Red Mangrove (122 x 122 cm)

In the landscape I have a sense when a subject or subjects suitable for painting are nearby. It depends, of course, on what series or type of subjects I am working on at the time. Take Red Mangrove as an example. Recently I have been interested in mangroves as subjects. The shapes are fascinating and create wonderful grids in the design format of a painting. Their rhythmical directions, structures, textures and colours, are all part of that attraction, as are the shadows cast on their branches and trunks, and in the water. Contrasts of sky and sea backgrounds and sandy or muddy foregrounds, with just a shallow coverage of the tide, the surface throwing reflections back onto the trunks … The Red mangrove species is common to the Great Sandy Strait. Its leaves are a bright green and as they die, take on the many hues of yellow. Trunks vary from a deep reddish brown to shades of grey, and are often encrusted with oyster shells and other forms of marine life. There is so much more to say about them. They are to me exceptionally aesthetic.

For Red Mangrove a square format was chosen. In the immediate foreground the subject needed to be life-size, so I decided to make the canvas 122 x 122 cm in size. The first layers of paint begin at the top, with the sea background, a light blue with some darker movement … Prussian blue with body white (zinc white) and the top forms of the trunk and roots are beginning to stand out. The subject is a grid, i.e. its forms are covering the canvas, running out of the sides and top, but with a strong design concept breaking up the space, with positive (subject) and negative (background) shapes balancing each other. The main trunk mass is on the vertical cut (golden mean 1.618 value) to the left side, and other forms are rearing out at the cuts on both sides, some at the top and others below. There is one small seedling growing from the base, just on the right hand vertical cut. A nice touch. It has some small green leaves contrasting against the darks further up. The water line where most of the prop roots are, is on the lower horizontal golden mean.

Prussian blue is used in all the mixes for the darks and lights – with alizarin, burnt and raw umber, cadmium yellow deep and yellow ochre – helping to unify the colour relationships. Blue is complementary to both the deep and light reds. Greens are also complementary.

I am now beginning to push the brush in the direction of the many ellipses running around trunks and branches. The mangrove has a natural propensity to show growth rings around its trunks, which allows the raised drawn movement in paint to look natural. The forms, with their wonderful texture – bumps, small lumps, pits, scars, and the very prominent remains of oyster shells – are beginning to show their objective structure and, hopefully, subjective essence, and I am now so very much a part of this painting. The water at the base of the oblique picture plain is full of movement, the slightly zig-zag diagonals of blues, greens, reflected browns and yellows are moving down towards the bottom edge of the canvas. Sand from the bank is becoming visible through the water surface … or is it? It’s ambiguous.

After almost one month of work, at least eight hours per day, the painting is finished. And I am pleased. I frame it with a very thin shadow-box profile of hoop pine coloured a pinkish off-white to relate to the lights in the painting. Looks good.

Red Mangroves II (51 x 135 cm)

This painting follows on in the tradition of its big brother Red Mangrove, but is a subject in its own right. Its colour palette is similar, but the spatial tension is a little stronger. The shape is vertical to the proportion of one whirling square rectangle, plus one square; the sum total of 51.5 x 135 cm, designed to encompass the subject, which is basically root tubers, beginning at the top right golden mean and moving diagonally down to the bottom left. Simple shapes but so much rhythm, with its beautiful contrast of directions from forms behind. Some leaves appear in the top left, and another adeptly placed seedling is coming up from the bottom right cut. Drawn movement in paint again shows the structure of ellipses, especially the front forms which are lighter pinks, contrasting with the darker reds and blues of the background. I frame it much the same as Red Mangrove but tint it a darker pink to relate to the mid pinks in the painting.

Deep Creek (50 x 158 cm)

Another in the series of cliff subjects, this one taken from near the Deep Creek estuary on the western side of Fraser Island: another ancient dune system, with beautiful red-pink oxides colouring the sandstone cliff face, gradually subsiding into the sea. It is a simple subject, yet not so simple, the red and salmon pink cliffs reflecting into blue-green water … the shapes are fascinating; just love the colour complementaries, juxtaposing with the rhythmic movements of water, the blue from the sky joining in with their play.

