Portraiture, Beethoven, Art in Old Age, Sex

I am listening only to Beethoven in the studio now. I have sorted through my Cd's and I have 19 Beethoven ones and although there are gaps with some of the minor works, I have all the symphonies and concertos.

I was inspired by seeing the film "In Search of Beethoven" on Friday last week and it was very enlightening. Instead of seeing Beethoven as a misanthropic, brooding and bad tempered recluse, he came across more as an extremely sensitive and optimistic person, unable to marry because of class distinctions and his increasing ill health isolated him from everyone. I am beginning to think it will be better for my own soul to be listening to his oeuvre instead of more jarring and distracting modern music. I want to be steeped in the one influence and that a good one or the best one there is.

I think staying away from the plastic world of shopping centres this summer will be good for me and for my work also. This will be a sacrifice in this hot Queensland climate but I need to craft the kind of life I want for myself and remove all distracting influences. I am weary of plastic, retouched, glossy visual experiences and overdubbed, laugh tracked aural ones. I want sustained experience not advertising and billboard bombardment. It's about time I put my thoughts into practice. I need to just put my head down and work.

I do feel the clock ticking away, telling me I am 51 now and I haven't achieved anywhere near what I had hoped to at this stage. I finished the book "The man who painted women" and in it there is a part where the artist talks about highly productive older artists. Picasso in his 70's was decorating pots, beginning work on the panels War and Peace, and writing a play, Michelangelo at 75 was building St Peters and finishing the Pieta, Matisse was designing and supervising the construction of the chapel at Vence. They had all achieved so much before this of course but the main point is how much they were still achieving. There is hope for me yet.

I found this book by John Newton (mentioned in an earlier blog) quite deeply thought out as far as the art practise was concerned. The main character resembled Picasso in many respects. The author had made him a protege of Pablo's to get around this. He didn't paint women but woman, and he was totally obsessed with delving into their bodies in more ways than one. I found the sex in this book quite overwhelming and when I asked myself why, it was because usually the tame Mills and Boon versions of sex that you read about are always from the fem ale's point of view. This was so obviously from the male perspective and it was almost too much information for me about the workings of a horny old bastard's mind.

I need to get back my paintings now but more thoughts about sex and art tomorrow.

Self Portrait Drawing, Dufy, Courbet and Kangaroos

This is my first drawing for months. A grim self-portrait in the mirror and a Chagall floating wedding couple in the background. I only spent about an hour on it and used the "trois couleurs"
method on a paper I had already painted. It was a start.

Since then I have been thundering along. About two years ago after my previous trip to France in 2007 I came back all inspired to paint kangaroos. I got a gold class membership to Lone Pine and went fairly often to draw and photograph the kangaroos. I had started about 6 smallish paintings, oil on canvas board but had abandoned them due to pressure of gallery work, weddings etc. On one of my long walks this week it came to me with a flash that here was the perfect canvas to continue on. I am no longer precious with these works as they've been hanging around for a while, so more able to take bold risks with them. I just squeezed out paint on Wednesday morning and started without thinking too much. I have spent months thinking and journal keeping so it was not as random as it sounds. The turpsy oily smell permeates the studio again and has greeted me every morning since. So kangaroos, French references and my medieval bird symbols it is, and all I want to do is paint.

I did pop into the library yesterday to pick up some books I'd ordered. When we were in the Musee d'Orsay on this latest trip I was bowled over by the large Courbets. I studied these of course back in my undergraduate days. The "Burial at Ornans" and "The Artist's Studio" but I must admit I hadn't given them much attention in recent years. They are easily the most impressive things in the Musee d'Orsay and I'd promised myself I would read about him in detail when I got back. I really love his animals, dogs and especially deer with huge horns, and of course the self portraits, so thick and luscious.

I have also been having a second look at Raoul Dufy after seeing some I hadn't seen before in the Museum of Modern Art. I had always thought of his work as a bit facile, a bit decorative and wishy washy but I was impressed with the sensitivity of his colour washes and his confident almost calligraphic use of line. The subject matter too is very seductive, the curly architectural details, the statues, horses, trees and promenaders of Paris and the boats skimming along that he is famous for. I hadn't realised the extent to which he branched out into other media. Lino cuts, fabric design, tapestry, right up my alley in fact. I love all that stuff.

Raoul Dufy once said "Every night I go to bed happy and exhausted, telling myself that I have worked to the limit of my resources and can die peacefully" well I don't know about dying but the rest of the sentiment resonates with me. I have never felt more motivated to work and have never had the time available to me that I have now. I have my routine sorted out. I just have to keep producing.

