Illustration - SALT Magazine Winter - 2011

Article - "Challenges Grow With Paradise" by Bernard Salt

Illustration - Peter Hollard (pen and ink)

I have been working on illustrations for the Sunshine Coast's SALT Magazine for a number of years and will start to include them in my blog entries. About a month before the magazine goes to press, I receive the article from Bernard Salt, and am given open slather by the editor Kate Johns to interpret the article in any way that I see fit.

Sometimes ideas are obvious and flow like sun dried salt, but often a meaningful interpretation is as hard to grind out as wet sand.

Always challenging fun. 

Read the article.

The Processes Employed To Make A Work Of Art - Robert Motherwell

"In Black and White" -  Robert Motherwell

About the Artist - Robert Motherwell

 "A few years ago I was standing next to one of my huge black and white pictures (In Black an White Nos. 2 - 183cm X 408cm. 1975) in a museum gallery, and a middle aged man approached me and asked what the picture was about, what it "meant".

     Because we happened to be standing in front of the actual painting, I was able to look at it directly, instead of an after image inside my head. I realised that the picture had been painted over several times and radically changed, in shape balances and weights. At one time it was too black, at one time the rhythm of it was too regular, at one time there was not enough variation in the geometry of the shapes. I realised there were about 10,000 brush strokes in it and that each brush stroke is a decision. It is not a decision of aesthetics - will it look more beautiful? - but a decision that concerns one's inner I: is it getting too heavy or too light? It has to do with one's sense of sensuality: the surface is getting too coarse, or is it not fluid enough? It has to do with one's sense of life: is it airy enough or is it leaden? It has to do with one's own sense of weights. I happen to be a heavy, awkward, clumsy man, and if something gets too airy, even though I admire it very much, it doesn't feel like myself, my I.

     In the end I realised that whatever "meaning" that the picture has is just the accumulated "meaning" of ten thousand brush strokes, each one being decided as it was painted. In that sense to ask "what does this painting mean?" is essentially unanswerable, except as the accumulation of hundreds of decisions with the brush. On a single day, or during a few hours, I might be in a very particular state, and make something much lighter, much heavier, much smaller, much bigger than I normally would. But when you steadily work at something over a period of time. your whole being must emerge.

     In a sense, all of my pictures are slices cut out of a continuum whose duration is my whole life, and hopefully will continue to the day I die." 

Twisted Realism Reaches Europe

In a few weeks time we leave for Europe. Ever since my “A Stranger in Familiar Place” Exhibition back in 2007, I have wrestled with the notion that I am a misplaced person.

All of the artwork that I bring to my paper and canvas, has no Australian influences, never has. Yet when I strolled around France on my first visit, there was an overwhelming sense of being “home”. 

This will be third visit in six years, and each trip feels more and more like a reconnaissance for something more permanent. This time the journey is interspersed with a wonderful week long residency, teaching my art processes and practices to senior Art students at the International School Lausanne, in Switzerland.

As I’ve prepared for this workshop, exploring my processes and practice has been very challenging, and rewarding. How much we take for granted what we do. It just happens spontaneously with little obvious thought. I just do it! I have always just done it! As you reflect on what it is you do, you soon realise the enormous accumulated knowledge and skill that has been gained over a life time of hard graft, questioning and a deep love for the thing that is ultimately your passion.

Works from 
"A Stranger In A Familiar Place"
(Oil on canvas. 76cm x101cm)

   

I love art, but I love teaching it as much, and spreading the word about the joy of exploring your passions, no matter what it is.Little do the students know that the pleasure is always all mine.

‘Tables and Dreams’ (114.5 x 76.5cm) Charcoal, Pastel, Graphite on Paper

I had a dream. I climbed one of my ladders, erected under the ceiling of a cathedral, and looked down into the dark cavernous space below. There was a table, my art books and pencils, and blank sheets of paper waiting to be indulged.

Like the paintings in the Louvre, similarly the cathedrals of Europe start to look the same. But there was one hauntingly elegant church in the heart of Avignon, called Notre-Dame des Doms that possessed me.

"Inside, a cold darkness filled the empty cavernous space. Dim light revealed  balconies and arches, straight out of the mysteries of Phantom of the Opera. The interior was fat and brutish. There was power and reference within its windowless walls. As I silently walked around, the massive pipe organ to the front left struck a long sonorous chord, that reverberated through my chest and filled the sanctuary with an ethereal, far-off sound. Loud, it wrestled with the reluctant spirit within me. I moved to one side and peered up through squat stone balustrades. In the moving shadows a solitary crouching figure, lit by flickering candle light, filled the vastness with sound."

