Brett Whiteley in Ultramarine

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Harry Kent, Whiteley in Ultramarine
oil and acrylic on canvas, 76x102cm

Brett Whiteley loved Windsor & Newton Ultramarine.

In some of his most iconic paintings one drowns in a Sydney Harbours of blue, looking for splashes of white - a yacht, a bird, a palm - on which to cling so that, Alice-like, we aren't sucked down into some surreal world.

I finally feel ready to move onto oils after my charcoals and inks in search of a vision of Brett . So this image is based on my Brett Whiteley in lino block prints [here].

It is actually a large monoprint with some subsequent adjustments by brush and solvents..

Some days earlier i made a series of 16 monoprints in oil on A3 paper. They are intended to be viewed as a single work. I haven't been able to photograph and blog the set because of the danger of smudging the paint when handing 16 pieces at a time. And so i am posting this painting first although it follows on from them.

The bottom half of the background is actually Prussian Blue and i wanted the flame-haired Brett (following on from my Brett Whiteley sees red set below) to be be set against the darkness, both standing out against it and progressively being swallowed by it. Foremost in my mind was the tale of the passionate Aussie larrikin artist reduced to isolation and depression.

I crowded the head into bottom right corner, seeking a sense of 'being squeezed out the picture', of 'everything crowding in', of 'struggling to remain in the frame' of fame.

It is so hard to keep your flame burning when you are no longer flavour of the month.

close-up of print and brush marks

But this work is not chiefly about composition. It is very much about painterly mark-making and texture. In many ways, it is more a figurative abstract than a portrait. The the fresh primary colors and knobbly lavish paint-work is what  first strikes the viewer when presented with the actual work rather than a photo.




This effect is heightened by the size of the work. While not huge, nevertheless a height of over a metre gives it a decided presence.
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Brett Whiteley sees red

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Harry Kent, Whiteley sees red I
charcoal, ink and acrylic on Arches paper, 42x61cm

Brett once described his childhood as being filled with Napoleonic rage. (He liked everything in heroic proportions).

His sister Frannie, in her biography of Brett, writes of his childhood sense of abandonment when he was sent to boarding school and when the marriage of his parents failed and mum left home. And his grief over the loss of some close friends in death such as Joel Elenberg. And in his final years his sense of isolation, loneliness, and depression.

In his younger years he had been an obsessive hoarder (birds eggs, stamps, money, soft drink) and later, hoarding firewood made him feel secure. No one has said he was a kleptomaniac but he did used to pinch stuff. Frannie records the small skull artifact he stole from a Balinese grave despite the taboo attached. Blundell, in his unauthorised Whiteley, tells of the time Brett bestowed a massive collection of art books on a friend in London - all previously stolen from a library and hoarded.

I think all the above is symptomatic of Brett carrying a void within that longed to be filled. He hungered for love and belonging,  and sought an artist's fame and public approbation as the next best thing.

Harry Kent, Whiteley sees red II
charcoal, ink and acrylic on Arches paper, 42x61cm

When he met criticism or downright rejection of his work, he was cut adrift, disoriented, filled with despair ... filled with rage. Frannie records his sense of profound hurt when critics attacked him. She had seen him literally cry over harsh criticism. Instead of enjoying accolades after thirty-five years of hard work, in his final years he was bewildered as to why he should be dealt with so cruelly.

Harry Kent, Whiteley sees red III
charcoal, ink and acrylic on Arches paper, 42x61cm

His wife Wendy once said that while he was nice to live with, he could be vicious and switch from gentle to hard in a second.

He painted about rage. Rage against the dying of the light. The rage of the baboon with its paws nailed to addiction. Protective fury over his paintings if they were damaged or threatened. Fury at being told what to do by others.

Harry Kent, Whiteley sees red IV
charcoal, ink and acrylic on Arches paper, 42x61cm

And in his discourse there was fire.

Seems to me he spoke with passion and conviction, holding forth interminably as if to allow no silence in which doubt could creep in.

Frannie speaks of his his endless flow of wisdom, one-liners, put-downs and penetrating witticisms and idealistic tirades on everything from Communism, Australia's need to Asianize, war, pacifism, the Australian psyche, Bob Dylan, and always ...

... art.