Van Dyck, The Need for a Routine and The Trout Opera

Van Dyck, The Need for a Routine and The Trout Opera

Only two weeks ago this photo was taken of me in front of Van Dyck's masterpeice of Charles I supposedly hunting. It was the end of my second day of Louvre overwhelm. If I had found the Van Dycks earlier I could have spent more time with them. He is after all the greatest painter who ever lived, student of the master Rubens, and creator of the the most exquisitely sensitive portraits ever painted. I felt quite dizzy with a sense of panic that I had to get on with striving to be a better portrait painter myself. There are so many lessons here that can only be gleaned by looking closely at the actual paint surface.

Now of course I am home again and trying to set myself up to paint everyday or at least draw. My goal is to create at least one thing per day or to at least work on something I have already started.

This brings me to my first point which is a need for routine. I know I work my best in the mornings. I was at my most productive when we rented the Bardon house when this house (home and gallery) was being renovated. I got up in the mornings (after Tom had left for work) and still in my pyjamas I started work. When I was ready for my first break I had breakfast and got dressed. I didn't have to worry about visitors as few people knew we were there.

I think my biggest problem is going to be my reading addiction -picking up a book when I stop for a cup of tea and not being able to put it down again, or putting it down and picking it up again an hour later when I feel like another cup of tea. I will need to make some new rules for myself. No reading during the day except in my lunch break. I do know that when you really push yourself to achieve something you have to make some sacrifices. I have already decided to give up TV. It's actually no great loss as our TV is not one of the new wide screen ones and since we have been overseas the pictures seem to have gotten wider and now we only see the very limited middle section. Even watching The Einstein Factor you can only see the middle contestant so comparing scores is impossible.

In the last few days I have finished The Trout Opera by Matthew Condon. It has such a wealth of accurately observed facets of life and not just life here in Australia. It is a wide canvas he uses and his choice of iconic Australian symbols resonated with me. Mt Warning and the storm clouds rolling over the canefields, the Sydney streets, the road trips and of course the Snowy River. I was only a couple of chapters into it when I realised he was writing an alternative version of the Man from Snowy River.

What really got to me though was the trout costume that provides the most brilliant opening line in recent fiction, about the giant trout shuffling across the bridge. The costume makes a few more appearances but none more memorable than when the shock jock radio guy finds it in the shack at the end. The whole idea of dressing up, being masked, being free to be something else is the nugget I took from this. The symbol of the river, looking for its source, the 100 years of history complete with its myriad characters, migrants, locals, suicides etc and of course the fact that the Sydney Olympic opening ceremony tried to encapsulate all this in a matter of minutes. It was significant and also a stroke of genius on the author's part to have the old man's story running parralel and then to opt out and not even be a part of it at all. Well none Matthew Condon. You have written the great Australian novel!

Afer I had finished it I picked up The Man Who Painted Women by John Newton from my booksheves. ( See I do have a problem) I must have bought it secondhand, lured no doubt by the "p" word in the title. I read the blurb about John Newton and it says he lives in Sydney but spends "As much time as possible in Spain"! I like that in an Australian! For me it would be France but I applaud the sentiment. "As much time as Possible" is good, we always come home eventually, but we bring so much with us.

I am only a few chapters into this book. It is about a randy old goat of an artist, a bit of a sexist character but interestingly so from this perspective of politically correct everything. The line that has me thinking most so far is not even about art. It is "Why should he not drink as much red wine as he pleases"? And how censorious we can be about other people.

I presume John Newton speaks Spanish. I hope he does.

I know that for me attempting to improve my French for the past few months I began to suffer from what I will describe as second languge syndrome. As my French is naturally limited not being a native speaker, I found my thoughts were limited also. No way could I express a complex thought or feeling with my limited vocab and syntax, so I stopped even thinking on that deeper level. It just led to frustration. Now I am back in the English speaking realm I feel the world of the mind has opened up for me again with the parralel ability to express it again.

Today I will do my first drawing in many months. A self portrait in the mirror. The most basic of all artistic endeavours. I want my skills back. I know skill is unfashionable these days, but centuries of artistic endeavours have made me want to continue in that direction. The old cliche about being able to do something well before you can successfully depart from it and all that.

No reading today. I'll try not to anyway!

Back from the Honeymoon.

No not a metaphorical honeymoon, a real one. A month in Paris with my partner of 12 years who is now my husband of 6 weeks.

My artist's soul is full to bursting with inspiration and ideas to restart my real work of painting and sculpting again, after the distractions of wedding planning and getting our sculpture garden ready for the ceremony. All that is thankfully behind me now and I have a desperation to get back to work. For the very first time in my life I have time stretching out ahead of me with absolutely nothing clogging up the openness of the diary. I love this feeling. No pending social commitments clogging up my head space. No classes, no gallery to open...

