METAPHOR

This painting is called 'Metaphor' and I painted it a few years ago. I actually really love this painting and have had it hanging in my house continuously for awhile. This is what I have previously written about this work:

When I paint I see, I feel and I sense. I love painting. When I paint my landscapes I immerse myself in something which is not easily explained, but which is felt. I think about my childhood, youth and adulthood. Distance is time, space and memory and it can be simultaneously far and close.

I grew up on a grain farm outside Dalby which is on the Darling Downs in South West Queensland, Australia. My parent’s farm was in the middle of a fertile but treeless black soil plain. Looking west there was nothing but the flat horizon, looking east the Bunya Mountain Ranges cut a majestic silhouette against a relentless sky.

I like to use landscape elements as metaphors for life. Mountains have always been something to conquer. They are metaphors for overcoming adversity and gaining confidence. In Metaphor I have brought the mountain close to the viewer to enable an engagement with majesty but to make it absolutely conquerable.

I am really pleased to say that 'Metaphor' is now hanging at Fine Design Consultants,
46 Douglas St, Milton, Brisbane 4064 P: 0733696636 http://www.mydsdc.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=37 So, if you would like to see this painting drop on down to Fine Design Consultants.

ALSO, 'Wonderland: An exhibiton inspired by childhood' continues at Kiln Gallery www.kiln.com.au and has been extended until 13 April. The show looks great.

AND, I have been invited to speak at a festival called FEHVA @ Bangalow www.fehva.com Have a look at the website. I am thrilled because I get another chance to talk about my work and also about art and peace. PLUS, I have been invited to speak at another conference [details coming] at the University of Queensland in September...about art and peace.

So, things are happening!
Kathryn

INTIMATE VASTNESS

Easter break is here and a time to rest! Well, I have just cleaned the house, added to my website, checked out a few leads and now I am updating my BLOG. The kids are away and I have uninterrrupted time! BLISS

Wonderland: An exhibition inspired by childhood @ KILN Gallery http://www.kiln.com.au/ is attracting attention and has been extended until Sunday 13 April.

I have been painting and thoroughly enjoying myself. I have also just ordered 4 more huge canvases and look forward to starting on them. The idea of vastness is on my thoughts at the moment. Where does vast begin and end? A cell is vast when we realise there are other minute components which give the cell life. Yet, it can also seem so small. Our house can seem vast yet viewed from a distance it diminishes. The Earth is vast, but seen from space it is just another dot in the galaxy.

I keep an eye on the stock market. It can seem so vast yet it can start to crumble at the drop of a hat [so-to-speak]. I laugh at the term sub-prime! It gives a connotation of being small and unimportant, less than prime/premium. Yet, the collapse of the obviously vast sub-prime world of lending/borrowing has caused vast repercussions around the world. The erosion of confidence which has lead to the credit squeeze has seen vast enterprises and corporations reduced to a fraction of their values of 12 months ago...some crumbling within days. So every little component of a system is important!

So can vastness be attributed to an emotion or a behaviour? I think it can. We can feel 'vastly' happy, sad etc. How about the vastness of greed. Some comentators attribute the floundering financial system to greed which is a pretty basic human foible...some would say sin. So, if the financial system can flounder across the world because of something as basic as greed it certainly does not make our world seem very sophisticated or enlightened at all! If basic greed is the underlying insidious culprit then let's find and encourage systems where greed cannot find a home.

Now...the painting above has nothing to do with greed or the world of global finance...except of course it is for sale! This image is a landscape albeit an ambiguous one. It seems to be turned inside out...its workings are revealed...disclosed, transparent...two of the many words which are bandied around the financial world!!!

