As morning dawns and evening fades

Abstract

Discovery is an age-old concept. The lands of Australia and New Zealand were colonized through the adventurous spirit of the explorers we find on the coins or notes of our countries today. In comparison to the Old World, the lands of the antipodean ‘new world’ seem to be not quite tamed and some places remain untouched. The light, colours and forms possess a sense of moodiness that is evocative of the spiritual; the lands could be described as “visual psalms”. Representation of the ‘new world’ is largely imaged through the European conventions of the Old World. Historically, artists throughout New Zealand and Australia have grappled with developing imaging methods that can truthfully render all that the new world represents. Research for this thesis led to an exploration of techniques and ideas utilized by artists such as Colin McCahon, William Robinson and Euan Macleod in the quest to capture the spirit of place in our southern lands. In investigating the old world conventions applied to an explication of the new, I was particularly interested in the religious and the spiritual and how these act as markers or guides to interpreting the land. The grandiosity of the southern lands awakens a sense of the spiritual, prompting an exploration of philosophical and theological ideas around the sublime and the beautiful. This led to an investigation into the transcendent and infinite qualities of the sublime and its relation to the divine. This research accumulated to a personal investigation or discovery of the sublime through filters of spirituality. The poetic sensibility, literature, lyrics and music of the Romantics played an integral part in this discovery. The spiritual symbolism and significance of sky and clouds were explored and this fostered a tendency to focus on the drama of light, colour and movement found in an ever-changing sky. The desire to capture movement in sky through paint led to specific research on other artists such as Victor Majzner, Stephen Bush and Kate Shaw, all of whom stretch the material possibilities of paint. Through a praxis-based research I have sought to develop imaging methodologies with the fluidity necessary to articulate my own sense of spirit of place as well as the specific geological topographies of New Zealand and Australia.