In the four years of running the gallery I have filled six journals with thoughts and ideas that I knew I would one day get to. Now is that time finally.

At this point I have been home from Paris for one week and I give myself one more week of playing with household stuff, sorting clothes, sewing a few new things, reading and walking, before I start in earnest.

My reading since I got home has been from the two poles of my existence. I first finished Geraldine McCaughrean's "Vainglory" a masterpiece of a historical novel about Renassaince France. I couldn't believe the presence of the real life historical characters it contains...people I have always been obsessed with, Francois 1, Henry II, Catherine de Medici and the places, the Loire valley, Chenonceau, Chambord, Leonardo's Clos Luce...places I have been to if not on this most recent trip then the one before two years ago. I'd love to write a long piece about this book and I will one day but my point here is that I went straight from this book to Andrew McGahan's "The White Earth". The only thing they have in common is the Mc of the author's name. From my obsession with the France of the past to the reality of the Darling Downs where I was born and raised just like the McGahans. We all had a McGahan in our class at school in Dalby, went to swimming training with them. This book touched me deeply and it rang true having grown up out there in that flat country. The beautiful Bunya mountains thinly disguised as the Hoops in the book. What I am trying to say here is that it is the CHOICE of these two books that indicates to me what my real subject matter is as an artist. The displacement I feel that I have written about before. Loving so much the language,art and culture of the French and being physically and somehow spiritually a girl from country Queensland. The links and the contrasts are real things but what is in my head is an imagined unity. I can see the kangaroos at Malmaison and not feel anything wrong about it. I can also understand people wanting to bring rabbits here but then again look what subsequently happened through the ignorance of that idea!

But back to my main theme which is is a back to work one. I feel excited to have so much material to work from. I visited Malmaison on this last trip. I walked all around Josephine's garden. I photograped the cedar tree she planted with Napoleon after the Marengo vistory in 1800. The original of the painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps by David is in this building. (One in the Louvre is a copy)


This house was where Josephine really developed her famous "style" in the chateau and in landscaping the grounds and this is where many of the Australian animals and plants collected on the French explorer Baudin's voyage ended up. I find this fact amazing and so significant for Australians. I could make it a life's work researching it but I will have to settle for interpreting the whole situation as an artist with just snippets of the story as layers in my work.

I hope I stick to my plan of back into it in a week. I will keep you posted.

The Retrospective Experience

Last night was the opening of my swansong show in my gallery.

(The gallery will still exist but in a new morphed form.)

(I will still exist as a new morphed mid-career artist, suddenly with the time to devote to my practice full time instead of running a gallery 5 days a week.)

Now I am no longer a commercial gallery director I feel free to speak so much more openly and honestly about my involvement in the artworld. I don’t have to be careful because saying certain things might be bad for business.

We are such sensitive creatures…artists. Having dealt with so many over the 4 years of the Robyn Bauer Studio Gallery that is the one thing we all seem to have in common. I have always felt such empathy with artists on opening nights and last night brought the usual mixture of pride yet shrinking terror that the limelight illuminates within you.

I have on display what I have termed a “mini-retrospective” consisting of works of mine from as far back as 1989 until the present. My initial idea was simply to just show works of mine that I still owned for the big gallery walk night, instead of filling the gallery with works by lots of artists like I usually do for this event. It seemed inappropriate to do that for just a one week show. Other artists would expect their work to be up longer and with mine I could close it up whenever I liked. But the idea grew from just putting up a few works I had here to showing the whole gamut of pieces from many different series. Like most artists I had kept work from different periods and different shows, some for wholesome spiritual reasons, some because they never sold, others because they had never even been shown.
This means of course there is mixture (hopefully a progression) of styles, and of media. Subject matter seems to be the most consistent feature surprisingly. There are symbolic birds from way back.

I worried. Did it look too much of a hotchpotch? Do I look “all over the place”? Is the work representative enough? Good enough? Should some things not see the light of day ever again? God knows I have painted over enough works in my time. Some of these probably have at least two incarnations lurking underneath. I guess I did know I had to get over my own cringe factor about some of my work over the years and just embrace the whole oeuvre as a part of who I am and where I been on my inner creative journey. That’s what I decided to do. I also knew deep down how good a thing it would be for me as an artist to actually have all the work up so that I could really look at it, really see it, to be justified in thinking anything about its quality at all. A positive exercise and all that…

This brings me back to last night.