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Brett Whiteley listens to Bob Dylan

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley listens to Bob Dylan I,
ink on paper, linocut image 20x15 cm

Brett Whiteley described Bob Dylan as ''the most satisfactory voice in pop, I think. There's sort of mango and Courvoisier and the best sort of hissing and low gravel Jewishness on it.'' (here).
But Dylan's importance for Brett Whiteley went beyond a mere appreciation of the voice.

His sister, Frannie, records in her biography [see below, p. 126] of Brett that
"He found an intellectual and spiritual brother in this man, whom he eventually met almost thirty years later. Brett was obsessed with poet-musician Dylan ... He collected his albums and was intimate with every song as though they were speaking to him directly. He listened to Dylan almost daily for most of his life."

I believe that he discovered in the person of Dylan the kind of intuitive artist, gifted genius even, that he himself aspired to be ... a bringer of gifts from the gods. He saw in Dylan a kindred spirit writ large. In short, he idolized the man and the musician.

Brett Whiteley had himself always wanted the gift of music making. He had wanted to be a rock star. If he couldn't have the fame, notoriety and kudos that came with rock stardom, then he would live the life of a rocker as an artist.

Brett Whiteley played Dylan's music full bore as he painted. He hated silence. Couldn't work in silence. He even soundproofed his studio so that working in early hours would not attract complaints from the neighbours.

Back in 1967  Brett Whiteley moved to New York for a couple of years. He made his home in the crazy Chelsea Hotel.

Hilton & Blundell  provide a lively description of the setting: "'The Chelsea was not part of America, had no vacuum cleaners, no rules, no taste, no shame,' wrote former resident Arthur Miller, 'It was a ceaseless party.' It was where Dylan Thomas died in a drunken stupor and Sarah Bernhardt slept in a huge coffin in the pyramid-like cottage on the roof. ... Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey in its seedy rooms. It was Andy Warhol made one of his first films, Eugene O'Neill and John Huston wooed lovers and punk rock-master Sid Vicious would kill his girlfriend. It was the alma mater of New York pop culture. ... Rock hell-raiser Janis Joplin became Arkie's (Brett's daughter) occasional baby-sitter ... Brett would talk about how Jimi Hendrix would riff up and down his guitar when they were together."

The Chelsea Hotel was immortalized in song by Leonard Cohen with a song of the same name celebrating his tryst with Janis Joplin. At one time or another, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe and Gore Vidal had stayed there. The Mamas and the Papas and the Grateful Dead could be seen visiting.

It was also the centre of the Manhattan drug trade for artists, especially musicians.

The Chelsea Hotel was also where Bob Dylan lived in the 60's, where he wrote Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. Brett kept a huge portrait of Dylan on the wall of his modest penthouse apartment there. It was an acquaintance and adoration that would last the rest of his days.

I sometimes wonder whether Brett Whiteley didn't style his Afro hairdo after Bob Dylan. Yes, Brett had naturally curly red hair that would grow into a mop when long (Donald Friend in his diaries described it as "a great frizzy 'Orphan Annie' halo"). But the shape and tight ringlets, and the comment someone made about how wiry and stark it felt to the touch makes me wonder if he maintained it using product to get 'the look' of his idol. Brett Whiteley's hair has become a motif for me in this series.

source fanpop.com

The 1967 is also when the rock musical Hair blew us all away with the same free-wheelin', high-energy, experimental, counter-culture celebration that i believe marked Brett Whiteley's out-look.


Hilton & Blundell  describe the occasion of Bob Dylan's 1986 Australia tour press conference. "Brett was frantic about what to ask his his hero. He sweated on it for weeks before the Great man arrived, while friends contrived to have Dylan's press conference held at Brett's 'stude' in Surry Hills."

Brett's circle said that he was thrilled to have Dylan there but also desperate for Dylan to respond and understand what he was on about. When finally it was Brett's turn to ask Dylan some questions,  it was as if Brett believed a cosmic collision of personalities was about to take place according to Kate McClymont. She saw Brett as wanting verification from Dylan about his own sources of inspiration and his benediction. But this press conference did not deliver the public affirmation Brett had wished for that he and Dylan were inspired artistes together.

Brett's sister Frannie writes of the time in 1992 when Bob Dylan came to Sydney for a return tour. Brett had bought tickets to every show and carried with him every night a copy of the catalogue from his recent exhibition in case he got the opportunity to present it to Bob. Dylan's minders were under orders not to admit anyone new to his dressing room. But Brett was not new and the opportunity came. Dylan looked at drawings and asked, "How'd you do that man?" Brett was elated over meeting, "Tastic".

