#y2s2

Studio currently

Reflecting on September seminar critiques and other contextual developments, I am beginning to work on my final paintings toward end of year.

There were a few practical decisions for this work. I had to decide which elements of the canvas to do myself, and which to outsource: priming, cutting wood for bars, assembling bars, stretching the canvas, or a combination of these things.

Within the scale I wanted, I was losing hope on affording two canvases in any capacity, especially as I realised how difficult it would be to stretch myself, but thank goodness I have sorted getting them made.

With the canvas juust fitting in my studio, I'm going to paint the first thin layers, then roll off and deliver to canvas guy in two weeks, which I will then pick up stretched two weeks after that, which I am timing to deliver straight to DEMO (in my friend's large van) so that I can spread them out and paint the finishing touches properly.

These two paintings will be installed on the symmetrical walls, and I'm hoping to make a third for the opposing wall but I'm going to decide closer to the day.

Opposite wall:

Painting-wise, the key things that came up in my September crits that I am keeping in mind are:

The saturated colour palette would work stronger with lesser distribution. It was a bit over-done in these works.

Particularly the neon yellows and greens have a chemical appeal to them, which creates an interesting balance within the work but needs to be done carefully. Purples maybe not so successful - makes it too tropical

The large unfinished work had success because of the freshness/spontaneity; the smaller paintings are over-worked such as moments of over-blending.

Similarly, I need to 'stop' more and give the painting moments to breath, where the viewer can enter the work easier and have more depth to the layering rather than all-over

Brown tones are a great way to 'ground' the work to Aotearoa. The uku/whenua association works well, and it steps outside of the obvious 'green' mode than may automatically represent this. Specific different tones of brown work well, with purple red undertones or visible other colours that are just a step away from being muddy.

I need to be careful about repetitive gestures, try changing my approach to the brushmark to better capture specific foliage, particularly with the thick areas.

I'm considering this feedback in my new paintings, I'm starting on the smaller pieces of canvas before beginning the large ones.

I made a calender dating between now and hand-in (November 21st)

Some things listed include:

- Sourcing large scale stretcher bars and getting the canvases prepped and made

- Writing essay and publishing catalogue

-Artist statement 3x drafts with Glen

-Titles (and overall project title)

-Organising painting transport

I decided between two exhibition spaces, I chose option 1 because I will possibly just install two large paintings and the angled walls will work great

The paintings themselves need to be confident, and comprise of all the ideas from my MFA while considering specific feedback from recent crits. I will specify this in another post

Artist Statment:

A painter divides space, arranges or mixes colour, and tends the paint upon a canvas, gardening an artwork toward completion. Through my paintings, in which at times I depict natural features of physical botanicas, or sometimes I allow the boundless imagined interpretations of ‘garden’ to lead, the aim is to reconsider gardens within contemporary Aotearoa within a layered context of art and social histories.

Historically, gardens have been a subject for women to paint as a safe, leisurely activity. Whilst many established women in the field depicted strong modernist approaches to the subject such as Rita Angus and Frances Hodgkins, there are layers of social repression that restricted women to such domestic settings. Painting this subject in contemporary Aotearoa has allowed me to expand what ‘garden’ can mean outside of the hierarchies both within the art world and the garden environment.

I aim to consider how a garden can be both its own entity within physical landscape, and an intangible idea led by imagination. Victorian influence of geometric layouts and exotic plants lead to some gardens representing the grandeur of its occupant. At other times, wild foliage and native greenery coexist with a curation, blurring together this ‘gardenesque’ organization with nature itself. It is in these moments that it can be questioned what ‘garden’ means.

Personal heritage also informs my work, in which my mother and late grandmother are passionate gardeners who have owned bromeliad nurseries, providing insight to bromeliads as an exotic symbol within Aotearoa’s garden history since their first introduction in the 1960s. I have whakapapa to Ngāpuhi, and my tupuna/ancestor Moegnaherehere signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I am particularly interested in how these two elements of my heritage may contrast, and how by painting endemic foliage alongside imported plants, this may speak to colonisation and the coexistence of different cultures within Aotearoa and its gardens. The resulting environments may appear familiar to here, but at times blur to unfamiliar or intangible new places – this is to reconsider the hierarchies between bush or wilderness, and the garden or domestically controlled.

[PAINTINGS UNFINISHED]

[left] Noble Groves Oil on canvas, 1450mm x 850mm

The last couple of weeks I have begun working on another large scale painting. It's approximately 4 metres x 1.5

I have primed the raw canvas with 4 layers of gesso myself, as I've found it more cost effective.

The problem, however, is that I primed it on the floor of my studio.

What I didn't realise, is that the texture from the jagged concrete was picked up through the priming process (not as thick paint to be sanded, but as physical dents)

Once I moved the primed canvas onto the wall, and painted the first layer of oils, I instantly realised my mistake as it was horribly textured to paint on and looked terrible

(these photos don't really show the texture well but it was bad!)