I think this is that place. 

I often wonder what I bring to the table of life?

"I'll Meet You Under The Railway Bridge..." (180cmx90cm) Charcoal, Pastel and Graphite on Paper

Inspired by my time in Vernazza, I created this drawing. 

It's a snapshot of the people and beautiful port that makes up this little village, that oozes from the cliffs over-looking the Mediterranean. 

The title comes from a telephone call I made when we arrived in the town. I had to ring the mysterious Ms. Bianchi. At the other end of the phone was an Italian voice that spoke in perfectly fractured English. Enthusiastically, she implored me to meet her under the railway bridge, in order to guide us to our accommodation.

The making of this work was filmed. You can follow it's construction on the following page entry. 

Creation of a Twisted Realism

My first steps into youtube.


A photo was taken every 10 minutes during the 35 hours it took to complete the drawing, and then condensed into a 3.30min movie.


This work is an experimental piece based around my experience of Vernazza, Italy. I wanted to tell the story of my time in this small coastal village, one of the picture book Cinque Terra towns, and thought that a cartoon strip concept might be a novel way of doing it.
It's the first of a number of cartoon strips that will tell stories.

Journal Pages from Europe - Montmartre (Paris)

Sepia photos by Peter Hollard

 "It's 5.00pm before I head up the hill to Montmartre. It's getting to the end of the tourist season, but the crowds are still steady. My goal is to find the lady in the Peintre's market who I spoke to the other night. She was bright, friendly and spoke English. I find her. Her name is Evelyn and she gives me some clues to places I might visit outside Paris, to spend some time and do some art. Obligingly, she scrawls some names on a paper bag."

Page from European Journal

"At Sacre Coeur there is a makeshift concert on the steps leading up to the cathedral. Three guys are playing simple funky music. I sit with the crowd and am moved by the warm evening air, the sounds, the oneness of a large group of people, and the gently sprawling city in front of me that is Paris. Metal rooftops catch the last rays of the sun. It's magical. It's perfect."

‘Paris Pulse” (114.5 x 76.5 cm) Charcoal, Pastel, Graphite on Paper

At dusk, I would wander the streets of Paris up to Montmartre. 

Amongst the artists and gargoyles, the tinkering cutlery and emptying plates, the beautiful and the curious, cigarette smoke and sausages, espressos and laughter, a steady pulsating rhythm of music flowed from the wide steps running down from Sacre Coeur. 

I joined the crowd and listened, and savored, as evening descended. From this spot, the whole of Paris sparkled into life before me, as if a gift. Just as I was about to burst, in the far distance, the Eiffel Tower danced into life in a pulsating blue frenzy. 

I think this is my favourite spot in Paris. If you don’t shed a tear at these sublime moments, you are without heart.

How can you not love Paris? Beautiful, beautiful Paris.

The Generation of an Idea

"Granville Musings" (115cm x 200cm) Charcoal, Pastel and graphite on Brown Paper, 2011

When I am working on one of my drawings, I am always open to spontaneity, serendipity, and other chance occurrences that wander through my head. In the past I needed to have the image pretty well worked out in my journal before I commenced, but then I started reading about Dadaism, and how chance played an enormous part in their creativity. In particular the written word, but music and visual art were all heavily influenced by this movement. Immersing myself in Dadaism gave me permission to let go and be open to all ideas. If in the middle of a piece of work now I am hit with an idea, I automatically honour it and incorporate it in my art without questioning it's relevance. I will make the new idea fit.

But this need I have to honour the idea, is partly to do with where I believe ideas may originate from. The Ancient Greeks believed we were privileged enough to be merely channelling ideas from elsewhere in the universe. If it was a great idea you weren't feigned as a genius, you were merely the one chosen to bring it to light. Conversely, if the idea stank, it wasn't your fault either, the gods got it wrong! Either way the artist's reputation remained in tact. 

The American poet Ruth Stone could see "a thunderous train of air coming down over the landscape"  where she lived in the mid-west. The wind was ladened with a new idea. She would run furiously to her house to get a piece of paper, for if the ideas passed over and she wasn't ready, someone further along, would collect and use them.

I need to grab that idea when it comes to me, record it, and use it without questioning!

“The Torment” (114.5 x 76.5 cm) Charcoal, Pastel, Graphite on Paper

Tormented to the point of distraction, 

each day is a defeat 

as I reside in these hours 

of mediocrity. 

I know what’s out there, 

but can’t quite get to it.