But better was to come. The following day Dylan came to the Brett's studio. They spent a couple of hours together looking at Brett's work and discussing painting. All his life Dylan's student, in those sweet hours he now found himself his hero's teacher.

A month later, Brett Whiteley was dead.

And what of Bob Dylan?

On a 1990's recording of Brett Whiteley's favourite music, Dylan is heard to say in an interview,

''say hello to this guy Brett Whiteley. Is he still painting? He gave me some drawings the last time there and they still look good to me.''

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley listening to Bob Dylan II,
ink on paper, linocut image 20x15 cm

In this second version of my linocut i deliberately inked the cuts so that they would show, rather in the style of early German Expressionist woodcuts, while in the top version's printing i had masked out these cuts with paper to obtain clean areas of white. Which is better is a matter of taste.

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Brett Whiteley in lino

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in lino I, linocut on paper, image 20x15 cm

This is my first excursion into the world of linocut block printing. I've never previously attempted either woodcut nor linocut. But the direction these ink and charcoal drawings have been heading has made me want to 'have a go', as we say in Oz.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in lino II, linocut on paper, image 20x15 cm

Brett Whiteley himself produced 8 linocuts in his career.
David Brigitte lists them here as:
1. Waves, 1977, edition of 8 + A/Ps
2. River 1977, edition of 8 + A/Ps
3. River & Landscape 1977, Edition of 8 + A/Ps
4. Fruit Dove 1980, edition of 25 + A/Ps
5. Sydney Harbour by Night 1981, edition of 20 + A/Ps
6. Light Globe 1981, edition of 10
7. Warming & Reading 1981, edition of 10
8. Reading 1981, edition of 10
and all were all printed by him and in low numbers, so are quite rare.

However, reportedly David Preston established Etchers Press in Brett Whitely's Reiby Place Studio in 1978 and  subsequently created numerous linocuts and etchings for Brett Whiteley, John Olsen, Judy Cassab and Charles Blackman.

I started to play with colour but it lacks the starkness that attracts me to B&W.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in lino II,
linocut and oil on paper, image 20x15 cm

Here is one of the lino printing blocks. I took more care with the direction of the cuts second time round.

linocut block for Brett Whiteley in lino II

And finally, here is lino II slipped into a black frame with a double white matt.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in lino II, mounted.

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Brett Whiteley's meditation

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's meditation,

charcoal on paper, 59x42cm

"To draw you must close your eyes and sing."   
                                                                   Picasso

Alison Croggon's review of Whiteley's Incredible Blue, a recent play about Brett Whiteley written by Australian dramatist Barry Dickins, contains a brief para summarizing not only the Dickin's play, but also Whiteley's artistic career:
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"Whiteley is a compelling figure: part artist, part charlatan, myth-maker extraordinaire, he died of a heroin overdose in 1992, aged only 53, in a country motel. So much of his work is trashy product for the cannibalistic art market that at once made and destroyed him, and yet his sublime gift for colour and line gave us some of us our most iconic paintings. Dickins, however, isn’t interested in moralising, nor in biography. What he has created instead is a poetic riff that recreates Whiteley’s restless imaginative excesses, a theatrical meditation on art, beauty and self-destruction."
[read the whole review here].

While regrettably i have not seen the production (though would dearly love to), i was struck by the similarity of artistic intention between Dickins' play and my humble efforts in this evolving series.


The notion of a work being a 'meditation on art' stayed with me.
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... and i began to think about BW's love for Eastern drawing traditions, interest in Buddhism, rapture for Tai Chi  (his sister Frannie says it was the closest he came to actual meditation).
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... and i began to see his art works as Do-Zen, or moving meditations - the traces left by his body in meditative dance.
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... and i began to look for Brett Whiteley's Buddha nature.


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Brett Whiteley listens to Rimbaud

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley listens to Rimbaud,
charcoal on paper, 59x42cm

Brett Whiteley found Arthur Rimbaud's poetry intensely meaningful. It spoke to him of his own inner turmoil. I suspect it gave voice to his anguish over addiction.

"I am weary, I die. This is the grave and I'm turning into worms, horror of horrors! Satan, you clown, you want to dissolve me with your charms. Well, I want it. I want it! Stab me with a pitchfork, sprinkle me with fire.


