Brett Whiteley's starry night

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's starry night, oil on canvas, 120x270cm.

My final work in the Brett Whiteley series, and the final work towards to Masters degree, is this triptych celebrating Brett Whiteley's  apotheosis ...  his ascension into Australia's cultural firmament - a star at last.

The 270x120 cm work consists of three 90x120cm panels:
Brett Whiteley departs Thirroul
Peter Pan over Lavender Bay
Brett Whiteley illumines our firmament
While each panel is intended to work as a self-contained painting, the work was envisaged as the three placed together to form a complete narrative.

To date my Brett Whiteley series has consisted of numerous works, among others, that explored his vulnerability, isolation and depression so I wanted to finish with this more joyous celebration of his achievement.

The triptych references Vincent's painting Starry night (HERE). I felt this was a fitting motif given that Whiteley worshiped Vincent. He was painting portraits of Vincent in the early 1970's and in 1983 had his his exhibition 'Another way of looking at Vincent Van Gogh' hung by the Gallery of NSW. Brett's tribute received a hostile reception from the critics. One mocked that Brett has been struggling to become Vincent for the past fifteen years. So i thought it only a reasonable gift to Brett to allow him to ascend at last into Vincent's starry heavens.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley departs Thirroul, oil on canvas, 90x120cm.

This first panel depicts Brett's spirit departing the hotel in Thirroul where he died. He heads upward, out over the East coast of NSW. He seems to be entering a portal on the right of the painting.

Harry Kent, Peter Pan over Lavender Bay, oil on canvas, 90x120cm.

That portal turns out to be the window from his painting, Interior with time past (HERE) with its window of his home looking out over Lavender Bay on Sydney Harbour. And so i depicted Brett's spirit, Brett the eternal boy Peter Pan, flying past outside under the Southern Cross (this is my Oz night sky, not Vincent's French one), sailing over the Opera House sails that reference his painting Opera House (HERE).

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley illumines our firmament, oil on canvas, 90x120cm.

In the third panel he takes his place in the pantheon of stars twinkling down onto the Australian cultural landscape, down on his home town of Sydney and the bridge that used to draw and paint so often, down on those savage critics whose names are already forgotten, and down on the young generations energised by just discovering his work for the first time. This is Brett at his zenith, Harlequin funster and mystic, arms raised in haunting and blessing.

And so, gentle viewer, we arrive at the end of this my Brett Whiteley meditations, and indeed, the end of my Masters research Project. In the next couple of posts I will be reporting on the assessment and giving some thought on where to next with this blog, if anywhere. Thank you one and all for sticking with me through this journey.

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More apparitions

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's apparition #9, oil on board, 60x90cm.

Here are some, the last, of my Brett Whiteley apparitions. Apparition #9 (above) is my exploration of how much or how little is needed to suggest a face. How clouded, ambiguous, or anomalous can a portrait be? I was thinking about Vincent's comment in a letter to Theo, "The real painter does not paint things as they are, after a dry and learned analysis. They paint them as they themselves feel them to be ... I want my paintings to be inaccurate and anomalous in such a way that they become lies, if you like, but lies that are more truthful than literal truth."

 The others below are two more inks.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's apparition #7, ink on paper, 

These two ink Apparitions are a bit wilder than some of the more graceful inks in my previous post. Picasso once said, "when i paint a wild horse you may not see the horse but you will sure see the wildness'. Well, these Apparitions purport to be Whiteley, and they are loosely featured on his curly mop, cleft chin, low straight mouth and baggy eyes, but in reality they are invented Expressionist figuration. Which means the wildness is not Whiteley's but mine own, i guess. But then as they used to say in the Renaissance, "Ogni pittore dipinge sè" (Every painter paints himself).

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's apparition #8, ink on paper, 

And finally, my apologies everyone for the delay in responding your lovely comments on the previous post. I've only just returned from a trip away to Sydney and have been flat out getting ready for my assessment exhibition. Am so looking forward to getting a life back!


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Brett Whiteley's apparition

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's apparition #3 ink on paper,  56x76cm.

 I am enjoying just producing a series of quick inks on Canson Traditional 250gsm  paper in between writing a Contextual Studies paper for my Project and finishing a large oil towards my assessment.

I was reminded to actually enjoy my creative work and stop worrying about Universities and galleries by that wonderful American Expressionist painter, Dan McCaw:

"I believe that everyone has an inherent desire for original thought, and as an artist I find a passion to visually express something within myself that cannot be defined but have faith that it exists. I am constantly measuring the strength of my own convictions, trying not to change my art to fit what galleries, critics, and society deem acceptable, for when an artist chains himself to the opinions of others he or she will loose the most important thing that he has to contribute: his own voice and individuality.

