Some Notes on Landscape Painting
Gareth Morse (2016)
The Australian Landscape - Painting- Drawing - Realising - a tenuous Beginning.
So - let us sit together in a point of little or less recognition - in a VASTNESS which is known Geographically as 'The Great Sandy Desert'. We have our Drawing book - some 20-by-15 Centimetres = Good sturdy paper - simple means of drawing - maybe a 6B pencil =- a small piece of conte - so what then? No pretentious crap.
It is scorchingly hot - the land is flat - covered with minuscule vegetation, a whole legion of minute insects - here and there a most unexpected glorious flower, some new bird sound - in the distance to our right a number of small hills - the colour in this heat seems residual = the notion of 'Distance' virtually incomprehensible - however the LINE will proclaim its own elegant authority over it all = after Sixty years of Drawing that is unquestionably for me - the absolute Visual source of Understanding - of relating - of somehow arriving at what I comprehend of what is in front of me, of selecting,of questioning - but above all of Being.
Whether it's North Wales - 'yr Wyddfa', the old Docks in Bristol - the turbulence of the Sea bursting over the Sea Wall in Weston-super-Mare - fact essentially giving way - for me anyway, to the sheer energy of sensation = to the extraordinary turquoise brilliance of my first glimpse of the Australian bush - incredible low tonality - there in the Hills just out of Perth the SWIMMING POOL bursting with a sort of alien colour - almost absurd - yet there it was.
Then the sheer force of the great white seawaves at City Beach - all this mingles - continues - even back to the blackened pits of my home in the Rhondda Valley - South Wales - a place - Ferndale in English - in my own language Glynrhedynog - its magic is indisputable even now after a whole lifetime - the Mountain Cefn Rhondda, a huge moorland with foxes, skylarks - sheep- bleating lambs in due season, cuckoos in the woods, the great lake 'Llyn y Forwyn' - with its story of the drowned - Celtic beauty -. So here we are with memories of such a treasured nature - the servant Girl - 'y forwyn' - lingering forever under the Lake - are such recollections more than Imagination or do they occupy the very substance of Being - a going beyond what Iris Murdoch calls the 'Veil of Selfconsciousness' - into the treasure of Existence itself ----
Back now to Drawing - the afternoon wears on - the heat climbs to a suffocating force, an extremity which is beyond endurable - so 'Pack it in - get a couple of Beers '- the Reality, the wonderful simple, obvious replenishing reality of OZ. Just a small matter of driving some 150 kms to the nearest Pub. I should have brought a Six-pack of Emu !! Now then back to those distant hills - barely more than a sinuous line in drawing - that is the 'escape element.' So I take to the Air - fly over this place at about 20.000 ft, the distant hills become something far from obvious - an essential discontinuity with - the seen - what has been drawn as a tenuous line from a Distance reveals a truth of powerful magnitude - it reveals a whole Geological history, the supreme, vital forces of the immense icesheets as they scraped over an an an ancient landmass - coming from the very sources of Existence to a terrain of unimaginable complexity - they have not scoured the landscape - they have CREATED it. They continue - and will continue long beyond our temporary Climate change = for I believe that they ARE both continuity and discontinuity - the new present, the new past, the new future - they are essentially what was NOT known - and will remain only as a surmise - we will never experience their inevitable new, ongoing NOT KNOWN - our Landscape is merely a moment of transition - not some sort of easy facile Appearance.
Glaciation IS ..So now to Painting - which IS ?????
(To Fred (Inglis)) Now***Photographs of Paintings - recent years and current, continuing//Drawings////a small selection from my 20 or so Drawing Books - journeys all over the place in OZ'.
So I hope that they give you pleasure - endless hours in the bush, the coast - so many places where time has left relics of a vibrant - at one time - culture and industry- perhaps particularly the Eastern Goldfields - Kalgoorlie,Niagara, Kookynie -- minesites all gone - Bronze Wing - Day Dawn - especially GWALIA - [Welsh for Wales] with its magnificent Hotel -- superb pressed Tin roof - its staircase from 'Gone With the Wind' - all now surrounded by - Nothing --- relics lost in vastness -
Apart from Mount Magnet with the decaying shack known as the house of 'Tommy the Turd' where I found old newspapers from the early 1900's - HAUNTED so it seems which explains the vast collection of empty Beer Bottles - then of course Kalgoorlie with the famed GOLDEN MILE the most extensive treasure house known at the time my VERY FAVOURITE DRAWING SPOT ~in FLY FLATS just outside Coolgardie - where Camel trains could turn in the street, the very source of the largest Gold Nugget every found - - it is very difficult drawing in Fly Flats - your guess - just a mere 100 degrees of fly-heat --- now so many drawings I have done of Kalgoorlie represent the Golden Mile as it WAS before the huge PIT just demolished a rich, rich history - such utterly remarkable Red/Orauge COLOUR changed - too the Pub with a deep, disguised hole in the Bar which the Miners could climb by hidden ladder to that 'foaming ream' so loved by Rabbie Burns in Ayr -- perhaps the Drawings are a bit of Archive --
So too especially DARWIN - with its Mindl Beach + CROCODILES -------- a great place - a Two Sketchbook place ******** I hope that this little note will convey something of the pleasure and indeed Privilege which travelling in the essential Australia has been for the now Auncient Welsh/OZ artist.
****My Painting -'Eastern Goldfields - a fork in the road to Gwalia 'seems to sum up' - sort of crystallise experience = how ? I will soon embark on a much bigger work
Red, Red, RED, RED EXTREME HEAT- long straight roads which seem to go on endlessly to Nowhere, tracks which exist and vanish = certainly NOT APPEARANCE -
- perhaps ESSENCE - what else ? What lies behind the Veil ?