Ah! To return to life! To stare at our deformities. And this poison, this eternally accursed embrace! My weakness, and the world's cruelty! My God, have pity, hide me, I can't control myself at all! - I am hidden, and I am not."
[Arthur Rimbaud, 'Night in Hell' from A Season in Hell. Read it HERE] 

He would listen Steve Kilbey's recitation of A Season In Hell as he worked.

You too can listen to Steve Kilbey in this Youtube clip.

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Brett Whiteley blue

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Harry Kent, Whiteley blue,
ink and pastel on paper, 59x42cm

I sometimes imagine BW as a larrikin schoolboy, clowning down the back of the class. I imagine his easy-going Aussie charm and winning ways hiding the Black Dog of depression from view.

I picture him in my mind's eye painting with exuberant flair, music up full bore, alcohol subduing the intimidation of a blank canvas.

I see him lost in a reverie of charcoal and paint, sailing close to Nirvana. There was Zen in the making of a mark. And i picture him seek for meaning in the traces his charcoal made, pondering from whence the sublime curves came. He felt a carrier of metaphysical messages, a shaman seer.

Yet i'm also left feeling that he could never quite be a believer.

Instead, a permanent seeker. Seeking a way in. A way out.

I'm not a biographer. I am a visual artist. I am not reviewing the life of Brett Whiteley. I am merely responding to his art and to what i've seen and read and heard about him. It is this impression, my own personal impression (what other can i have?) that informs the images i make.

They are not intended to be great physical likenesses. Nor accurate depictions of the personality his acquaintances and those close to him once knew (indeed, this work is as much inspired by German Expressionist woodcuts).

Rather, the images in this series are the creative products of my understanding (flawed as it might be) and of my creative imagination (limited as it might be). This is art, not biography, history or documentary. They are mine own art.

While this is my own personal Brett Whiteley, my hope is that the works in this series will also touch something in those kind enough to give them a viewing.

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Brett Whiteley contemplates old age

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley contemplates old age,
pen on paper, 27x23cm

In his 40's Brett Whiteley was nicked-named Peter Pan.

He seemed to have the spirit of eternal youth. He had the playfulness of a pickled boy.

At 44 he felt that although his body was aging he still had the same spirit as when he was 14.

When he looked in a mirror he could see a body aging. He could trace the slow ravages of death.

In his early 50's he died.

He never knew old age. Just the dread.

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Brett Whiteley fades away

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Brett Whiteley, Brett Whiteley fades away,
charcoal on paper, 59x42cm

"there is something unsettling in the way the BWS [Brett Whiteley Studio] is part gallery and part shrine to the memory of man who was once vital, and then faded away."
[blog this art life]


This quote comes from an article on the blog this art life. There is no name attached to the article and the blog has numerous authors, so regrettably i cannot acknowledge the authorship.

The article has an unfortunate smug tone about it. It's not just the use of the royal plural throughout. It's mostly the attempt to gain some critical vantage over BW's work by constructing it as disappointingly dated 1960's hippy effluvia.

Of The American Dream, "we began to feel freaked out, the way people in the 1960s used to get “freaked out”. It was a bad trip, man."

Of Alchemy, "we cannot, however, escape the thought that the work is also horribly dated. Anyone who is sentimental for the mythic past of the 1960s should take a look at this picture to be reminded of the reality – although it was painted in the early 1970s, its hippy concepts are so overwhelming it’s hard to take it seriously."

Negative, even catty, yes. But the writer(s) also seemed to be a person(s) of sensitivity to line and to painted surface. While their tastes and evaluations were not mine they conveyed a clarity of perception, a consistency of perspective, and a sensitivity to atmosphere enough to make me look and think again about Whiteley's work. Certainly enough to make me ponder again about my own response to the Brett Whiteley Studio which I had visited a decade or so ago.

Brett’s studio and home are located in a building that formerly housed a T-shirt factory in Raper Street, Surry Hills, an inner-city suburb of Sydney. He bought it in 1985 and converted it into a studio and exhibition space. He lived in the factory from 1988 until his death in 1992.

Brett Whiteley Studio
by Jac Bowie 2006

Brett Whiteley Studio
by Jac Bowie 2006

These pics (taken by Jac Bowie), are much as i remember the Studio from my own visit.

So did i feel, like this author, that "What had troubled us was the deep and inescapable sense of sadness you feel inside the studio. Perhaps it was the ignominious junkie’s death, maybe it was the work that was in a serious state of decline in the last decade of his life."?

