. I believe they are classed as weeds, and I would prefer native plants. But I enjoyed painting the flowers.

Conversation with a Pink Elephant 45 cm x 35 cm

A still-life study I did as a painting exercise. What more can I say?

Baby Kraken 45 cm x 61 cm

I found a rather boring picture painted about ten years ago abandoned in the back of my store-room. Added the Kraken, a definite improvement. Probably my favourite painting of all of these.

All these paintings are in oil on stretched canvas. If you are interested in any of them, contact Betty Nolan at Nolan Gallery, Space 109, Salamanca Arts Centre, 77 Salamanca Place, Hobart 

Phone: (03) 6223 3449 Mobile: 0438 446 785 

https://www.nolanart.com.au/

Gallery hours: Mon - Fri 10 am - 6 pm; Sat 10 am - 4 pm; Sun 12 pm - 4 pm

Pink Flowers

a recent painting, now off to its new owner

When you venture into a Tasmanian forest you discover an intricacy of fungi, fern, lichen and moss, of strange little spiders, grubs and insects, of creatures avian and amphibious. Pause and watch them living their complicated lives around rocks, rivulets and rotting wood in an intriguing, interconnected wonderland. So much to keep you fascinated!

Pink Flowers oil on canvas, 84 cm x 97 cm

This is one of many paintings celebrating the intersection between flora and fauna in which I begin by painting some big, basic shapes to establish a pictorial scaffold. Then I grow the details over it, like buds opening on winter branches, green moss cushioning a delicate bone, the patterns of weathered rocks, networks of lichen lace draped over naked twigs; all these natural shapes begin to furnish and inhabit the space. Before long, they take on a life of their own and become a fantasy landscape, lush in colour, an improbable biology of anthropomorphic beasts and peripatetic vegetation.

The line

When fishes flew, and forests walked, and figs grew upon thorn . . .

repeated again and again in my head while I painted Pink Flowers and might go some way to explain it. I’m sorry about the unimaginative title, but I did put a bit of creativity into making the picture.