Everyone has an internal compass, it has no needle to guide, you only know you are heading in the right direction when it just feels right. It is undefinable, your guides are instinct, feeling and intuition. It may lay past the likeness of the subject, you have to be willing to give up the safe, predictable and familiar, you have to be curious, vulnerable and willing to fall on your face. The treasures lay inside each of us waiting to be uncovered"  

What an uplifting breath of sanity.

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

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's apparition #5, ink on paper,  56x76cm.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's apparition #6, ink on paper,  56x76cm.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's apparition #2, ink on paper,  56x76cm.

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Brett Whiteley's visitation

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's ghost #3,
charcoal, watercolour and acrylic on paper, 76c55cm.

Continuing to explore Brett Whitetley's ghost, i have followed up Brett Whitetley's ghost #1 (which was painted in the dark) by making a few drawings in daylight.

These were exploratory 'doodles' in preparation for my final work, a 190 x 270 cm triptych depicting Brett Whiteley's apotheosis into the cultural firmament of Australia.

This triptych will culminate my Brett Whiteley series and be the final work towards my Masters degree. Hopefully my next posting will be able to show it!

Brett Whiteley's haunting

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's haunting, 
charcoal, shellac, oil and varnish on paper, 76 x 55 cm.

I have been haunted by Brett Whiteley - man, artist, cultural icon. This series of works has been both that haunting and an exorcism.

The drawing above is designed to be viewed through back lighting, such over a light box or illuminated by strong sunlight from behind, otherwise it is a dark and murky, almost undecipherable image. 

But given the aforementioned illumination it suddenly 'appears' as a golden glow, the shellac having rendered the watercolour paper translucent.  

Just like a ghostly apparition should.


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Brett Whiteley's ghost

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's ghost, oil on aluminium panel, 90x120cm.

I wanted to explore further the co-agency of media in creative practice. I wanted to discover, by doing, how oil paint that had been been substantially thinned with gum turps and Liquol might behave if given fairly free flow. Could i use repeated pourings of puddles to built up an expressive portrait? I envisaged a process very much like that employed in water color washes but using a pouring dispenser instead of brushes..

For that, i needed two other characteristics of water color - a reflective support and translucent pigments. For i knew from experience that watercolor paintings (unlike gouache) gain their glow from the light passing through the pigment and reflecting back out of the painting off the white paper beneath to the viewer.

I hoped that polished aluminium plate might achieve a similar effect but with more luminous 'edge'. I think it does. But trying to polish out the imperfections in the surface of a 900x1200x0.8mm plate is exhausting and requires more patience than i have. I used a wax based metal polish which made me worry about subsequent paint adhesion.

Since then i have discovered cerium oxide powder ($35 for 250gm) which is used to polish and clean glass. I haven't as yet tried it on metal. But it has promise and the huge advantage of being a powder that you mix with water to make a slurry. After rinsing there is absolutely no residue left on the surface.

For translucent paints i selected some semi-transluscent oil colors - Prussian blue (PB27), Viridian PG7) and Dioxazine Purple (PV23).

I had also wanted to find out what the best way of mixing, storing and applying might be. In the end I settled on used tomato ketchup plastic squeeze bottles with their screw-valve tops.


Once poured out onto the aluminium surface, allowed to settle and dry, I found the paint even granulated like watercolour. Was it the result of the Liquol mix left standing for a few days?

Unfortunately my photo fails to capture both the effects of scale (the image has a significant presence) and of reflective surface. The light gleams off the exposed parts and through the paint as one moves past and around the painting. It has an inorganic coldness  about it quite suited to the subject - Whiteley's ghost. And the work feels very permanent, being on metal.

Would i do another? Probably not. Not unless i could purchase perfectly polished sheets (unlike the dented and scratched panel i got from an industrial estate). And if i did, the pools of paint would be larger and more layered. And most importantly, i would have to acquire a work easel that i could tilt in all directions, including dead level. So, some investment needed if this were to become a polished professional art form. 

Meantime, it's been an interesting learning experience. And here it is .... Brett Whiteley's ghost.

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Brett Whiteley dances in the wilderness

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley dances in the desert, oil on canvas, 50x60cm

I am haunted by the image of Brett Whiteley dancing in the desert. And so i painted this exploratory small oil, full of unresolved problems, but a springboard to larger paintings to follow that will flesh out the idea.

