Im in my UNSW Art & Design studio space today and whilst people are slow to return from the summer break, Ive seized the opportunity to spread out a bit and review a work that I started out at Lake Mungo in May last year. Initially, I wanted to have the work complete in situ over a number of visits…but this morning I felt differently about a huge roll of paper and the charcoal remnants next to my desk. I could smell Mungo. I remembered a place.
I regularly get asked and to be honest I also wonder why I study this colour in particular… some days I know and I can see the personal connections and other days I’m just baffled why I would bother, but I keep coming back to my connection of colour and country…PLACE
layers of earthly redness. a work in progress
So I saturated the whole sheet which is about 1100cm squared and selected three earth reds; Burnt Sienna, Venetian Red and Perylene Maroon of Winsor & Newton Professional Water Colours and went to town with it!
I could feel the scars of invisible drawings done by sharp stones and sticks from my first time with this paper whilst working at Lake Mungo, NSW National Park. I could feel small grains of sand and clay. A memory of place.
The paper is heavyweight cotton but it becomes soft when its saturated with water and the red pigments of Burnt Sienna and Perylene Maroon soon stain through the surface and embed themselves deep in its layers. I did not used the Venetian Red. It is a beautiful red with a density and weight that is probably closest visually to the red of the pockets of dense red clay at Mungo but I felt that it was too soon introduce her to the work. The Burnt Sienna and Perylene Maroon need to have some time on their own. I want to see what they do first.
Ironically, I have called this post keeping their place, which is a reference to the nineteenth century colourmaker, George Field and his identification and advocacy of the inherent qualities of physical colour used by artists, one of these qualities being…keeping their place. The quality of a coloured pigment is determined by its dispersion with a vehicle (which in the case of my use of watercolour in the studio today is gum arabic) to maintain its stability and strength.
For these reds paints to feel like Mungo they almost need to be subjected to the elements as well…..water, wind, air, earth and time. Every particle needs to find its own place.