Here are some notes from my Artist Floor Talk accompanying my Awakening Around Roses exhibition on show until March 12th, at G3 Artspace, Shirley Burke Theatre, Parkers Rd, Parkdale Wed-Fri 9-5 & Sat 12-5
A
lot of people ask me why I paint on circular canvases. Well circles
in art is not a new thing. If we go back to very early indigenous
art forms we find circles. In Australian aboriginal art you will see
the use of concentric circles to represent waterholes, meeting places
and ceremonial sites.
Circles
have been used widely in religious art, in stained glass windows,
mandalas, labyrinths and mosaics.
Circles
were popular for a time in English pastoral art of rural and farmyard
scenes. Also circles and ovals were popular for cameos, miniatures
and portraiture in Victorian times and earlier. You will also find
circular motifs being used in art deco and art nouveau styles.
Renoir
painted some beautiful circular garlands of roses and he actually
started his artistic career as a porcelain painter, painting flowers
on china plates before the process became automated.
If
you went to see the Monet exhibition last year you would have seen
one of the four circular canvases that Monet painted. He found that
people would dwell longer and contemplate a round painting more and
it also inspired him to paint his large waterlily murals which were
displayed in the round.
Rose
are the perfect subject for a round canvas because roses are all
about circles and spirals.
I
paint from photographs because there are many hours involved and many
layers and the roses would shrivel up and die before I finished the
painting. I love photographing roses especially in bright sunshine
to capture the dramatic shadows. When I take a photo my camera
sometimes recognises the roses as a face and that is how I see roses
too, and in this show I have tried to capture the different
personalities of the different roses, so let me introduce you to some of
these different characters.
ROSE
QUARTZ
This
was the first rose I painted on a circular canvas back in 2012. I
photographed this rose in the main street of Nuriootpa in the Barossa
Valley. There are some beautiful roses in South Australia and if you
go to Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills you can visit The Cedars which
is the historic home of Hans Heysen who was most famous for his
landscape paintings, but both Hans and his daughter Nora painted
beautiful rose paintings and you can still wander through their
gardens and see their roses.
AMETHYST
ALLURE
I
don't know all of the names of the roses in my paintings but this one
is most likely to be Blue Moon. A true blue colour doesn't occur
naturally in roses. Since 1840 rose breeders have tried to create a
blue rose but the closest they have got is mauve and lavender
colours, so in the language of flowers a mauve rose symbolises
mystery.
FRACTURED
TOPAZ
This
was an unusual rose too, it was a bit creamy and lemony with dark
toffee shadows – sounds a bit like a lemon meringue pie. And the
shadows on the petals were purpley in colour rather than grey.
CRIMSON
CORONET
This
rose was photographed at the Victorian State Rose garden down at
Werribee where they have over 5000 roses growing and they say the
best months to visit are November and March. I love this rose
because of its expression, in the caption for this one I've written
that it breathes a sigh of rapture and it really does look like it
has its little mouth open.
PEARLESCENCE
In
some roses the petals really curl back as they open up and that was
the case with this one and it had a real sheen to it so I used an
iridescent white paint which has little particles of the mineral mica
(or fool's gold) to give it a pearly sheen.
ROSE
RETICULE
I
was really excited to find this rose in the gardens at Ararat just
near the lake. It's structure was really unusual . People have been
asking me about the word reticule. It's a very old-fashioned word
and if you read historical fiction you might read of someone slipping
their fan or their dance card into their reticule and it is a
drawstring purse and this rose looks like a drawstring purse with all
its little compartments. There's a great art gallery in Ararat too,
if you're passing through.
VELVET
CARESS
Some
roses have a beautiful velvety texture and that was the case with
this one – it had beautiful soft lush petals.
TODAY,
TOMORROW & FOREVER
The
whole lifecycle of a rose is illustrated in this painting – we have
the bud, the rose in full bloom and the spent bloom in the background
just about to drop its petals ( a bit like the roses in my floral
arrangement! But roses are beautiful at each stage, and in this
painting we have a background looking out to distant hills giving a
sense of this cycle of life continuing on into eternity.
IMMORTAL
BELOVED
Ah
red roses – a symbol of romantic love and passion – think of the
tango with a red rose between the teeth. For this show I wanted to
get the darkest and most moody rose I could find – I've called it
Immortal Beloved which was the name of the biographical film about
Beethoven and Beethoven certainly had a lot to be moody about, worst
of all losing his hearing and never getting to hear his final
compositions. I believe this rose may be a Mr Lincoln which is quite
famous for its many petals and strong fragrance.
TERRACOTTA
TWIRL
When
I run about photographing roses, I'm always on the lookout for the
perfectly formed rose blooms which are most commonly found in the
Hybrid Tea roses and this rose which I photographed in a monastery
garden came close to having that perfect shape.
COFFEE
ROSETTA
Coffee
coloured roses are very popular and are collected by people, they're
also popular in bridal bouquets and are quite exotic. This painting
is soon to be very famous as it has been selected by Avant Card to be
used as one of their art series postcards, so later in the year
10,000 postcards of this painting are going to be printed and
distributed nationally in theatres and other venues.
BLUSHING
PEACH ROSE
This
is the pin up rose for this exhibition being used on the invitations
and posters and I photographed this rose in
Parkdale, it was hanging over the fence in someone's front garden.
This was an incredibly beautiful rose in structure and it had such a
lot of colour variation in the petals, so to achieve this affect I
had to paint multiple glazes to build up the colour and develop
richness in the shadows.
FLORIBUNDA
The
flowers in these roses lack the classic rose shape, but they make up
for it with the sheer number of blooms on the bush and their open and
sunny faces. They're very pretty but there's a lot of work in a
multi-bloom rose and you've got the stamens as well which are
notoriously tricky, but I loved how the stamens cast these beautiful
little shadows.
Now
the two paintings in the foyer as you came in are my most recent
paintings and they're both cream roses – a single and a bouquet.
Cream
roses, too, are a tricky subject because they pick up the colour of
everything that surrounds them and if you're photographing cream or
white roses you need to be careful what you are wearing – if I was
to wear a bright red top when photographing them I could be
reflecting a pink light onto the roses.
BOUQUET
DE ROSES is a glimpse into a sophisticated bunch of roses – imagine
them in a crystal vase on a lace table cloth – very elegant and
chic
And
finally we have the MARILYN MONROE rose. I photographed this one at
the Victorian Rose Society's annual rose show and half a dozen people
had entered their Marilyn Monroe's into the show because it really is
the most shapely and beautifully structured blonde rose and Marilyn
Monroe is the perfect name for it.
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