Oh yes...check out http://www.fehva.com/ I have been asked to be one of the guest speakers at this fabulous festival @ Bangalow which is very near Byron Bay.
ALSO http://www.artsconnect.com.au/kathrynbrimblecombe-fox/index.htm

Water Penetrates The Intimate Vastness 80 x 120 cm oil on linen

WONDERLAND

The group exhibition 'Wonderland: An Exhibition Inspired By Childhood' opens tomorrow night. The exhibition is online at www.kiln.com.au The theme is such a great launching pad for all sorts of things. As adults we still carry the child we were inside us...the inner child. However, it is interesting to think of this in relation to some of my previous posts about inherited memories and that perhaps some of these are not useful to us. I know I have carried beliefs which at one level I know are limiting but at another level I have found it hard to let them go without guilt, sadness, fear etc. Limiting beliefs must be irradicated!!! And done without angsting ourselves.

I have written a short artist's statement for the Wonderland exhibition. My childhood has given me an incredible supply of wonderings! I find myself often thinking about the landscape of my childhood. It was a vast landscape with endless skies and flat horizons. In a way it provided me with an experience of endless possibility. However, until recently I have not seen the connection between a lived spatial experience using it as a metaphor for a possible lived life.

HOW THE LANDSCAPE OF MY CHILDHOOD HAS INLFUENCED MY WORK

Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox B.A [UQ-Art History Majors]

I grew up on my parent’s grain farm outside Dalby on the Darling Downs. The relentless space of the flat treeless Pirrinuan plain perpetually influences my work. When I was a child I ‘dreamt’ I could fly and indeed I ‘knew’ what my parent’s farm looked like from the sky even though I had never been in an aeroplane above it. I traveled to and from school on a bus and as I sat there gazing out the window [trying to ignore the big High School boys who sat down the back] I used to imagine what it would be like to catch the summer mirages, enter their mysterious shimmerings.

The vastness of my childhood landscape allowed for both distant and close perspective to view the patterns, shapes, movements and the minutae of life. I remember foreign visitors [and even some Australian city folk] being overwhelmed by the space and flatness of the landscape. Their reactions were both physical and emotional.

Looking east the Bunya Mountain Ranges cut a silhouette against the sky. Looking west the flat horizon sometimes seemed to reveal the curvature of the earth. The Pirrinuan Plain with its 12 m of black topsoil provided a richness of seasonal contrasts: the blackness of the ploughed soil, rich green young seedling crops, the ochre of an expanse of ripened wheat or the bright yellow of sunflowers and the beauty of red sorghum crops. The cracked dry earth could swell within moments of a shower of rain. Snakes disapeared into those cracks causing my two younger brothers and me great anxiety especially if we saw one whilst walking home from the school bus. Plagues of locusts, un-named beetles and mice periodically descended on us. I remember locusts jumping on my face and head as I watched tv. I remember hearing mice scurrying across my bed at night! But, these pests caused great damage to my father’s crops.

I play with perspective in my paintings and I believe this is influened by the vastness of my childhood landscape where I could simultaneously pretend to fly, pretend to be inside the mirage and gaze upon distant horizons.

Shared Destinies Oil on linen 120 x 160 cm

COLLECTIVE MEMORY

                                      Collective Memory Oil on linen 80 x 120 cm

This is a new painting. The idea of collective memory really interests me because until recently I thought memory was personal, individual and private. I am sure aspects of it are, but to think a group we can have memories is intriguing. Also, the possibility that inherited consciousness from the past may have a subconscious influence on our lives is fascinating. Indeed, it makes one ask questions about the thoughts and beliefs which we carry, but upon deep reflection do not vibrate at the right level for us. Are they part of an inherited consciusness which is not useful in this day and age? How do we rid ourselves of this consciousness particularly if it is not useful? Recognising that it exists is probably the first step.

In this painting I have placed the trans-cultural/religious tree-of-life at the centre of an emanation of thoughts which are represented by the small dots. These thoughts change colour as they move through time to become memories. Yet, everything is connected and a vibration is maintained. The tree-of-life represents everyone...past-present-future.


Collective Memory Oil on linen 80 x 120 cm