"Cohuna Diaries"
A SELECTION OF PAINTINGS FROM THE EXHIBITION
2009 - EXHIBITION AT ANITA TRAVERSO GALLERY
Title: "Perhaps he does love me." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 36 x 45 cm
Title: "What I remember from the drive to Cohuna was the long, straight, flat plains and roads. And the mirages. " Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "The wind is blowing around my face, little strands are tickling my skin." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "The chooks have laid and I’m making banana bread with our first egg. It had two yolks!" Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "Deep in my soul I knew it was where I had lived and grown up." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "I could have paid someone for their time but I like being in control and able to see each stage as it develops." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "If I was born in Tibet, I’d be Buddhist." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "He doesn’t ask me to explain myself." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "I’m scared of loosing the intimacy we’ve sometimes experienced." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm SOLD
Title: "He’s dancing to some beautiful ambient music in front of me with the sliding doors open wide, looking out over the sea." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm SOLD
Title: "It’s so bloody hot today." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm SOLD
Title: "I know it’s a long journey – learning how to communicate. It’s something we’ll be practicing until the day we die." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm SOLD
Title: "It was a bit scary calling, but I soon got over that. I told her all my news and everything was back to normal." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 15 x 45cm SOLD
Title: "The sun’s shining today. It’s beautiful. I’m thinking of staying overnight again." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 15 x 45cm COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Title: "I’m feeling better – less stressed and more able to relax – although confused how to start today. It’s ok. I’ll have a cuppa." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 15 x 45cm SOLD
Title: "I was trying to fill the empty spaces with trivial up-beat conversation, too afraid to ask him how he was; it was bad timing anyway." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "His sunglasses are resting on his head." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm SOLD
Title: "We went for a paddle. It was very windy & blustery, but fun!" Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 16 x 22cm SOLD
Title: "I loved the sounds of the birds and the smell of the creek." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 16 x 22cm SOLD
Title: "Our red wine tastes like it’s gone off and the fridge has run out of gas – but we are relaxed for the first time in what seems like ages." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 16 x 22cm SOLD
Title: "And that heals my fractured world." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 16 x 22cm SOLD
Title: "Lots of other things I used to worry about have dropped by the wayside." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 16 x 22cm SOLD
Title: "I woke up feeling more tired than when I went to sleep." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 16 x 22cm COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Title: "We filled two buckets with rainwater and used one to wash the side of the van. That was satisfying." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm SOLD
Title: "I’m disappointed, but not surprised." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "I can smell some lovely pine trees or another earthy smell wafting through my window." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "She burst into tears when I got there and strangely, that made me relax." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm SOLD
Title: "She’s similar to my other friend with her matter-of-fact, caring temperament." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 16 x 22cm SOLD
Title: "Nic and I boxed together. She said I have a strong punch." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm
Title: "It’s only a small cup and holds a small cup of tea; just enough to stay hot and satisfy me." Medium: Oil on plywood Size: 35 x 45cm SOLD
Artist Statement
"Cohuna Diaries"
Solo Exhibition at Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne - 2009
Photography, writing, video and oil painting have been used to investigate ideas relating to landscape, travel and intimacy in this new series. The small oil paintings are based on photographs I took while travelling in Australia and New Zealand and their lengthy titles are extracts from my personal journal. These provide a glimpse into my private, interior world of neurotic musings, day-to-day trivia and observations.
Combining paintings of farmland, animals, trucks and landscapes with such personalised titles, the works explore the segmented, sometimes dislocated experience of travelling through changing scenery while still contemplating my personal life, feelings and relationships in the face of supposed leisure.
‘Cohuna Diaries' refers to the small country town of Cohuna, in northern Victoria where I was born. Last summer I returned there for the first time in fifteen years. I was searching for connection within the landscape that was my home until I was six years old.
Being an irrigation district, the landscape around Cohuna had been transformed dramatically by the drought. Seeing the farmlands and my old home, I was struck by the desolate plains and cracked earth. Returning to my studio I soon painted the photographs I took there and later added the titles from my journal.
A new mode of working for me has been using photographs as artworks. I’ve written word paintings[1] or further extracts from my journal in permanent pen over the photo’s surface. Many pictures in the series were taken within five kilometres of my home in Brisbane. The descriptive writing was a way of noticing and recording the details of my local surrounds.
Whether travelling through my local neighbourhood, revisiting rural Australia or journeying overseas, a large part of the experience is affected by an interior world that occurs almost independently of my surroundings. As the philosopher De Botton writes,
It is unfortunately hard to recall our quasi-permanent concern with the future, for on our return from a place, perhaps the first thing to disappear from memory is just how much of the past we spent dwelling on what was to come: how much of it, that is, we spend somewhere other than where we were. [2]
Through these paintings and photographs, I’m trying to present a more accurate representation of my experience of landscape and place – a representation that celebrates nature but is not divorced from the psychological landscape I constantly inhabit.
[1] ‘John Ruskin’s word-paintings derived from his method of not only describing what places looked like (‘the grass was green, the earth grey-brown’), but also of analysing their effect on us in psychological language (‘the grass seemed expansive, the earth timid’). He recognized that many places strike us as beautiful not on the basis of aesthetic criteria – because the colours match or there is symmetry and proportion – but on the basis of psychological criteria, because they embody a value or mood of importance to us.’ Alain de Botton, ‘The Art of Travel’, Penguin Group, London, 2003, p.234
[2] Alain de Botton, ‘The Art of Travel’, Penguin Group, London, 2003, p.23
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