I certainly understand what the author meant. Yes, i had the sense that i was walking through the shipwreck of a once proud galleon, now beached, with the tide gone out on its exposed ribs. Yes, i felt sadness hang in the air like stale incense. But that is not all i felt.

For i also witnessed a drawing group in action there. Artists and aspiring artists were gathering around the remains to see if enough energy still wafted through the rooms to energise them too. Or perhaps it was they who were bringing their energy to lay on Brett's shrine.

No, this was not a hippy enclave. It was not the 1970's pickled in a jar. It was a living enterprise. It contained aspiration and inspiration as much as it contained nostalgia and reverence.

a drawing class at the Brett Whiteley Studio
[image link to www.pmmaclism.catholic.edu.au/]

Our author concludes, "Eventually the sadness was too much to take and we vowed we would never again visit the Brett Whiteley Studio."

But this is not my conclusion. I will return soon, just to unpick the embroidery of my constructions of Brett Whiteley, man and myth, artist and icon.

Meanwhile, i will press on with this series. A few more drawings searching for ideas (but i probably won't post any more of them) and then i'll start on the oil paintings. It may be some time before i post one of those.

So a holiday for some weeks, gentle readers, from Brett Whiteley.

Or rather, Harry Kent's scratchings and  scribblings about an enigmatic artist who serves as a window into the enigmatic processes of the creative artist.


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Brett Whiteley's inisistent madness

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's insistent madness,
charcoal and Conte on paper, 52x42cm

"One of the hardest things is to discipline oneself to keep looking until one sees to a point of almost insistent madness, to concentrate on one vision until it discloses its third and fourth veil, to keep seeing past what you have just seen requires feeling and ambition, the more open, the more unexpected and extraordinary the intervention ..."
[Brett Whiteley, from Catalogue of 1976 Exhibition, Australian Galleries, Melbourne]


Here i have portrayed BW with his red hair (he had curly red in life) acting as a kind a burning that both reveals and obscures his vision. I wanted a whiff of Promethean fire. I wanted a suggestion of dangerous craziness.

As Coleridge, the English poet, writes in 'Kubla Khan',
"Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."


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Brett Whiteley Shipwrecked

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley Shipwrecked,
ink on paper, 59x42cm

"I notice a lot of gifted people shipwreck ... the whole notion of having a gift – there is this requirement in it to test it, to ride close to the edge. It seems part and parcel of the very notion of a gift to – to – to rebel against it. And to see whether it is really real. Because it can be very easily dissipated or damaged. Or, ultimately, destroyed. And I’ve had an immense problem with it. Because I don’t really want to spend a lot of time discussing the notion of the disease of addiction, but all my heroes have been addicts and I am an addict, and for the rest of my life, I will struggle against the embracing of the mysterious self-destructive self-murder, the urge to deny, defy, wreck, ruin, challenge, one’s gift." 

[Brett Whiteley from transcript of 1989 video clip Difficult Pleasure: A Portrait of Brett Whiteley ... listen to Brett talk about his gift @ Australian Screen  HERE]


I tried to delve a little deeper to let this image float into consciousness, to move further away from naturalistic likenesses into suggestive, ambiguous imagery:

... the drowned sailor washed ashore with his hair matted in the strand kelp,

...  Ozymandias' head half buried in the desert sands: 

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." [Shelley]

A favourite piece of music he would listen to in his studio, as he painted on the way to shipwreck, was Tom Waits's Shiver Me Timbers .
I'm leavin' my fam'ly
Leavin' all my friends
My body's at home
But my heart's in the wind
Where the clouds are like headlines
On a new front page sky
My tears are salt water
And the moon's full and high.

You can listen to it here on this Youtube clip.



Brett Whiteley Shipwrecked (detail)

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Harry Kent in Kosmos Journal

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Harry Kent, Fukushima Ghosts, 2010 

I have just received my complimentary copy of the current Fall/Winter edition of Kosmos Journal (here) which features my painting Fukushima Ghosts I. (You can read about the painting here).

I was contacted last year by Nancy Roof, the editor, who had discovered my Fukushima Series in my Flickr account, Art Informel (here), requesting permission to publish.






Kosmos is a bi-annual journal  associated with the United Nations. It works for global peace and understanding, so I was glad to agree and to waver royalty payment.

