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GROW YOUR OWN ART – a new direction.
Bronwyn Rodden
I was been raised on an eclectic mix of styles via my mother, also an artist, whose art classes in the Rocks in Sydney I managed to sneak into on occasion. I recall it as a magical world of colour and strange smells, objects collected to be lovingly arranged for still lives, life drawing classes from which I was excluded as being too young. The walls of our home were firstly strewn with cheap reproductions of art, but mostly not easy art.
Russell Drysdale , The Cricketers (1948) Drysdale’s unforgiving outback, sombre Redon and Rouault, for which I am grateful, they were works that made you come back to them and think about why these artists produced these works, paintings that could be revisited again and again.
The Old King, Georges Rouault
My mother’s works soon joined them, most somewhat sombre as well, perhaps a release of years of hard life as a mother of eight in a poor family. One of the more vivid works of hers (Marie Rodden) is this painting that was hung in the Blake Prize in the 1960’s, it is based on an Aboriginal legend from a book she made me take to school for the teacher to read out, which they did.
While my mother’s studio, fashioned from an old shed, was interesting, I have more intense memories of our garden; strong visual images of such things as the way a rainstorm formed crystal clear rivulets over grass, making a magic prism for just a few hours. Or the colours of flowers, the smell of the old pine tree and excitement at cutting a limb for Christmas, bringing that intoxicating scent right into our home. And there was the bush: the return each year of the waratahs and Christmas Bells, flashing like baubles in the forest, flannel flowers with their velvety petals, the mysterious Blue Pool which was lined with a brilliant white clay reflecting the sky in an aqua heaven – at least until someone dumped a car into it. But the most exciting thing about all this nature was the dynamic aspect of it, the way it constantly changed and surprised, and the fact that this was not always in a pleasing way reinforced that this is real, living, constantly changing.
Spiral Jetty from Rozel Point, Robert Smithson 1970
When I first came across Land Art I was blown away by their work. The combination of using the inherent beauty and horror of natural materials to at the same highlight them in our consciousness was an extraordinary moment for me in Art. But using heavy roadbuilding equipment to scour shapes in the landscape always seemed excessive – what were they doing, destroying nature to show us nature? I preferred and Environmental artists such as Andy Goldsworthy.
Goldsworthy’s approach is to use what he finds in the natural world, creating works which will remain part of the natural environment, break down with the passing of seasons. The exceptions are his works in stone, the starting point from his drystone walling work when he was young.
He says, ‘They are a means to understanding form. They are much more than just the sum of the materials. Even when I cover a rock with leaves, or another material, it doesn't stop at the surface. I'm trying to get to the heart of the stone.’
‘The reason why I'm drawn to work the way I do with materials that I find in a place, are these layers. There's a journey you can make from the leaf, into the place, to the tree, to the growth. . . It's not the materials so much that I'm interested in as the connections to the whole, to the whole place: and the life of the materials.’
Over time I’ve seen artists begin to incorporate some natural materials into their oil and acrylic works: mostly charcoal, some colours from boiled gum leaves and bark, and these were inspiring to me, though often delicate and suggested an inability to stand up to the bombast of paints made from petroleum and plastic. My paid career has never followed logical steps and I found myself studying Agriculture in Wagga, which was fascinating as much for what I learned about country and outback life as it was for reinforcing my interest in life sciences. But, after working in a soil chemistry lab, I decided that a future in science wasn’t me, at least not as a scientist. But I have always retained an interest in the alchemy of substances, from cooking to gardening, and finally to art.
One of my first experiences of finding colour in nature was, as with many others of my age, collecting blackberries as a child, my fingers soon crimson with their juices, which would take several washing to remove. I suppose I had another Eureka moment in my art practice when I found myself tipping acrylic laced water onto my garden to prevent it getting into our waterways and wondering what I was doing putting such poisonous substances into this innocent earth. Soon after the Dianella in our garden produced its wonderful purple berries and I picked one, squashing it between my fingers deliberately to see if the colour would stain them and it did. I found myself with wonderful purple tipped fingers and thought there is colour everywhere – why am I introducing more plastic into this world when I have colour right here under my nose. From this point I began to be obsessed with my garden, pulling off leaves and flowers, pressing them between my fingers to see if they could render any colour. Then I began to read books on natural dyes, and began using other techniques, microwaving, boiling, steeping over time, finding low toxicity mordants to help the colours stay fast. For one of the major ‘problems’ with natural colours is their lightfastness and ability to fix for long periods of time. I am beginning to wonder if this is really a problem and if perhaps some paintings should be short term, like Goldsworthy’s leaf throws, captured by photograph.
Rover Thomas, Hills of Durham, Nilah Marudji (Rover’s Country),
In Australia, there is of course a long tradition among Aboriginal people to use ochres in their art and ceremony. Rover Thomas’s paintings have always been an inspiration. I don’t use ochres my work, I feel that they are of such importance to the Indigenous people of Australia that I don’t wish to take more from them than has already been lost.
John Wolseley at work
One of my favourite European/Australian artists using natural pigments is John Wolseley. Although he also mixes watercolour with natural materials, he doesn’t overwhelm the natural colours.