A light coloured araucaria pine, minimal shadowbox frame presents the subject well.

Cliff II (50 x 158 cm)

Continuing on down the Sandy Strait, in the same area as Cliff I, this subject is a little more complex. Deep reds, sumptuous red-darks, comprising burnt umber, permanent mauve, alizarin, cadmium yellow deep, and white, to give, among other things, a variety of pinks …

The same attention to drawn movement is applied, and for the same reasons, but the design is obviously different. The green of the sea is complimentary to the reds, and balances its area with the white band, or mass, across the top of the format. Moving up the canvas from the sea, which is an oblique plain, to the rock ledge, then sloping inwards up to the cliff base, a vertical plain to the top, with the exception of concave shapes on the way up … I like the large concave form on the right, coveting the ‘fall-out’ area. It strengthens the notional space, moving obliquely into the cliff face.

Cliff I (50 x 158 cm)

The first in a series of cliff subjects, as viewed from the sea, near Deep Creek at Ungowa, on the western side of Fraser Island. Cliff I, being sandstone, is a remnant of a very old dune system, exposed by the sea … oxides having leached down from the surface over thousands of years, forming the colours seen today.

I love the red of this cliff face, bright golds and siennas, but it is the composition that is also alluring, with its rhythmical verticals and horizontals throughout. It’s like a slice of cake, the vertical vein running from top to bottom, and the zig-zag of dark coming from the golden section to the bottom left. We are looking straight at a vertical cliff face, but, in design terms, it is a flat format from top to bottom.

The paint texture is both visual and actual within an accentuated drawn movement (brush marks), showing the directions of both plain and facet, which emphasises surface objectivity. I hope that by showing the structure in this way, as in all my paintings, I can induce a subjective response in the viewer, and get that aesthetic message across.

A thin profile shadow-box frame in natural (brown) pencil cedar, finished the subject well, relating to the reds in the cliff.

Boomanjin VI (triptych, 102 x 102 cm)

(Each panel 30 x 102 cm. Centre Panel displayed 6 cm apart on each side.)

This is a subject from Lake Boomanjin on Fraser Island – another one of those subjects you see when looking for something else. I just happened to look down in front of me, and there it was – or to be specific, the idea was. Pieces of dead reeds washed up as flotsam on the sandy edge of the lake, displaying a natural but aesthetic order, juxtaposing their directions with the surface of the environment, forming a play between positive and negative shapes … Fascinating! Later on, in the studio, I decided to divide the subject into three panels of the same size, making it a triptych. One large panel on its own (102 x 102 cm) would have been uninteresting, but three small panels (30 x 102 cm) displayed separately, with a continuous design relating throughout, seemed to work very well.

A lot more effort though involved – three stretcher frames and canvases, and three minimal picture frames – but when hung, about 6 cm apart from the centre panel, the design was far more appealing. The spectrum is conservative: ultramarine and raw umber, variously combined with body white (zinc) to produce many light and dark greys, and a yellow ochre and white combination create other necessary lights. The more dominant titanium white, being the overall highlighter.

How to make sand look like sand? A difficult question. However, by experimenting with many different brushes, with stubbier bristles, and by flicking or splattering at the canvas paint of different consistencies and colours – blue, grey, brown, white and yellow – gradually with practice, a good quality of surface was built up that had the appearance of sand. I have used this method with all sand areas in my paintings, except in more distant perspectives.

Shallows II (103 x 103 cm)

This subject comes from the same area as Shallows, but has an interesting history. Originally it was part of a mangrove subject taken from the eastern side of Little Woody, in which the rocks, which are the dominant feature of the subject now, were only a background for the trees. Feeling that the subject was too busy, I removed the mangroves and emphasised the rocks, and this in turn improved the overall composition.

