Sally Barron Artist

1. Visit to Melbourne

Pierre Bonnard: Colour of Memory

NSW Melbourne 2023

Visiting this exhibition helped me to study Bonnards compositions and colour close up.see below fig 1

fig 1
Bonnard
Studio with Mimosas 1939-1946
Oil on canvas

I made several sketches of his work, which is a method I use in the studio once I have started my own paintings and wish to further decide how to resolve them. fig 2

There were also a few paintings by his contemporary and friend Jean-Édouard Vuillard which were worth examining for his use of light within interiors. This is a subject that interests me as I want to explore the abstract qualities of a studio space - I feel the environment I work in bleeds into the landscape work and I would like to paint this.

I made many notes on colour combinations, and think about another painter I greatly admire, Fairfield Porter who cited the post-Impressionist painter Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940) and the Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) as his most important influences. (fig 3 & 4)

Fairfield said, from Vuillard he learned to paint in a manner that he described as “concrete in detail and abstract as a whole;” from de Kooning, he absorbed a working process that was open-ended and uncontrolled. 1 If I could sum up my main aspirations for my paintings it would be these 2 things.

Fig 3
Edouard Vuillard
After the Meal
1893 Oil on cardboard

2. Talk by Imogen Taylor

Micheal Lett Gallery Auckland September 2023

New Zealand Painter Imogen Taylor spoke in her talk about the etymology of the Latin word Abstract, meaning dragging or drawing. She regards her work as moving away from representation but also towards it, as she searches for the bringing together of her ideas and concerns of painting. These two ideas need not rule each other out. They are non-binary.

Taylor mentions her pleasure in painting and her links to spiritualist and theosophist painters such as Agnes Pelton USA (1881–1961) (fig 5) who created early work in the mode of what was called introspectives, where there were figures communing with the landscape, very dreamy and symbolist.2

Fig 5
Agnes Palton
Orbits
1934
Whitney Museum of Art

Other ideas I have thought about from her talk are the hierarchies of language, animals, music, touch, as well as the splitting of spaces that some representational devices can do, such as inserting animals into a painting. fig 6

**fig 6**
**Imogen Taylor, Night Eyes (Chestnuts) 2023,** acrylic on canvas, 1500 x 1200mm

3. The Beauty and Politics of Latency: On the Work of Tomma Abts by Jan Verwoert fig7

Reading this essay struck me as very timely for the Key Questions I am considering in my practice.

Namely, am I an Abstract artist who uses representation as a spark to feed off, or am I a Representational artist who’s work becomes abstracted?

In the essay Jan Verwoerd says

“there is something provocative about the insistence on remaining Abstract. First of all, abstraction is the opposite of information. Providing and processing information is the dominant mode of cultural production today.”3

Verwoerd suggests that Abstraction reaches out to that which is not yet quite present in the minds eye.

Another key question for me is how I am inspired by the Abstract Expressionist impulse as well as the Impressionist mark making and colour language. Apart from liking the aesthetic of both of these movements do they serve a purpose for my art making?

This question seems to relate to Verwoerd’s observation of Tomma Abts noting, “By developing her language of processuality out of minute reversals and irregularities, Abts “defies the ostentatious theatricality of Abstract Expressionism’s grand gestures and Tachism’s nervous mark-making.”3

Further reading includes this recent article about a New Zealand contemporary painter who has been recommended to me, Emma McIntyre.

5. Emma McIntrye’s abstraction

McIntryes work also addresses key questions for me regarding abstraction and historical precedents. (fig 8 & 9)

For Example, Graham says that, McIntyre is channeling the art of the Rocco. As McIntyre points out, flowers contain all of art history. Stuck in symbol purgatory, halfway between meaning everything and meaning nothing. Furthermore,

“For McIntyre, ornamentation transforms painting into more than just a scene- it becomes a stage, a site of activity and imagination, tension and release.” 4

fig 8
Emma McIntryre
Pour plenty on the worlds
***(b. 1990, Auckland, New Zealand)***

fig 9
Emma McIntyre 2023
David Zwirner, 34 East 69th St New York City

All these ideas from the other artists are feeding into my work. fig 10

fig 10
Sally Barron
Beyond the garden
Oil on canvas 1650mm x 1800mm

Sometimes my work has started off as a purely mark making event then I ‘see’ something emerging from it that I may solidify, for example a curve may become a hill or island. (See cover photo)

I have been following the processes I set out in my next steps last seminar to create regular studio ‘thought forms’ at the beginning or the end of the session.fig 11

I will see if I can put these together somehow as combining a number of these could make one piece the same size as the large paintings 1650mm x 1800mm.

fig 11
Daily ‘thought forms’
oil on found tiles

6. Campbell Patterson

Notions

Michael Lett gallery

Campbell Patterson's paintings (see fig 12), describe the application of layers of oil paint dictated by numbers taken from units of time. For example, 12 or 24 hours in a day, or seven days in a week, provided “parameters for building up painted surfaces as part of an idiosyncratic, yet rules-based approach.”6

Patterson proposes artmaking as a pretext or alibi, it is merely one of the ways one might expend time, or even attempt to quicken it. Whilst these are not especially concerns of mine, I like the ideas surrounding the exploration of time passing and showing layers of effort going into a piece of art.

***fig 12***
***Campbell Patterson, pseudonym, 2022,*** *oil on canvas, 600 x 450mm*

7. Per Kirkby

I have been revisiting this artist especially as regards to his working methods, studying his drawing en plein air in his garden and drawing from his geologist background for the various formations and motifs in his work. I have noted that like Share Hughes and myself, Kirkby has struggled not to ‘see a horizon’, we seem to need to search out where we are in space - to ground ourselves.

“When you look outside, you never see clearly or innocently. I look outside - and I see the trees and the light. That’s what I see first. Then I start looking for a kind of system. Those leaves are hanging down because the trunk ends there. But I don’t see that first. What I see first is innocent, in a way. So to what extent or when - is the innocence of the first observation replaced by structure? When I paint and repeat the same things over and over again, I see them quicker in nature. So this profession has a certain loss of innocence, if you will. Interviewer: Do you really need to see any more? Do you have to look at the garden? Kirkby: Yes, absolutely.” 5

Per Kirkby is a great example of someone who allows a painting to unfold and gives the effect of seeing with his ‘minds eye.’ He has said that he paints “among ruins”, destroying his previous work with new paint. fig 13

footnotes

1 https://parrishart.org/exhibitions/pictures-in-pictures/

2 https://news.artnet.com/the-big-interview/agnes-pelton-haskell-interview-1822842

3 New Museum 235 Bowery NY Essay by Jan Verwoert

4 https://artnews.co.nz/big-crafty-angels-in-the-garden-emma-mcintyre-spring-2023/

Big Crafty Angels in the Garden - Art News Aotearoa Spring 2023 Essay By Evangeline Biddeford Graham

5 Per Kirkeby was interviewed by Poul Erik Tøjner at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, May 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyiqw-7wlBg

Oct 13 Post 35 - Key takeaways