This year (2009) I have been in my studio mostly; I have changed my time table so that studio work is prioritized and teaching and project minimized. I have not been able to do this for thirty years.
Review for Notion of being, moments of being. Irma Stern Gallery, Cape Town. December 2009
There is an inherent mystery and poetry in painting that does not need analysis for meaning or symbolism to reveal its reality. One is often forced to ask that painful question as a painter: what is the use of painting? What is the meaning of a painting? These are moments of doubt and cynicism that stymie the activity.
By “poetry” I mean the images conjured up by words and sounds and their reference to a mystery and value that reaches to the core or essence of things where the experience of mystery is felt but never explains itself.
When I am asked: “What does it mean?” I just can’t compromise the painting or clarify the mystery by trying to explain meaning in intellectual terms. The mystery will remain if the work is autonomous, is interactive and generates imagination, i.e. it is an inspiration for others or offers up a kind of numinosity that is compelling.
This requires faith in the act of painting and the use of empathy. I learnt this as a student when I read Hans Hofmann when he said….
I am also asked about abstraction: I don’t “abstract” from any thing. Sometimes, years later I make an association that clicks. Why did I paint triangles? Is it because I wake up every morning looking at Table Mountain and my mind sees triangles. The eye travels but does not see much, it misses a lot unless it is really there working with the details of an image in a focused way. The freedom of the eye is precious indeed; it picks up the unknown, often what is present is invisible. John Berger (“our faces, my heart, brief as photos”) states that “The language of pictorial art, because it is static, is the language of such timelessness. Yet what it speaks about, unlike geometry is the sensuous, the particular and the ephemeral”
The mystery, the unknown belong to an eye and reflecting mind ready to embrace the unexpected. These are often moments of inspiration and surprise; important clues in this work of painting. My notion of an “abstract eye’ is one that picks out the structures, not the literal, but the poetic or metaphoric. I am not distracted or focused on the formal syntax or even the narrative itself but how these may emerge, like a river running has to have the river bed as its context. The eye resonates with the surface and color and the rhythm or patterning rather than the pure seduction of a melody or its lyrics; the moments of being as an intersection between the timeless river bed and the ephemeral flow of the river water.
This over view has been written as an attempt to gather information for my exhibition at the Irma Stern museum in December 2009. As I do not work in a linear way, but rather back and forth and with variants I can’t give reference to this work in a chronological order but will refer to exhibitions and experiences which I hope will contextualize and locate my process. Working with etching has brought me closer to detail and back to line and drawing. The etchings relate to the ongoing work with music and are more figurative.
Essays that are relevant to the work for the show at the Irma Stern will be on my website from the first week in June; they are; “This is where we meet” - artists statement in 2006 and “no trace of vertigo.” Estelle Jacobs essay from “Joe’s choice” viz, “The jetty series” and “studio conversations” all have points that are part of the dialectic of my work.
This body of work is almost complete and I am now working on new images for Waters, an exhibition with three Finnish artists and two South Africans. Another series which does not have a name yet will need a home soon.
Recent musings took me back to the first “Thupelo” workshop which I did in the mid eighties. The dry country was on fire, the painting in this workshop was rigorous, competitive and ambitious. There was an emersion into the medium and the shared energy. This momentum carried me for many years. Many of South Africa’s best abstract works were made by artists at that workshop and are now in the JAG collection.
My time in Uganda in the 1990’s where I participated in a workshop attached to a leper colony on the shores of Lake Victoria left enduring images for me: the miles of washing lines with sheets and clothes from the village and the hospital; the great privilege to have endless time to work and talk with artists from different backgrounds; the Nile river flowing in full force on its way to its mouth in Egypt many miles away.
I worked figuratively during this time, painting the boats and the fish, the people and their homes. I felt very self conscious about this content and gave all the work away. The work I did bring back from this important experience was “cloth” made from painted canvasses, cut up, hanging loose or woven in parts and flailed too.
Picasso talks of these transformations; “first I eat the fish and then I paint the fish.”
Various fund raising trips to Europe and USA have exposed me to painting that has challenged and troubled me; weeks or months later I suddenly “get it” and move on in my own work after much “off-line” processing in my psyche. I am very grateful of course too to the wonderful references I have lived with here in my own country. Participating in the Biennale in Korea last year was grounding; it was a time to separate out from the various collectives and focus on what I have wanted and needed to do. The exhibition in Busan was called “Expenditure” and was an introduction to the writings of “Bataille.” Notions of excess and expenditure were explored in various ways and have contributed to this exhibition too: “notions of being, and moments of being.”
AVA February 2010
Six artists, 3 from Finland, 3 from South Africa.
“I see the dreams of water; I see the water dreaming.”
Waters are always moving and yet are contained; the edges of the containers are described in many ways; forests, swamps, beaches, board walks, ice bergs, concrete, plastic, to name a few.
In the movement I am contained by waters; in a dam, a bath, a pool, the sea. The waters that are in and on my body are contained by my skin, I hear them sometimes in my tummy, I see them in my eyes and mouth. The Waters I taste come from various sources, the taste responds to the waters place of origin. It is deep and has its own color but is quite colorless, reflective, transparent, and liquid and runs away, mercurial. I cannot hold them, I cannot control them, I am part of them, (thus the large canvas) but I can taste, feel, smell and move in them. I can separate out from them; see them in books, read and understand and know what is being described; I can think about, imagine and wish for them. They can fill me and I can throw them away. The sound shifts from a roar to a sprinkle; the rain brings waterfalls, generous gifts from the sky and the sun. Waters are deep under the earth, between and under rocks, they can be dark and hide, they always find a way to keep moving even if simply by evaporating away. They are in the sky waiting, being held, in our prayers when not available; we wish for, cry for, wilt and die without them. They have no sense of time, nor do they respond to our time, plant time, animal time, life time. They come with the wind if they want to; sometimes with warning and clouds, sometimes alone. They know no measure, too much or too little is no concern of the waters; they simply overflow, wash away, or retreat. In the quiet house I hear the waters deep beneath me in the under ground streams. A dripping tap will wake me. On a boat I feel them pushing and pulling playing with the fragile structure deciding whether to toss it or gently assist its arrival on land. They reject and receive and make sounds about what they are doing, even silently. I can touch and play with them without fear and I can fear them as my life is taken. I live with them; they give life; I live without them, but briefly