Over to you
\ Gareth
It is scorchingly hot - the land is flat - covered with minuscule vegetation, a whole legion of minute insects - here and there a most unexpected glorious flower, some new bird sound - in the distance to our right a number of small hills - the colour in this heat seems residual = the notion of 'Distance' virtually incomprehensible - however the LINE will proclaim its own elegant authority over it all = after Sixty years of Drawing that is unquestionably for me - the absolute Visual source of Understanding - of relating - of somehow arriving at what I comprehend of what is in front of me, of selecting,of questioning - but above all of Being.
Whether it's North Wales - 'yr Wyddfa', the old Docks in Bristol - the turbulence of the Sea bursting over the Sea Wall in Weston-super-Mare - fact essentially giving way - for me anyway, to the sheer energy of sensation = to the extraordinary turquoise brilliance of my first glimpse of the Australian bush - incredible low tonality - there in the Hills just out of Perth the SWIMMING POOL bursting with a sort of alien colour - almost absurd - yet there it was.
Then the sheer force of the great white seawaves at City Beach - all this mingles - continues - even back to the blackened pits of my home in the Rhondda Valley - South Wales - a place - Ferndale in English - in my own language Glynrhedynog - its magic is indisputable even now after a whole lifetime - the Mountain Cefn Rhondda, a huge moorland with foxes, skylarks - sheep- bleating lambs in due season, cuckoos in the woods, the great lake 'Llyn y Forwyn' - with its story of the drowned - Celtic beauty -. So here we are with memories of such a treasured nature - the servant Girl - 'y forwyn' - lingering forever under the Lake - are such recollections more than Imagination or do they occupy the very substance of Being - a going beyond what Iris Murdoch calls the 'Veil of Selfconsciousness' - into the treasure of Existence itself ----
Back now to Drawing - the afternoon wears on - the heat climbs to a suffocating force, an extremity which is beyond endurable - so 'Pack it in - get a couple of Beers '- the Reality, the wonderful simple, obvious replenishing reality of OZ. Just a small matter of driving some 150 kms to the nearest Pub. I should have brought a Six-pack of Emu !! Now then back to those distant hills - barely more than a sinuous line in drawing - that is the 'escape element.' So I take to the Air - fly over this place at about 20.000 ft, the distant hills become something far from obvious - an essential discontinuity with - the seen - what has been drawn as a tenuous line from a Distance reveals a truth of powerful magnitude - it reveals a whole Geological history, the supreme, vital forces of the immense icesheets as they scraped over an an an ancient landmass - coming from the very sources of Existence to a terrain of unimaginable complexity - they have not scoured the landscape - they have CREATED it. They continue - and will continue long beyond our temporary Climate change = for I believe that they ARE both continuity and discontinuity - the new present, the new past, the new future - they are essentially what was NOT known - and will remain only as a surmise - we will never experience their inevitable new, ongoing NOT KNOWN - our Landscape is merely a moment of transition - not some sort of easy facile Appearance.
Glaciation IS ..So now to Painting - which IS ?????
(To Fred (Inglis)) Now***Photographs of Paintings - recent years and current, continuing//Drawings////a small selection from my 20 or so Drawing Books - journeys all over the place in OZ'.
So I hope that they give you pleasure - endless hours in the bush, the coast - so many places where time has left relics of a vibrant - at one time - culture and industry- perhaps particularly the Eastern Goldfields - Kalgoorlie,Niagara, Kookynie -- minesites all gone - Bronze Wing - Day Dawn - especially GWALIA - [Welsh for Wales] with its magnificent Hotel -- superb pressed Tin roof - its staircase from 'Gone With the Wind' - all now surrounded by - Nothing --- relics lost in vastness -
Apart from Mount Magnet with the decaying shack known as the house of 'Tommy the Turd' where I found old newspapers from the early 1900's - HAUNTED so it seems which explains the vast collection of empty Beer Bottles - then of course Kalgoorlie with the famed GOLDEN MILE the most extensive treasure house known at the time my VERY FAVOURITE DRAWING SPOT ~in FLY FLATS just outside Coolgardie - where Camel trains could turn in the street, the very source of the largest Gold Nugget every found - - it is very difficult drawing in Fly Flats - your guess - just a mere 100 degrees of fly-heat --- now so many drawings I have done of Kalgoorlie represent the Golden Mile as it WAS before the huge PIT just demolished a rich, rich history - such utterly remarkable Red/Orauge COLOUR changed - too the Pub with a deep, disguised hole in the Bar which the Miners could climb by hidden ladder to that 'foaming ream' so loved by Rabbie Burns in Ayr -- perhaps the Drawings are a bit of Archive --
So too especially DARWIN - with its Mindl Beach + CROCODILES -------- a great place - a Two Sketchbook place ******** I hope that this little note will convey something of the pleasure and indeed Privilege which travelling in the essential Australia has been for the now Auncient Welsh/OZ artist.
****My Painting -'Eastern Goldfields - a fork in the road to Gwalia 'seems to sum up' - sort of crystallise experience = how ? I will soon embark on a much bigger work
Red, Red, RED, RED EXTREME HEAT- long straight roads which seem to go on endlessly to Nowhere, tracks which exist and vanish = certainly NOT APPEARANCE -
- perhaps ESSENCE - what else ? What lies behind the Veil ?
Over to you
\ Gareth