Unpacking the Facade - an investigation into the landscape as motif

Abstract

“Unpacking the Facade” investigates the role of the artist as translator of the immediate environment. Examining a variety of sites in New South Wales and Tasmania, including the Blue Mountains, Fowlers Gap, Hill End, Queenstown and the Tasman Peninsula, this research merges the cognitive models of sensation (intuition) and perception (understanding) to unpack the landscapes’ facade. This merged duality establishes a holistic methodological strategy supporting the comprehension and translation of source material into creative content.

In the context of this research project, intuition refers to the drawing upon sensory experience, memory and the artist’s inner qualities. In addition, the freeing of the pre-learnt explores the intuitive and gestural through calligraphic line, signifying an abandonment of a predetermined pictorial outcome. Contrastingly, the observed refers to understanding, consisting of that which epitomises logic, order and the physical world as well as cognising the multitude of received sensations - intuition.

This research project involves an examination of the art practice of three key artists, Cy Twombly, Per Kirkeby and John Wolseley, whose work demonstrates the merging between intuition and the understanding. It presents an explanation of the way in which these artists enable gesture, spontaneity and the transient to coexist with the rational idea in their making.

Printmaking, drawing and painting comprise the practical mediums used in this project and it is the varying procedural approaches inherent in each of these disciplines that provide key strategies in the exploring of sensation and perception. The employed methodologies readily enable forms of documentation, most apparent in the notating and recording of occurrences during the time spent at each site, that are pivotal in the development and resolution of studio based work. When used in addition with an extensive photographic record taken during field investigations, these strategies aid in the recollection and reclamation of memory during the work of translating a seemingly contradictory synthesis of these garnered experiences.