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
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
1 comment:
Hi Kathryn,
I love the painting and I really enjoyed reading your posting about your childhood memories. Excellent. The painting is really well done. I think it is a stronger piece than the one below that reminded me of the human eye. I wish you much success with the new exhibit.
Thank you for the nice comments about my blog. You were right on target about the level playing field out the window. We all need to strive for a level playing field, especially for those among us that can not. Who speaks for the young, the old or the disabled? Who looks out for them? We should not throw the level playing field ideal out the window, but we all need to strive for it.
Hope you had a nice weekend too.
Fred
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