Translating an idea into an artwork
Everything begins with an idea. Sometimes it is concrete, at other times it is nebulous or fleeting. The idea can arise from a curious shape or an interesting shadow, but more often it emerges from a desire to express something. Sketching helps - I try to be loose and free in my sketchbook and just get the ideas down; colour, shape, sensations. For my work Archive 170, I wanted to convey the latent histories of place - we live in a 170 year old home build by convicts and lived in by many since it was first built on traditional Noongar land by a young British officer, Lieutenant Edmund DuCane.
I wanted to reflect the history of the building itself and the people who built and lived in it over that 170 years, while acknowledging this doesn’t reflect the ancient history contained in the land and its indigenous people. The history of the house itself is bound up in the wooden shingles, layers of paint, limestone mortar, the bricks themselves, and the building’s context within its local area and connection to the rest of the historic precinct in Guildford. My sketches took me on a journey of texture and colour trying to reflect the surfaces of paint, render, stucco, shingles and masonry, while placing the house within a geographic space.
DuCane himself was an artist and did many rough pencil sketches of the place, so I used the notion of pencil lines translated into bold black marks. I included small abstracted elements of DuCane’s sketches within the painting, and used historical records and maps to represent the house’s location in time and place. I can recognise familiar landmarks in the finished work, although they may be obscured for the viewer.
Translating the sketches into an artwork is not an exact process. Choosing materials and method of application is crucial to the feeling of the finished piece. For this work I wanted a loose ‘sketchy’ feel, so precision was abandoned and my brushstrokes are loose and large. The scale of the work plays tricks (this work is 125cm x 135cm) and so often what works on a small scale needs to be revised - as I am painting I realise some elements need to be much larger to gain prominence or to properly occupy the space of the large canvas, and others need to be omitted or modified to keep the impact clear. The colours I use in the final work may also change, depending on my response as the composition takes shape. The final work also contains many elements that do not appear in my sketches as the process of story-telling evolves while I paint; I painted some of DuCane’s responses to this place in his own words, then painted over them in deliberately coarse brushstrokes to represent the 170 years’ of paint layers that partially obscure history, I made washes from the convict-made bricks and included them in early layers, and I made marks with soot from one of the original chimneys. The house literally lives in this painting.
One of the difficulties is knowing when you have successfully translated your idea, and it sits before you fully expressed, so you can stop painting and walk away. At times I haven’t got this right, but I am definitely getting better at this as an artist. I often refer back to previous sketches for renewed inspiration and reflection - sketchbooks are a living record of the creative process.
A preliminary sketch for Archive 170, showing loose ‘sketchy’ lines reminiscent of DuCane’s own sketches, soft washy colours, references to maps and landmarks such as King’s Meadow and the Helena River.
Archive 170, the finished work, with far greater complexity and more detailed elements which reflect obscured histories of place. The sketch lines have been translated into bold black paint, loosely applied. Some of the landmarks in the sketch remain such as the river and King’s Meadow, while others have been emphasised - the upper circles drawing attention to the hub of the historic precinct with our home right in the middle. Other elements have been extracted directly from DuCane’s sketches such as the parallel lines in the lower right hand corner (which he refers to as “the wicket”) and the roof-like marks in the top right hand corner. The very small horizontal lines in the top middle reference the railway which has a strong historical connection to the house through another previous occupant, and local developer/politician James Morrison. DuCane’s words (including reference to Western Australia as a “damned desolate place”) have been painted over on the left hand side.