I was panicked at the cost and time wastage, but my supervisor Sara came to the rescue with her suggestion that I flip the painting around and wet the back of the canvas. This would shrink the fabric and hopefully restore a flat surface. The fast drying oil medium made it safe for me to manoeuvre it to do so.

I did this, crossed my fingers, and thank GOODNESS it seems to have undone most of the bumpiness. I have begun a new layer of paint and it is blending 100x better.

Andrew McLeod responds to Susan Te Kahurangi King

Te Uru Contemporary

Saturday 26/8/23

Susan Te Kahurangi King's drawings showcase extreme intricacy. Most pieces in this show are small, less than 400mm, as are most of King's extensive archive of several thousand drawings. The modest size holds the space strongly, because the compositional and technical complexity of the works provides plenty to look at within the frame. The scale is sometimes chosen functionally - particularly with King's earlier school age drawings, where the marks are built up on scraps of school paper or the back of some card. Many children or teenagers find themselves sketching in a similar fashion - and it is lucky King's grandmother carefully held these works, because she was creating something beyond her years even at the age of 14. An innocent, creative spontaneity is evident throughout this earlier work, as is in many children's art, where the imagination is more unbound than in adulthood. Contrasting to the 'child-like' descriptors, is an exquisite complexity which sees layers upon layers of minute and careful mark making, and deliberate calculated composition.

This imaginative surrealism continued toward King's current work now, which is exhibited in this Untitled show alongside earlier work from the 1960s and 1970s. McLeod discusses the obvious hierarchies that surround King's practice, and the amazement at her prolific status as an artist, in which her work could be akin to Willem De Kooning and other significant 20th century painters. Susan is autistic, and non-verbal, which often placers her in an 'outsider artist' category. Whilst her autism is an important part of her, in which it has allowed a gifted insight to see the world and more importantly communicate about the world in such a profound way through art, there is certainly an unintended or pervasive hierarchy that is implemented in an art gallery context, particularly when considering the gendered inequality too, making Susan Te Kahurangi a significantly important artist who contributes to breaking down these barriers.

I was extremely lucky to meet Susan, as well as her sisters Petita and Wendy, in 2019 during my last year of undergrad, in which I was able to look through the archive of literally thousands of phenomenal drawings. My work was specifically looking at art world hierarchies, and honouring the women before me who have painted in Aotearoa to build the context of today. I was embroidering at the time, and I particularly was drawn to the textile relationship within King's work, and I translated part of her work through stitching alongside other appropriated paintings.

Meeting Susan Te Kahurangi King at her home in 2019

King's drawing [left] detail of my 2019 embroidery [right]

Colour palette and glazing

In previous paintings, I have started with a 'garden' / 'Aotearoa bush' colour palette and added vibrant, exotic or saturated colours on top.

In these new paintings, I am instead layering saturated colours first, and then pulling back the tones through glazing, leaving small moments of strong colour.

It is difficult to adjust to this process, because the first couple of layers are so exaggeratedly saturated that it's hard to trust that it's not the final palette - but that's mostly because it's something I'm not used to.

These two paintings have now been painted into several layers, and I believe the new process is accomplishing what I wanted it to - the base bright colours subtlety push through, with moments of brightness shining stronger than before.

Since this is a new method of painting, something that I'm loving is to be learning a new skill, by flipping the process that was so ingrained in me. I think the risk/change has paid off, because new things are happening in the painting that wasn't before.

This may seem like an over-reaction to such a simple part of the painting process, but it has been a big breakthrough for me because of how significant colour is within my paintings.

Another thing I am doing that is relatively new, is glazing. Just like with the colour palette, my physical approach to painting had been quite methodical, or habitual, in the way that I put down the layers.

Whilst much of the painting is still done in my usual approach, I have made certain sections glazed in which I wanted stronger contrast or added depth/realism. This is done using a medium and very thin washes - each time a layer dries, I add another layer, until slowly the effect builds up into a refined section. It certainly has a smoothness and starkness that I had not achieved before through thick blending.

I think both of these techniques are most effective in conjunction with the other painting qualities I'm interested in - whether thick buttery brush marks or rough messy moments against softly blended areas.

(paintings incomplete)

I have moved into a new studio, which is wonderfully spacious and accessible.

In the weeks since seminar, and for the next while, I am completely focused on creating paintings that develop the points brought up at mid-year.

A key piece of advice from the assessment panel is to put context to the side for a bit, and really focus on the painting. Trust that the research and context will come into the painting naturally, so rather than compositionally focusing on botanics and specific imagery, I need to experiment with the paintwork itself.

A few explorations in these two paintings include:

- glazing as a process; I normally build oils in thick layers and so I am interested in what might happen if I use glazing methods to instead build up some areas in thin washes.

- following the assessors' advice, I've invested in some high quality paints; I bought several Schminck Norma large paints and it is SO much better especially in saturated areas, which leads to the next point

-colour: I am experimenting much more with colour in terms of saturation/contrast, and combining naturalistic greenery with surreal pigments of purples and oranges. Blending techniques also push this saturation to appear glowy in some areas, or graphic in others.