Fukushima Ghosts I in Kosmos Fall/Winter 2011 p.69

My work is featured prominently on page 69 of this 82 page edition to illustrate the article 'An Inquiry: Politics and Consciousness' by Mark Gerzon which touches on the issue of the politics of the nuclear energy industry in Japan.

Great to see my work acknowledged as a meaningful voice on contemporary issues.


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Brett Whiteley in the storm

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in the storm,
ink and chalk on paper, 59x42cm

"The calling forth, the mustering or stealing, or simply the deciphering of supernatural powers, ends only in a crumbling of pride, embarrassment, and intense confusion. Despair, despair - shocking despair"
[a Brett Whiteley diary entry while working on his painting Alchemy]


My Byronic vision of BW.


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Brett Whiteley's Crown of Thorns

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's Crown of Thorns, ink on paper, 59x42 cm

"One way of reading the meaning of a painting is as medical charts that show what the infliction of life felt like - the temperature of pain, the colour of ambition, the texture of pleasure ... The promise of death is that I won't care or know or think or feel anything, so what happens to my work is completely meaningless."
[Brett Whiteley in an interview with Rudi Krausmann for Aspect, summer issue 1975-76].

Brett Whiteley at the Sydney Opera House

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Harry Kent, Brett at the Opera House, ink on paper, 26x34cm

This drawing is another ink sketch in the series (here) commenced in the new year. These are all prelimnary exploratory sketches for an intended series of oil paintings about/around Brett Whiteley.

Brett Whiteley started to paint the Sydney Opera House in 1971 while it was still being built. He had just returned from New York and was now living at Lavender Bay from where the Opera House was clearly visible. 

Brett Whiteley, Opera House, 1982,
oil and mixed media on canvas, 203x244cm
[image link from artquotes.net]

The painting was first exhibited in 1972, but in 1982, after some additional touches, BW gave it to Qantas (the Oz airline) in exchange for free air travel. They decorated their club lounge at Sydney airport with it for almost 20 years before selling it off at auction.

While some see this image as a menacing mass of shark fins, i see it as an exuberant, optimistic, flamboyant, crazy work of celebration. It makes one as happy as seeing the Opera House sparkle on a sunny Sydney day. Yet in so many of the photos of Brett Whiteley he looks serious, troubled, depressed, while his writings are peppered with commentaries on existential despair. So i wanted to bring the two together to celebrate that mysterious relationship which exists between an artist and his or her work. In our understanding, the two often inform each other.

Yet ultimately, the art can't be explained away by knowing the man, nor the man analysed away by knowing his art (Freud's musings on Leonardo border on being silly). Knowing BW had a heroin addiction or a psychotic episode helps get an angle on a few of his works but it hardly explains his talent as an artist.

You can see BW at work and hear him talk about portrait painting in this clip:

In essence, i am using photos of him and his journals and biographical information to construct my own 'Brett'. To those who knew him well, my construction may be way off the mark.

Which is all beside the point.

For me, the notion of Brett represents something about Australia, about painting, about artists, about critics, about life, love, suffering and celebration, and the questing of the human spirit.

My 'Brett' is a symbol, an icon, a talisman. And in this series i am working out for myself just what that talisman means ... with an audience looking on.

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Brett Whiteley contemplated in ink

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley 7, ink on paper, 59 x 42 cm

I have started work on a series of paintings and drawings exploring my personal response to that great Australian artist, Brett Whiteley.

In July 2010 I posted a blog in memory of Brett Whiteley. Now that I had had visitors to this blog from 121 countries i thought that this was an excellent opportunity to introduce the amazing Brett to bloggers around the world who may not have heard of him.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley 1, ink on paper, 59 x 42 cm

I've commenced my excursion into Brett Whiteley using ink and paper. These are preliminary drawings to get me thinking visually about Brett prior to commencing a series of oil paintings. For paper i am using a cheap 110gsm acid free cartridge paper. If these sketches start to show any promise, i may switch to rice paper, Arches or Fabriano. For now, i feel i have total liberty and feel dubious about even showing these early explorations in this blog. But hey, we are all visual artists and like to see work in progress.

Harry Kent, Brett at the Opera House, ink on paper, 59x42cm
go to here

Why ink? It was a medium he used often. Brett described pen and ink as,

"The great unalterable

like sensitive harmonicas

that die of a broken heart

pens love the test of violation".