However, i was so dissatisfied with this painting that i deleted this blog post the following day, hoping to re-paint this subject. This was some months back, prior to painting Brett Whiteley dances on water. But time has run away with me. The new work is not done.  But for the sake of completion am re-posting it now. 

It started when i read Steve Meacham's story in the Sydney Morning Herald (here) (re-run in the Mudgee Guardian four days later ) about the controversial and now notorious time that Brett Whiteley painted a series of faux Aboriginal rock paintings in what might have been a sacred site.

Meacham wrote:
"It's summer, 1970. And Brett Whiteley strips naked to paint an Aboriginal-inspired mural on a sandstone underhang at The Drip gorge, scoured by the Goulburn River over millions of years into one of the most beautiful scenic wonders of NSW."

Why the Mudgee Guardian? Because The Drip Gorge lies near the town of Mudgee and in subsequent years there had been much debate in the pubs as to the value of the 'aboriginal art' in the Gorge. The matter had recently been brought to a head by the intention of a mining company to flood some of the nearby land for mine workings.

Some investigative journalism unearthed the truth ... not ancient Aboriginal paintings but hippy doodles from 1970. But despite repeated flooding over the years the paintings are still there today in good condition.

The truth of their origin was clinched by the discovery of a piece of film in which we see BW, naked, dancing and painting. You can watch the brief clip HERE .

So now the local Council has an original Brett Whiteley under its care while the mining company "acknowledges the potential significance of these paintings" and promises that "our mining operations will not disturb these paintings at all.”

Meanwhile, i am left with the haunting image of Brett Whiteley dancing and painting in the Australian landscape. Picasso once said, "Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen", which is what i guess i'm doing in this Brett Whiteley series.

So, in my mind's eye i see Brett Whiteley dance corroboree.
I see him dance his Dreaming.
I see his paintings flow from his Dreaming.







I see him dance in the desert ... out in the Never-Never.

Out on the wastes of the Never Never -

That's where the dead men lie!

There where the heat-waves dance forever -

That's where the dead men lie.

[from Barcroft Boake, "Where the Dead Men Lie"].

Although Brett Whiteley was also a deliberate artist, articulate about the skills of trade, well versed in Western and Eastern visual languages, it seems to me that more than any Australian artist he painted from intuition, made a cult of his intuitions, sang and celebrated his intuitions like St Joan her voices. John Olsen refers to BW's artistic 'instinct'.

But an artist who puts himself in thrall to his voices - who lives by exposing his Unconscious to the public - travels a barren and rocky road among society's institutions. For this is a hostile landscape that desiccates the soul. There is no shade or shelter from the politics of The Arts and the imprecations of the culture police ever ready to tell you what you should have painted instead.

So I see him dance through T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland", the army of mediocrities and brown-noses bringing 'no relief'.

"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water."

All the while he ached for water ... for solace ... for love.

He thought a cool spring lay in public approbation and the adulation of a plethora of hippy hangers-on. But that turned out to be a mirage.

So he took what solace he could, and in the end, like St Joan, died for his voices.

But not defeated.

For i also see him dance Zorba's dance of triumph-amid-catastrophe in the deserts of the heartland.

As i watch Zorba, i see Brett, now transfigured into Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man:

"to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow."

But we who remain have not forgotten.





POSTSCRIPT:
I had originally embedded a YouTube clip here of Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates dancing Zorba's dance on the beach in the movie, Zorba the Greek. But Fox has sinceblocked the clip for copyright reasons, even though it was only a couple minutes from an entire movie.

Furthermore, Fox has had every clip of any description relating to Zorba removed from YouTube. So i have done the same here and taken down the now frozen image of Zorba.



source 
www.technodisco.net/ 

Even worse, i could not even find a photograph of Anthony Quinn as Zorba on the web through Google. Copyright with bloody vengeance, though I think the only thing Fox has achieved is killing off masses of free publicity for a movie they could be selling. Entire generations will now never even hear of Zorba.  


Well done Fox executives. I hope it makes you a bundle of money, though i fail to see how!




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Painting in the dark

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Brett Whiteley's ghost, oil on canvas, 

This portrait was painted in the dark.

Why?

Because I haven't been able to paint for months. I've been daunted by the blank page. A blank canvas seems a mountain i just cannot climb. Have i simply run out of ideas? Motivation? Bravado?

