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 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 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 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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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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