Yes, the great unalterable. I love that ink is permanent. There is no fiddling. It's a 'one-chance' sort of mark-making. It is like a sword thrust - either a palpable hit or a miss.

As a Zen saying has it,

"When you walk, walk.

When you sit, sit.

Above all, don't wobble".

I love that there is no pre-drawing with a pencil. There is no safety net. ("Have you ever seen a pencil drawing that wasn't safe?", he once asked in a notebook). All my 'errors' are in plain sight. Yet the accumulation of errors can sometimes be so telling, somes so beautiful in their own way.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley opens up,
ink and charcoal on paper, 59x42 cm

These sketches were made using a reed pen that i made for myself from rushes growing by the Tamar River. I also used a goat hair Japanese calligraphy brush to help me get in touch with Brett. He so loved to work with Japanese brushes in the spirit of Zen.

But while i may use the media and something resembling his tools to get 'in the zone', I will not attempt to parrot his style. Brett could do Brett far better than i could ever hope to. All i can do is what i do.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley, Antipodean Explorer,
ink on paper, 59 x 42 cm

In the series i am now embarking upon i don't claim to produce portrait likenesses of Brett Whiteley. Does that matter? (See my discussion of portraiture and likeness here). These works will not be painted from life. They will, in part, be inspired by photos of the man. Does that matter? (See my discussion of portrait painting derived from photography here). These works aim to be expressive. They will be works of my imagination rather than likenesses. They represent what Brettness means to me, what it fires in my own imagination.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley blue,
ink and pastel on paper, 59x42cm

Initially they will be inspired by his art and by his writing. Ultimately, the images will derive solely from my imagination without reference to anything he has done or any image made of him.

They will be about his fate. They will be about suffering, and courage, and the triumph of creative genius over all that binds the human spirit.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's Crown of Thorns,
ink on paper, 59x42 cm.      go to here

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in the storm,
ink and chalk on paper, 59x42cm. go to here

In essence, i am using photos of him and his journals and biographical information to construct my own 'Brett'. To those who knew him well, my construction may be way off the mark.

Which is all beside the point.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley Shipwrecked,
ink on paper, 59x42cm.        go to here

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley contemplates old age,
 pen on paper, 27x23cm.         go to here

See too my most recent Whiteley ink Apparitions,  like the one below, HERE.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's apparition #4, ink on paper,  56x76cm.

For me, the notion of Brett represents something about Australia, about painting, about artists, about critics, about life, love, suffering and celebration, and the questing of the human spirit.

My 'Brett' is a symbol, an icon, a talisman. And in this series i am working out for myself just what that talisman means ... with an audience looking on.

I've embedded a clip of BW at work and play for those who would like see him in action.






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Negative capability in portrait painting

Facing Facts, acrylic gap filler and paint, 76 x 102 cm

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‘The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them.’

                                                           D.H. Lawrence

 I have been searching for a medium that allows impasto work (registering palette knife and brush marks) but that is much cheaper than oil paints yet suited to larger, more complex works. I chose a water based acrylic gap filler used in the building industry. The locally available product that i used is called Selley's No More Gaps. This sealant is water-based and therefore mixes readily with acrylic paints on the canvas.

It's native white color does not alter acrylics colors dropped into it though they are left with a matt finish. However,  once cured, after 24 hours, it can be sealed with polymer gloss which restores color vibrance and prepares the surface prior to glazing with oils. It gives off no toxic fumes during use and so can therefore be spread in large quantities in an enclosed space. Spraying with water softens it into a white buttery slurry.

a charcoal doodle for Facing Facts

The cheapness of the material and its haptic qualities are highly conducive to experimentation, exuberance in application, and exploration in image making. The medium itself contributes significantly to the finished work, becoming an active agent in artistic practice. All this leaves one open to a form of artistic practice that is more open-ended, vague in its intended outcomes, responsive to fluxus and receptive the gifts that serendipity can bring. All of which brings to mind John Keats' notion of negative capability.

John Keats, in 1817 when writing to his brothers about poetry, in a tantalizing brief reference said in his letter:
"I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." There is no surviving record of his ever mentioning it again but it has spawned a considerable commentary over the years ever since.

