Sunday, October 16, 2011

QUIVER

Mother Nature Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm

My exhibition PARADISE at Purgatory Artspace in Melbourne finished last Saturday. Great feedback from the gallery and visitors. I am very happy and am planning another exhibition for early 2013.

I will admit to being somewhat exhausted though. Having an exhibition is both physically and emotionally draining, not only leading up to the event, but also while it is on.
However, after a number of failed attempts to paint...yes lots of tearing up paper and over painting...I feel I'm now back in a creative flow. I've been painting with gouache on paper, plus I have prepared three canvases, which are sitting in my sudio [aka garage] willing me to spill out the images in my head.

INSPIRATION
Let's just say that whilst it is frustrating when the creative flow seems impeded, the ripping up and over painting become a kind of 'play'...and that's a good thing. I let it happen. Out of this 'play' some ideas started to gel in my mind and flowed onto the paper.

I've been wanting to explore more ideas of beauty. As regular readers know I have written about beauty before. For me, beauty is a reminder of what we lose if we do not nurture our planet and all its living creatures, including us. Beauty is not ignorant or simple, as its underlying pathos is an understanding of the existence of ugliness, which it consciously elides. The conscious elision is the element which differentiates beauty from mere prettiness. However, I think that many confuse prettiness with beauty, and in doing so skim across the surface of potential. The cult of celebrity, the fickleness of fashion and the vacuuous drama of reality shows seem to me to perpetuate the slippery slopes of superficiality, resulting in a tourist-like experience of life, rather than an absorption in life.

Beauty has a capacity to touch our hearts deep inside us, triggering resonances that quiver with the past and the future, reminding us at a core, or DNA, level of life's purpose. In these new works on paper I found myself taken to places within and compelled to explore the quiver, the resonance.


Quiver Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm

The body of a woman is present in these four new works. She is the conduit of life, the essence of life revelling in life. She is not a separate entity placed outside the 'scape'. She, is absorbed into the patterns of life, she is part of the pattern, the rhythm. I use the word 'scape' to encompass all environments from those bound to Earth, to those deep within the human psyche, to those in the outer reaches of the cosmos, as well as those that 'speak' of history, past, present and future.


                                    Threshold of Time Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm

Regular readers will identify my much loved transcultural/religious tree-of-life motif. The tree just keeps inspiring me! In these paintings it seems indivisible from the female figures as it erupts from their limbs and hearts, connecting to the distance beyond and within.


Firmament Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm

Here are some links to previous posts where I write about beauty:
http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/03/beauty.html [I write about beauty at the end of the blog post]
http://www.youtube.com/user/kabrimblecombe?feature=mhee#p/a/u/1/8J_zL8ALnJo This is a short segment from a recent 1 1/2 hour presentation I gave for the C.J Jung Soc of Queensland. In this segment I talk about beauty.

GOOD NEWS!
My entry for the BLAKE PRIZE http://www.blakeprize.com.au/ whilst not getting into the finalists was apparently in the group considered for the finals. AND, from that group the directors select works for what's called the DIRECTORS' CUT EXHIBITION. And, my entry COMPASSION is in it! http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/07/compassion.html

This link will take you to where you can see the list of selected artists. http://www.blakeprize.com.au/news/2011-directors-cut-artists-announced
The DIRECTORS' CUT is an online exhibition and the images are live from 26 October - 23 January. I'll keep you informed!

WEBSITE

Please check out my website www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com where I have online 'galleries'. Details such as prices etc can be found there.

Cheers,
Kathryn

2 comments:

Audubon Ron said...

I like this painting Mother Nature. I like the tender lines and simple silhouette. She seems fluent. As a classically trained ballet dancer, I learnt to look at the body as movement on a canvass. If you could imagine a large rubber-band stretching through the center of our body reaching into the heavens and down through the earth, that is how a dancer envisions a movement and then prepares the body to engage. The dancer’s eye must capture the entire movement in static pictures each leading to the next frame to assure that the entire nuisance is precise.

“the ripping up and over painting”

I listened to it explained that the way to hit a target with a canon seems to be produce by two fundamental stages. Shoot one over the top, and then shoot one in front and then split the difference in coordinate. That is called “bracketing”.

The last three paintings are very nice. Quiver is a sort of Aristotelian Psuche.

Audubon Ron said...

I like this painting Mother Nature. I like the tender lines and simple silhouette. She seems fluid. As a classically trained ballet dancer, I learnt to look at the body as movement on a canvass.

If you could imagine a large rubber-band stretching through the center of our body reaching into the heavens and down through the earth, that is how a dancer envisions a movement and then prepares the body to engage. The dancer’s eye must capture the entire movement in static pictures each leading to the next frame to assure that the entire nuisance is precise.

“the ripping up and over painting”

I listened to it explained that the way to hit a target with a canon seems to be produced by two fundamental stages. Shoot one over the top, and then shoot one in front and then split the difference in coordinate. That is called “bracketing”.

The last three paintings are very nice. Quiver is a sort of Aristotelian Psuche.