It is as if i have been as if frozen, trapped in a torpor, paralysed by self-doubt. No, it's not that i didn't have ideas or desire to work. It's that i was intimidated by the task. The responsibility of producing a 'good' painting was too great.

And along comes fellow post-grad student, Bec, who is exploring the notion of liberation from self-critical thinking during the process of painting. She is doing this through contour drawing and painting while looking away from the canvas. She has tried painting in low light as a gambit. So after we talked about, i was fired up enough to give it a try.

The process went as follows. After setting up the canvas and squeezing some Titanium white, Ultra Blue, Prussian blue, Cerulean, Viridian, Lemon Yellow and Indian Red onto a white plastic picnic plate (my disposable palettes), i went and turned out the lights in my studio. I found my way back to the easel with a torch, picked up palette and brush, and turned off the torch. I could just make out the shape the canvas in the gloom. When i looked at my palette, all the colours had turned to globs of black and grey.

I set to work to paint Brett Whiteley's features from recollection. I also carried a query in my head re Brett post postmortem. What might the ghost of Brett look like? Could i touch his presence in dark?

I guesstimated where the bits should be located on the canvas. Very quickly the blobs of black and grey on my plastic plate merged to become a dog's breakfast of vague grays. I pressed on. I could only gauge how loaded the brush was by the resistance as bristle dragged through paint, the weight at the business end as i lifted it to canvas. Sometimes i heard a splat as excess flipped off and smacked onto the canvas as i worked in haste. Whatever image was emerging in the dark, i was not responsible. I stabbed and slashed and squiggled. And then stopped to turn on the light.

Surprise. An image that had a rawness about it. Non-realist. Expressive. Parts were satisfying. Other parts silly or dead. The whole didn't hang together. So i poured on some gum turps to let osmosis fill in the gaps. A mistake, in hindsight. It killed off much of the immediacy and freshness.

But for better or worse, here it is, warts and all.
Art or a mess, interesting or silly, i don't care.
It's what happened in the dark.
I've called it Brett Whiteley's ghost. A visitation in my darkness.
Hopefully it will kick-start some deliberate work in coming weeks.

In the meantime, i've started some art-related 'busywork'. I've stared a Pinterest blog HERE. It enables me to gather together drawings and paintings i like and are influential on my own creative practice. It enables me to share my passions and my work among a growing online art community. If you too have an art Pinterest board i'd love to connect up!

Brett Whiteley's autopsy

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's autopsy, charcoal & acrylic on paper, 59x42cm

“A large incision was made and the scalp peeled back to reveal the top of the skull, which was then opened up with a saw, disclosing the brain ... the brain was taken and placed in  formalin so that, after a period of time during which the tissues solidified, it could be sectioned and examined. There were no scalp, skull or brain injuries or diseases”.  Hilton, M & Blundell, G, 1996, Whiteley: an unauthorised life, Macmillan pp. 238-9.

As you know, I had made Brett's hair a motif in many of the drawings and paintings in this Whiteley series.

I had gotten to know the angle of his nose, its bridge and bulbous end, his straight mouth and cleft chin. My acquaintance had become somehow intimate and personal.

Then i read that they desecrated his corpse, that they peeled back his scalp, that they sundered the curly hair he was so proud of. That they pickled his brain.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's autopsy, acrylic on paper, 170x156cm

My intial shocked response drew a few quick charcoal/acrylic drawings.

Then i set to work with a floor mop to paint a large image (above).

I wanted to bash and splash.

I combed - literally, with a wide tooth comb - through his brain where his hair should been.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's autopsy (detail)

The work that followed (below) turned out as a rather adolescent piece of kitsch. But it started out as an experiment in process. I was searching for some way to conveying the sense of perpetrated violence. 

So  I took the piece round to a friend who owns a farming property and used the opportunity to 'paint' with a shotgun. I thought that by painting an image onto board and then blasting it from behind with a shotgun i might achieve an outplosion of splinters and shards.  These could then be fix into place on the scene with polymer gloss and, all going well, a dynamic piece taken home. 

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's brain, mixed media on board, 46x66x24cm

I had embedded red and blue party balloons, each containing small quantities of red paint, into a mix of plaster, PVA glue, and cotton threads ... hoping that shards of plaster and shreds of balloon would end up dangling from the gun wound. I also hoped that the outward explosion of paint would register and be read by the viewer for the violent painting event that gave it life.

However, all didn't go well. The agency of media asserted itself, this time against my intentions. The board did not consist of splintery timber but was a 20mm thick piece of flooring particle board i had happened to have at hand. The result was that three shots from a 20 gauge firing 6 shot at 25 meters simply blew a hole through it. It punctured balloons but not explosively. The plaster was too brittle and simply blew away. I returned home with a failed experiment.