Robert French, Peter Simpson and Charles Harvey of the Bristol Business School, of all places, summed up the literature on negative capability.
"Negative Capability suggests a peculiarly human capacity for ‘containment’: that is, the capacity to live with and to tolerate ambiguity and paradox, and to ‘remain content with half knowledge’ (Ward, 1963, p. 161), ‘to tolerate anxiety and fear, to stay in the place of uncertainty in order to allow for the emergence of new thoughts or perceptions’ (Eisold, 2000: 65). It implies the capacity to engage in a non-defensive way with change, without being overwhelmed by the ever-present pressure merely to react. It also indicates empathy and even a certain flexibility of character, the ability ‘to tolerate a loss of self and a loss of rationality by trusting in the capacity to recreate oneself in another character or another environment’ (Hutter, 1982: 305)."

Particularly pertinent to my questing for images from the unconscious is Diana Voller's application of Keat's notion to psychoanalysis:
"Negative capability’ is the advanced ability of a person to tolerate uncertainty. This does not mean the passive uncertainty associated with ignorance or general insecurity but the active uncertainty that is to do with being without a template and yet being able to tolerate, or even relish, a sense of feeling lost. ‘Negative capability’ involves purposely submitting to being unsettled by a person, or situation, and embracing the feelings and possibilities that emerge ... In my search for clarification, a psycho-analyst I talked to described ‘negative capability’ as ‘the experience of the conscious mind in the presence of the unconscious’."

Her description of what it feels like to be in a state of negative capability is drawn from the accounts of experienced psychotherapists and is most illuminating:
"They described it as being immersed in something, feeling alert and aroused, having a sense of wondering where this is going to go, the excruciating sense of unknown-ness, shame and fraudulence at ‘not knowing’, a familiarity with the recognition that ‘this is the anxiety of not knowing’. At the same time it was also associated with playing, intuitiveness, and experienced as good fun!
No wonder we don’t communicate about it a lot outside the therapy world – shame, fraudulence, playing and fun – how can that be professional?"

This feeling of being a fraud, of floundering in the world of art ... how familiar!

In working on Facing Facts i ran the gamut of emotions. Sometimes i felt i was tapping something true in my character; other times it felt i was contriving an image. Sometimes the work felt spontaneous; other times it felt over-planned. Sometimes i really enjoyed myself and was fully absorbed; other times it was hard labour and a struggle. Sometimes i thought i knew what i wanted to say with this painting; other times i was groping blind and waiting upon the painting to tell me where it was going. Sometimes i felt like an artist; sometimes i felt a sham. I had to be content to be a state of fluxus. I had to be at ease with negative capability.

But to work with negative capability in portrait painting carries implications for me in how i conceptualize my creative practice. It colors my take on portrait painting, which is beginning to take shape as follows:
1   i feel a need for a freeing up and broadening of the definition of a the term portrait
2    i need liberation from realism and the quest for a 'likeness' for its own sake
3    i see 'painting' as process not as an object; the act of creative practice, not the product of that practice; i conceptualize painting as a verb, not a noun; i see a painting as the frozen track-marks resulting from the act of painting
4    the process of portrait painting is one of searching for personal emotional truth
5    in that sense, the work is expressive at its very root
6    freedom to search aspects of identity of the sitter apart from physical appearance
7    a greater openness to instinctive, non-rational creative processes (Surrealists)
8    a sensitization to inner emotional states during the process of painting
9    letting those inner states guide the the choice of, and especially the handling of, media
10   allowing the media to have significant agency in creative practice
11   if the emotion is true, then it is recognized by others (viewers)
12   conceptualizing painting as being an emotional communication stops the work sinking into solipsism, becoming mere self-indulgence
13    being a communication means painting to an audience, not for an audience
14    painting for an audience - for the sake of exhibition, adulation, commissions, or sales - puts static in the way of negative capability
15    for me, painting for an audience interferes with emotional integrity in the work, for the work likely becomes ever more consciously manipulative and formulaic
16   formulaic technique without emotional truth is painting without soul, it tends towards decorative illustration rather than serious art practice
17   a portrait must contain not only a truth but also a kind of beauty - it may be a seductive beauty or a terrible and dark beauty but there needs to an aesthetically satisfying load in the image or in the traces of its mark-making.

Whether i achieve these aspirations in any given work is a matter of doubt but these notions are gradually firming up into a personal 'manefesto'. (Manifestos in painting went out the window many decades ago which makes having one all the more anachronistically and archaically attractive to me).

In the meantime i always have .... negative capability!


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