The first comment was not good. A well meaning acquaintance said
“Wow, you are so versatile, it looks like 6 different artists!”
This of course for someone with the fears expessed above is the worse possible criticism. I explained to her that looking like 6 different artists was not actually a good thing, but she was adamant in her “praise”.

I have often thought that in the other arts diversity has been more celebrated than in the visual arts. Novelists, film- makers even singers have been applauded for switching genres, their “versatility” rated with their marketability, but painters are thought to lack consistency if they change. Maybe that has been the narrow market talking though.
I explained to my acquaintance that the work covers about 20 years and naturally certain things had changed and developed. Then I told myself to stop being so sensitive, seeing criticism where praise was intended.

This brings me to the point about comments generally. When it is actually your work on display, any comment, from the totally inane and uninformed to the seriously considered and discerning is absorbed by the exhibiting artist like water in a sponge, - a very dry cracked pale sponge that darkens as its gets wetter.

A few minutes later an artist acquaintance made the totally opposite observation unsolicited. She said she could see the threads between different periods very clearly. I told her about the other comment and she totally disagreed.
“No it’s all very much you” she said.
Phew! Relief. We respect what other artists think.

The night went from mediocre to good to great to amazing. None of my senses were dulled by alcohol. I wanted to experience the whole thing in every sober nuance. All in all I must express that there are so many genuinely discerning art lovers out there. I received enough genuinely insightful remarks to keep me forging ahead, my ego sufficiently placated, my insecurities sufficiently allayed. The bottom line is there are supporters out there, maybe not where you expect to find them, but out there nevertheless. It is refreshing, it is heartening and it keeps artists going. It will keep me going for a long while.

Ultimately though, it is what I myself feel about the direction of my own work that matters. You will always get good and bad press but you have to know within yourself that you are achieving something, expressing something worth uncovering and sharing. Art is a form of communication whether to one other person or to 1000. I myself can see the threads that run through my work from the beginning. In symbolism and imagery I can see my past journey more clearly. Some of the visual links have astounded me.
“My God I did that back then, I hadn’t realized”!

I just want to get better. I want to keep on producing. But thanks, thanks, thanks to all those people who really looked at my work and of course who really look at all art. We write statements and we try and explain ourselves in words and this really does help and is a big part of it but it is the audience who completes the circle and makes the whole process what it should be. Sometimes we are our own audience of one and other times like last night we know we are a part of something much bigger.



To see some of my images go to

www.robynbauer.com

or the gallery at

www.robynbauergallery.com.au

Homecoming Show

“Homecoming”
An exhibition of ceramic sculpture by
Robyn Bauer

What is a “Homecoming”?
The experience of leaving and then returning…Are you the same person or are you a completely different person? Do you somehow revert to the person you were in that first place? Both the leaving and returning are voyages and this is what interests me.

These are questions I have explored on a personal level but on a much larger scale, I have been reading and researching for the past few years about the voyages of discovery made in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The experience of Cook, Flinders and the Frenchman Baudin, was that of leaving their homeland and then returning and the discoveries that they made in between. With their European sensibility and classical education they actively sought the new and exotic and attempted to take it back with them to their “home”.

We here in Australia are a nation with a European heritage, so culturally where do we belong? We have been trained in the conventions of western thought and experience. We have responded to and been enthralled by the collections of exotica and the analytical descriptions of the botanical artists who travelled on these voyages. Sometimes the evidence of our eyes can be overwhelming and we need the filter that science and geography provide. These artists looked at Australia with such filters.

Even as a young child born and raised in Dalby in country Queensland I felt the “foreignness” of the Australian landscape and animals. The books we read then were all about somewhere else and not here. Things native to Australia still hadn’t been filtered enough for us to feel truly at home here.

As an artist I needed to decide where I wanted to place myself spiritually. I have always been so influenced by my passion for the history of art, the way symbols have developed, particularly those of animals and birds. And how such images become icons?
This has led me to explore the use of animal and bird imagery in heraldry and in chess sets. The honesty and integrity of the medieval artist is of particular influence.

The subtext of my “Homecoming” work is about some “too big issues”, such as the extinction of species, and displaced people and animals, the imposition of a particular culture on a landscape; an animal on a landscape; or removing an animal or a person from their natural habitat.

These are not all negative things. I have explored the idea of family trees in which the idea of belonging is central. My “Hand-leaf-safe-people” also present a very positive state of being and feeling.
My sculptures are just meditations on these things. My ideas flow so quickly. I can make them in a solid form and this hopefully is a form of communication that can reach other people. I have no answers only observations about the relationships between all these things that prompt further questions.
I feel a sense of the circle being completed by showing my new work in the town I was born in.