But i wanted to keep learning from what i had at hand and so i filled the blast hole with red and purple waterbomb balloons, allowing them to protrude as a cluster of organic lobes. I contrasted the tenderness and fragility of balloons with sharp-edged steel medical instruments.  I framed the piece in polished 0.8mm aluminium sheet, searching for a contrast between the 'organic' and the metallic, between the 'human' and 'medical'. But I lacked the tools and technique for cleanly cutting out a rectangle in sheet metal without distortion.

This small work was meant to be a pilot for a larger work of 90x120 cm. But i became too dispirited to continue and all my painting simply ground to a halt. My blogging lapsed into muteness. For many weeks now.

During which time i have survived a car collision in tact (a young man drove through a red light at speed, flashed across the front of me, i hit the anchors but still nudged him and spun him round while he ripped off my front fender).

To top it off this blog was declared public enemy number one by Google. Since end of June web searches that turned up tachisme.blogspot.com were told by Google that "This site may harm your computer or damage your mind" or some such. Seems their crawler didn't like a linked image of Bob Dylan, now removed. Western civilisation is once again safe.

So what next? I don't know. I have images in my head but can't face my studio. I think i'm just wearied by the whole academic process of painting for assessment. I have come to believe that painting belongs in art schools, not universities. Painting belongs to practitioners, not academics. Let universities research and teach art history, art theory and art criticism, but let art schools and artist communities teach the praxis.

I enjoyed the first couple of years of my Masters course when i was energised by the whole adventure of painting and free to explore the world of portraiture. But now i face my final semester. There are papers to be written, formal critiques to be presented. The adventure and lightness is gone, replaced by the grimness of assessment.

I am sick of being judged. 

Brett Whiteley dances on water

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley dances on water, oil on hardboard, 90x120

Brett Whiteley, to my imagination, was always associated with water:

... his paintings of Sydney Harbour with their oceans of Ultramarine, his celebrations of Lavender Bay where he lived overlooking the Harbour, his series on waves that reference Taoist philosophy and Japanese water paintings.

source savill.com.au

(Prophetically enough, i see in this weekend's The Weekend Australian Review that Savill Art Galleries is offering Whiteley's Seagull (1988) for sale - the painting featuring a large white breaking wave).



... but also his whole life. This was a life not so much writ on water as one of walking on water. Indeed, waltzing on water. He saw painting as riding a fluxus, the artist as one who who plumbs the unconscious to retrieve its pearls as images, arts culture as a pool of illusions and tricks, and fame a wave to be surfed.

... yet i am left with the sense that he was always secretly afraid of sinking.

The image i have created contains a touch of surrealism as homage to Whiteley, the Australian Surrealist. It contains an elbow from Salvador Dali, the Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia (battling the odds of mad and mystic water), and Schubert's Erlkönig wooing us away.

The image is ambiguous. Is the figure a demonic and omnipotent magician conjuring the wave? Or is he being overwhelmed and drowned by the tsunami of fate? Is he pirouetting with glee before sublime immensity or is he defensively fleeing the overwhelming darkness?

BW wanted to believe enough in his giftedness to enable him to walk on water ...  to be superhuman, semi-divine, a mediator between Man and the Gods.

But in fact he was all too human.

Daedalus-like, quietly he sank one night in Thirroul.

But it was not defeat for i also see him dance Zorba's dance of triumph-amid-catastrophe in the deserts of the heartland.

source myopera.com

As i watch Zorba, i see Brett as Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man
"to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow."


Ah, but we who remain have not forgotten.

Brett Whiteley holds court

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley holds court, acrylic on masonite, 73x87cm

'Brett did have a genius. A genius for self promotion ... That's what his great genius was for --- creating the myth of Brett Whiteley'.  [Jeff Makin]

'His great talent was for painting but it was not enough. It was never enough. He needed total attention'.  [David Millikan]

James Gleeson wrote of Bett's 'aesthetic integrity being swamped by showmanship'. 'He is an actor masquerading in a cultural charade'.

It was all theatre, the white BMW with BW numberplates, the red camellias he placed under the wipers, the black or white costumes, the sad-eyed addicted wife ... People loved the white suits and the rag-top BMW. They loved the bare bottoms on the beach, the auto-erotic touch, the idea of the artist as an act ... He was mobbed by schoolchildren, recognised wherever he went'. [Hilton & Blundell]

'From early on he was taken up by the glitterati, shallow people who responded. Then came the money-making exercise. It was pretty sad'. [Frank Watters]

all quotes from Hilton, M. & Blundell, G., Whiteley: An unauthorised life, Macmillan: Australia.