The depth of the bottom left area of the subject was accentuated and the design has many directions and rhythms throughout. The water travels up obliquely towards a horizontal level near the top, where the band of rocks running across appears to rise vertically as their colours change. There is an emphasis on reflected light and some distortion promoting depth, and I love the turquoise hue all over. It is framed with a light pinkish off-white, which picks out the minimal pinks in the painting.

Shallows (109 x 109 cm)

On one of the many boating excursions out in the Great Sandy Strait, we arrived at a small island called Little Woody and anchored away from the shore as the beach was entirely comprised of rocks. Beautiful rocks of subtle greys, browns, yellows and lights of many variations, about hand shaped and smaller, rounded with many years of exposure to the elements. Of particular interest were the rock beds in the shallows just covered by a thin depth of crystal clear water. The brilliance of the sun shining through creating multiple reflections from the surface, flashing intermittently onto their many shapes, displaying patterns of light everywhere. Fantastic, out with the camera and many shots later, one particular subject stands out from the rest, with the potential composition to make a good design for a painting. Eventually a 109 x 109 cm square canvas is determined by the actual life size dimensions of the rocks and their arrangement within the format perimeter.

As I am drawing these rocks to scale with charcoal, on the white gessoed canvas, I marvel at the way their shapes are fitting together so well, being in a random order. So many diagonals, verticals, horizontals, and rhythms between them, and towards the bottom frame the water is deeper and therefore distorting the shapes. The design is not oblique. We are looking straight down towards a flat plain at wonderful directions and facets playing off each other. Within the painting process, drawn movement in paint is showing the all important elements of plain and volume, but over all, it is the surface light that qualifies the real illusion of shallow depth. Grey against yellow, yellow ochre, rustic reds and browns and a dark blue brown in the deep crevices between the shapes.

Another month’s work and it’s finished, dammar varnished and framed with a light off-white thin shadow-box profile. One of my favourite paintings.

Reflection II and Reflection III (both 88 x 88 cm)

These two paintings are a pair, and were exhibited together also in my last exhibition, On the Edge II. They both originated from within a few metres of each other and were a result of a fishing trip in one of the mangrove estuaries on the western side of Fraser Island. Those reflections! I just couldn’t resist them. The water was so clear, still and inky dark, so the mirroring effect of the mangrove bank was fantastic. As the boat moved, slight ripples distorted the reflections, adding to the beauty of the scene. I have tried to capture its presence in both subjects by much the same method as the larger Reflection, only this time there are only two layers needed, transparent over opaque. They are not copies of photographs, they are my personal impressions, arrangements and colour interpretations of the subject. I hope to imbue my paintings with something more than a mere photographic representation. Something of the subjective essence that the object has and deserves.

Reflection (103 x 103 cm)

Reflection is one of those subjects that seem to appear as a consequence of looking for other subjects. Walking along a beach on the south-western side of Fraser Island, there were some shallow banks with a few mangroves on the water’s edge … the tide, swirling in from a calm sea, creating eddies around the trunk bases. I was looking through the camera lens at mangrove subjects that would stand out against a background of white sand, when I noticed the bank itself in front of me, only just covered in water, the sand visible underneath. The surface was reflecting sky-blue lights with darks from the mangrove shadows. Good subject, I thought, but how to show that undercurrent in the painting? The surface lights and sandy bottom?

The answer I hope is in the finished work that was exhibited in my last exhibition On the Edge II. Logically the sandy base comes first, then the shadows and then the lights. So the painting was completed in stages, one layer of paint drying before the next was applied. The impression of water movement was gained by using transparent layers of paint, showing plenty of raised direction with the underneath peering through. The prominent rhythms are pushing out of the canvas edges at the 1.618 regions, the main mass is moving around the top left pole, and bright blue reflections at the bottom right are balancing the lights at the top left. A simple but good composition – the painting not so simple.