Stylistically, I am also inspired by Elisabeth Cummings, whose landscapes seem to sing off the canvas,
Elisabeth Cummings, The Kimberley Oil on Paper, 2013
Rosalie Gascoigne is another wonderful Australian artist who led us into territory beyond the studio to find art. Inspired by the Ikebana classes she could access in a remote location, she brought these ideas together with her own aesthetic: ‘… with ikebana you can't win unless you've got shape and form in your things, and so I got a more sculptural eye and I remember when I used to walk in the paddocks, I used to see a lot more and I used to see the potential of things and I remember once walking over a piece of rusty, ordinary fencing wire and, oh that's only old wire you see, oh. And so then I came back and I picked it up, humbly, a bit of humility doesn't hurt anybody, because it was a good shape you see. I should have picked it in the first place, I shouldn't have thought that's wire you see, that's what I found with things, people play recognition, 'that's only an old whatsit, I got that off my car'.
Rosalie Gascoigne, Southerly Buster 1998
Recently I met a wonderful Chinese painting teacher, Andrew Lo. Andrew is a Buddhist and his approach is for artists to work together, the antithesis of the Artist Hero of the Western Art Tradition.
He paints in the Chinese ink and brush tradition, although he is excited by new ideas and interested to experiment. I was particularly interested in his workshop because of his use of rice paper. I have found this the best medium for my work and he explained, as an environmental scientist himself, how the colours bond with rice paper in a way that doesn’t happen with most other mediums: the colours become part of the paper itself.
I have joined a group in my area taught by Andrew which is a loose confederation of artists who come together to make all sorts of things besides art. Amongst people working in ink, pastel, watercolour and oil, you will have some ducking off to the kitchen to make soap, or others creating altered books – crafts that are seen as inferior to ‘art’ perhaps, but there is always a sense of adventure in these classes and something practical at the end. I brought my ideas for using natural materials to create inks into the class and Andrew was very interested in these. He has taken the idea to his Chinese painting group in Sydney, the Australian Chinese Painting Society, who he has tasked with working on particular colours - go find bottlebrush for red, he said.
I reminded him that they must not collect from the bush – besides the fact that it is illegal to pick Australian native plants from the wild, it would be devastating to see people stripping the bushland for art. I suggested for them to look in their own gardens, grow their own colours. Andrew is a strongly environmental person and he agreed, also adding that people can always buy plants at nurseries or even flower shops and markets for colour if they don’t have their own gardens. Andrew and I have another intersection, besides working in ink on paper. Chinese culture was also introduced to me by my mother, taking me to Chinatown in Sydney to see the mysterious and exciting colours and textures and smells of a completely different culture. It was strange but interesting, and like most Australians, I grew up almost as familiar with simple Chinese dishes as I was with barbecues. I retained an interest in visiting Chinatown and was pleased when the new Asian Art wing was opened in the Art Gallery of NSW. Landscapes have always fascinated me and to see some of the wonderful traditional and modern ink paintings was a revelation. I have also been influenced by the Taoist ideas of working in nature, and I spent some years learning Tai Chi practice and philosophy.
On a visit to Shanghai I was fortunate to visit the studio of the esteemed artist Tsai Yulong, a Taiwanese artist who also works in China. He generously showed me some of his works on paper, large scrolls withhis wonderful calligraphy but also his more contemporary works, incorporating Western influences in his work. Through his interpreter I told him of my interest in combining Eastern influences in my own work.
Tsai Yulong in his studio
Paper has for some time been a favourite medium for me and I was thrilled to see some of his large works, which he moved around casually, their delicacy disguising their actual toughness. I have a great admiration for the makers of rice paper. It is incredible material, even the most delicate tissue is far stronger than you might imagine. Making it is time consuming and complex and I would never attempt to do this myself. I have made paper from recycling other paper, and have tried to use Blady Grass from my garden, something that has been used in paper making in the past, but this has not been a success so I bow to those who can do it. Yggdrasil, from my Garden (detail), natural inks, Bronwyn Rodden 2015I have never been particularly drawn to creating a perfect studio to work in. I have always wanted to work in a situation where I was in touch with nature. In my old home in Sydney I worked on my verandah, close to my garden, sometimes creating artworks made by tying brushes to the tree ferns on a windy day, or putting wet canvases out into the rain to see what it would do to them. Now my studio is in our large garage - not glamourous enough for some, but perfect for me with its large expanse of floor inside and out on which to work.
And I am always surrounded by the garden which my partner and I have built from scratch on a block scoured by developers. Each day I look through it to see what is happening, what wildlife is visiting or building its home there, perhaps in some sticks I have left around or even the lizard hotel, which I found after seeing a magpie glaring in frustration at a box of newspapers that rustled with life. And of course the constant changes in the plants, new leaves, flowers and berries, bark that is sloughed off after a heat wave, seed pods dropped by rosellas after feasting on wattle seeds, green banksia flower heads shredded by black cockatoos – it is constantly changing, seasonal, and ever-inspiring.
Swamp wallaby in our garden (Photo: John Bennett 2015)
Natural materials provide ecological sustainability as a grounding to my work. The dyes change with heat, water, dehydration, there is process happening which you don’t have with the medium of oil or acrylics. I draw a little on my scientific background, enjoying the surprises that often occur as I try out new materials, new combinations or new ways of extracting colours. But my inspiration is the world around me, more surprising than I could ever have imagined.
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