Brett Whiteley in the abstract

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley inspired, oil on canvas, 46x60cm

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"A painting is a record of the extremely intensified moments of life - where more than one space, two senses of time, more than the law even seems to work, where the emotional forces seem to be propelling one to a dangerous limit, where reason and explanations become too enfeebled or too speeded up to matter."             Brett Whiteley

 
Why does Harry keep banging on about Brett Whiteley? Isn't it time he switched to some other theme?

Well, one reason i haven't is that i still find plenty of motivation to pick up a brush when i mull over 'Brettness'.

But another is that many of my drawings and paintings, though entitled with 'Brett Whiteley' in the title, could be about anybody. The physical likeness is pretty loose at the best of times.
In these most recent paintings likeness has been abandoned altogether. These are abstract figurative works - experimental, Expressionist, free-style, gestural. They nevertheless purport to be portraits but quite possibly are not. This very problem was raised for discussion during my Fukushima series here in May of last year.

I title them Brett Whiteleys because i had him and his life and art in mind as i worked. But viewers (if i still have any) should feel free to retitle them as they please. What's in a name?


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Brett Whiteley remembers

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley remembers, acrylic on canvas, 50x60cm

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'Memory is a wilful dog. It won't be summoned or dismissed ... It can leave you howling and it can make you smile.’

Elliot Perlman, The Street Sweeper

So i thought about Brett's memories, especially those of Wendy and of his heyday in the 1970's ... memories in the midst of his isolation and depression in the 1990's.

I wanted an image that did both - suggested Brett 'howling' and suggested Brett 'smiling', as the wilful dog came and went.

Brett Whiteley ponders fate

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley ponders fate, oil on canvas, 50x60cm

I'm seeking to make non-conventional images about an unconventional painter - my own images that express something of my own sense of the man and his art.

Why paint this way? I'm searching for expressive power and freshness. I'm turning to pure colours straight from the tube, mixing only on the canvas, for freshness and saturation. I'm turning to colour to carry emotion rather than produce accurate physical likeness.

How to render hair in a way that is not simply 'painting in'? How instead to trust in the agency of the medium to supply a myriad of marks which suggest hair texture? How to rely on plastic qualities of oil paint like paint viscosity, fluid dynamics of solvents, effects of suction and gravity? How to do enough yet not do too much?

detail from Brett Whiteley ponders fate

This painting is part portrait and part Rorschach. It was made the same way an inkblot is made.

Its ambiguous marks rely on the viewer to read form and meaning into the work.

Without the viewer this portrait would not be complete.

So thank you, gentle viewer, for visiting this blog and finishing this portrait for me.


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Brett Whiteley tangled up in blue

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Harry Kent, Whiteley tangled up in blue
oil on paper, 30x42cm

"I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keeping on
like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue."
                            Bob Dylan, Tangled Up In Blue

This is a series of 16 monoprints in oil on  29.5x42cm A3 Canson Oil Sketch 290gsm paper.

Although i call it monoprinting, actually sixteen impressions were made from a single image painted by brush onto plastic sheet. Impressions were taken by hand using an linoprint roller. Therefore pressures were inconsistent from one print to the next. I regarded that as a plus rather than a minus for it introduced some random vagaries that stopped the whole exercise simply becoming mechanical.

They are intended to viewed as a single work that traces the fading of image from heavy impasto  until only a ghost remains. If ever exhibited, they would be hung beside each other in a horizontal run along a wall at face height. Or maybe in 4 x 4 grid 118 x 168 cm as a single work.

Not so visible in photographs is the Viridian of the shadow side of the figure's face. However, it virtually spent by the 6th printing.

The dominant colours however are Ultramarine and Prussian Blue contrasting with the red-orange of the figure's hair. Brett Whiteley had red hair in real life though the colour has now taken on symbolic overtones for me. In my iconography his red hair repersents his passion and creative fire. Ultramarine is Brett's wild blue yonder where all things are possible while Prussian Blue is the darkness in his soul.

As the series advances the fire is gradually extinguished and darkness subsumes the figure.

As i worked, i also had my earlier drawing Brett Whiteley fades away in mind which was a response to a critic's comment:
"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."

You can read the resulting discussion here.

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