The picture of a Painter
by Duncan McKay

That to which we refer with the word “art” encompasses a great many things, to a multitude of different people. But it occurs to me that there must be some (perhaps indescribable) sense of it that is perceived by the practitioner, that all such artists would recognise as essential to “art”. In the past and with the benefit of historical hindsight this was an easier thing to see, or so it seems to me.

Fortunately, to my mind, this past has not entirely passed. Somewhat remarkably, even here in Perth, there is at least one exponent of an art practice that, whilst seemingly anachronistic, is a valuable education to young artists like myself. Someone has forgotten to tell this artist that he cannot aspire to truth through painting, and that is a wonderful thing to witness.

I meandered through a pile of drawings and watercolours in his studio recently, and was shown his new paintings. They are exquisite, even beautiful (though that is certainly a dirty word for “serious” contemporary art), but the patina of the recognisable and the influence of the past that resides on the surface of these images does not tarnish the substance beneath, if one has the time to spend with them.

In particular I was struck by the drawings. It is rare to see so much purpose in an understated trace of pencil. You can see the process of their execution. There in the centre of an expanse of paper is literally a stack of fine lines, resting with all the gravity that might suggest that they had lain there for a long period, that nature has had a hand in their disposition. But there has been a process of construction, one line has been placed next to or on top of the last with deliberation. The lines, however, do not conform to an aesthetic pattern through symmetry or design, but they sit with purpose and remarkably, in the overwhelming field of white, there rises both image and scene with optimal expediency.

These drawings are perhaps only studies for paintings, to come, or already executed, but they appeal to my own spartan sensibilities of structure, form and line before eluding me in the technicalities of paint and colour. But colour is where my friend goes, the drawings progress into paintings through the same process of construction. The process by which every brushmark can (and must) be deliberate and every colour is the product of keen observation in the same way that a line is a measurable entity with angles and curves and length relative to the composition. I do not have the facility with paint, colour or words to discuss the technical achievements of these works, except to note once again the tangible deliberation, discernment and care with which paint is used in these works.

This artist’s work is an interesting display of complete confidence in fallibility and flux. His work is not an attempt to render one moment real, as in a photorealist painting, but to allow the reality of every moment of observation, execution and memory to have a place in the image that he presents to us. Every mark on the page or canvas is clearly of its own time, whether that be in response to observation, memory or a moment of execution. Thus brown winter foliage can reside comfortably on the canvas with the hue of the summer sky at noon, each has been true for the artist at the moment of application.

The artist makes no apology for this apparent inconsistency or for the collisions on the picture plane that it might seem to invite. The work is honest, more honest, perhaps, than a painting that conjures a scene for a moment, the duration of whose execution far exceeds the persistence of the conditions to which it responds. The work is first and foremost a painting, a physical construction that owes something to observation, but is not driven by the inner logic of the “picture”, because that logic is contrived, like the logic of perspective.

Personally I find it is refreshing to have contact with an artist and friend who doesn’t say “I like my work to be open to interpretation,” or “I like the ambiguity of my work.” It is refreshing to meet an artist who knows what his work is saying, who can point to a brush stroke on the canvas and tell me what it means, who holds onto the idea that there is still some sense in which there is a right and a wrong way of understanding his work.

Cezanne and Morandi understood this approach to art. The work of art is a “picture” in which one can observe one’s own observations. The “scene” is the bare minimum of stimuli that one requires for this process, Mont St. Victoire, a collection of vases and canisters, a tea pot. Too often we forget that form and content are inseparable, as we search always for the best form in which to display our highly prized content. It seems that we often know what we want to say and so we look for the most appropriate, politically correct, means of saying it from the thousands of available options, so as not be misconstrued. Somehow we forget that the way that it has occurred to us is the way that it is most appropriate for us to say it, the most honest, the most true. One should not feel called to defend one’s language in art. When one is challenged, one should just know what it means.

There is something missing in the six years of full-time University study that I have completed in visual art. It can’t be gleaned from the occasional touring exhibition at AGWA, it can’t be discovered in a glossy reproduction, or an art history text… but there are traces of it in the studio and in the person of Peter Davidson, to date that is as close as I have been to understanding the Being of being an artist.

My artist friend’s example suggests to me that, even today, this certainty about one’s own practice is attainable, but perhaps I have been looking in the wrong places. One shouldn’t be seeking to compete with the big noises in global contemporary art, but one should find a quiet place to listen more carefully to the noise that one is already making. Morandi did his life’s work in his bedroom.

Duncan McKay