Even before my feet touched the red earth at the World Heritage Area of Willandra Lakes, I had to consider and prepare for how I might interpret this unique landscape. After all, everything I thought I needed to make art with had to be brought in. We would be a very long way from a supplier of the artists' materials that I was used to.
I've organised countless artist residencies, projects, and events over the last ten years. Artists would tell me what palette they regularly use and the materials they needed to execute a series of paintings in a place. Their colour palette was prescribed no matter where they painted… and the argument that the few basic colours allow artists to create an expansive palette is valid. Still, if the initially selected palette is not considered carefully, then that landscape's subtleties can not be truthfully represented.
So when arriving in Mungo (for the residency), I was determined to explore every colour that Winsor & Newton had developed in its watercolour range. I hoped to find the truth between the landscape before and the artists' palette (the landscape of commercially produced colour pigments- artists colours.
It's been a lifelong pursuit to come to know a place and a colour, and I'm only concentrating on red pigments.
It is a specific colour interest that led me to Mungo. I heard the story of Mungo Woman and Mungo Man. Mungo Woman had revealed herself in 1968 – the year I was born – the traditional owners of this land believe there is a reason for her revealing herself. Her stories need to be told, and questions to be asked. Her presence is in this place. Mungo Man, however, intrigued me for a different reason. His cremated body was laid in the earth very purposefully, with red ochre (not from this area) scattered across his body.
Why was this red ochre so significant to have been placed with this man? The red ochre is different from the red earth and dirt that seemed so intense in contrast to the outback's cool, vivid blue sky. The red ochre has an intensity that lives on its own, and that colour has a power and strength that remained for 45,000 years on mungo man.
These thoughts led me to question… what artists' colours in my paintbox would I use to capture that same intensity? Or what combination of colours?
It wasn't just about mixing bits and pieces together. How could I construct a red with the physical appearance and the subtle characteristic and personality of this colour?
I also investigated the lunettes' pink landscape, which led me to the Gol Gol Layer. This red layer of earth is deep dark red in its colour and is the demarcation of life in the landscape. So long ago…so old is this layer, yet it still is the platform for life…. It seeps through the layers of gypsum silica and silt from the ancient lakes. It creates soft, gentle pink streaks through the lunettes or, at times, deep rich red mounds that seem to poke through the vivid white canvas known as the walls of china.
With all this considered, my task at Mungo is to investigate the palette that captures a place, and its geology, weather, and light. The living colour of the most unique place I've ever experienced.
Extract from my visual diary 19.12.17
