Filling Your Creative Well: Ana Young on Residencies and Abstract Painting

Daring Creatively: Unfiltered is an Australian art podcast where Sydney-based contemporary artist Korynn Morrison picks up the phone, drops a surprise topic into the conversation, and hits record.

In this episode Korynn calls Sydney-based abstract artist Ana Young — one of Australia's most compelling painters whose practice explores time, memory and silence. The surprise topic: residencies.

This conversation came at the perfect time. Korynn is about to head off on her own artist residency at The Corridor Project in Central West NSW and needed exactly the kind of grounded, honest wisdom that only Ana could give. What followed was one of the most practical and deeply inspiring conversations about what a residency actually is, what it is not, and how to get the most out of being in a completely new landscape with nothing to prove and nowhere to be.

In this honest unplanned conversation two artists talk about Ana's recent residency at Lake Macquarie and what she brought back from it, why a residency is about recording and investigating not producing, how to simplify what you are looking at when a landscape overwhelms you, why going in with no research and no expectations is the best thing you can do, the installations Ana made from found materials and how they surprised even her, working with gouache in the field and why it is the most forgiving medium you can take outside, the importance of finding just one thing in a landscape and really staying with it, and why curiosity is the thing that keeps a practice alive long after technical skill has been mastered.

If you love art podcasts, have ever considered doing an artist residency, or simply want to hear an honest conversation about what it really means to slow down and fill your creative well, this one is for you.

Ana Young Relevant Links:

Ana's website HERE.

Ana on Instagram HERE.

Upcoming Group Exhibition Current Connections at MAC yapang HERE.

Join My Inner Circle: https://www.korynnmorrison.com/mailing-list

Visit My Website: https://www.korynnmorrison.com/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

My guest today is my dear friend, an atlas of creative wisdom, Anna Young. She is an Argentinian-born Australian artist based in Sydney whose practice explores time, memory, and silence. Inspired by the Australian bush, her paintings emerge as contemplative responses rather than depictions, transforming experience into abstraction through layered compositions and diffused forms. Painting for Anna is an act of reclaiming slowness, a space where fleeting fragments of time and feeling are given form. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Australian National University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Arts School Sydney. Has undertaken residencies across Australia and internationally and is a finalist in numerous major prizes, including the Dobel Drawing Prize, the Mostman Art Prize, and the Fisher's Ghost Art Award. Her work is held in public and private collections, including the Mostman Art Gallery in the Western Plains Cultural Centre. And the topic I gave her today was quite timely. And that topic was residencies. Because she has had quite a lot of experience packing her bags and getting things ready to go on residency. So I needed a little bit of help from her. So let's dive in and enjoy today's conversation. Grab yourself a cupper, and I think you're gonna get a lot out of this one. Hey guys, welcome to Daring Creatively Unfiltered, where I call up an artist friend, throw a surprise topic into the conversation, and hit record. No plan, no prep, no agenda, just two creatives having a chat. I'm Karin Morrison, Australian artist, cup overflowing personality, and someone who genuinely gets way too excited talking about the creative life. My guests are artists at every stage of the journey. And the conversations that happen when nobody's performing, those are the ones that we really need to hear. So grab a coffee, get into your studio, and come hang with us. This is Daring Creatively Unfiltered. Let's go. How the hell are you? I'm good. How are you? Oh, I'm good. I'm good. It's been one of those one of those weeks, but it's finally back on track again. How about you? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Yes, I've had one of those weeks. I was trying to finish all the work for the group shot Lake Macquarie, which I've now done. And uh had a massive studio cleanup on Friday, and I just about wiped myself out, but I did it. So I've come in today. I had a busy weekend, so I've come in today to a very neat, tidy studio.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Oh, that's amazing. It doesn't it feel so good? It feels like you got a fresh start when you bring clean.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

It does, and I it actually makes me assess what I've done. Like I look at all the paintings, I kind of move them to another room and I I kind of look at everything. I think, yeah, no, I've no, that's not finished. Yeah, yeah. Which is my way, but I've um I've got currently a lot of a very big painting and two slightly smaller ones that I'm going to I'm working on. So they're they just now that the lake Macquarie stuff is all out of the way, I can kind of relax and go nuts in the studio.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Yeah, and I think as well, like because all of that, um, which you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw the surprise topic on you now because I need your help today. Um you're gonna help you're actually gonna help me today because you know you're my my atlas of wisdom that I come to all the time. I wouldn't say that. You are, you are, but the surprise topic that I wanted to give you today was residencies. And okay. So the lake Macwork that you're talking about, did that eventuate from a residency?

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Yes, yes, it has. Um, the lovely Belinda Street that you also know. Um, she or she's she put a proposal to Lake Macquarie. Yeah, and uh we there was five of there were five of us, and we we got a two-week residency in February 2005, so we split uh the group. Some went on the first week, some went on the second, and we all kind of met up a little bit in the middle as one group left. And then I applied to see whether they had another week on my own because I wanted to go back and I love to revisit an area. I like to feel that I've got that that that kind of put things into my little brain so I can distill it into the work. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to look at every little bit, but I just wanted to reacquaint myself with the area. So that did come out of the residency, and um I was very lucky that they had a spot in March. So yeah, so Peter was able to come up with me, which was great. And how long was it? It was a week this one, but the I mean, um the last one was a week too, because we split the group into two, so a week each. So that's two weeks that I've had in one area, which I was able to uh because Lake Macquarie's quite big. There's a lot of areas around the lake, so um it was very, very good to go back. I got a lot out of it. So a lot of the installation, small little two installations I've made came out of the second week.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

I am really curious to see your installations because that's one thing of yours that I haven't.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

How little? How little? Uh they're um they're about the biggest one's 37 is on a circle, so it's 37 by 34, I think, by two two centimeters in depth. And the other one's about 30 something by 27 by two in depth. But the difficulty with them was to actually refine them. I kept they changed about, I mean, it's taken me almost three months to complete them. You wouldn't think so, but to actually get what I wanted, and also they're all made with found materials, so that was tricky. Um so they're made in two parts. Um, so I've just been talking to our lovely curator too. She wanted a little bit more info, and um mainly at install them. So um, yeah, there I I have this thing that I like to use found materials. I don't like to use any, if I can at all possible, I try to use things that I know I can use myself rather than take them to a fabricator. Very occasionally I might, but usually I use all sorts of things that I can cope with and I feel good about the environment. I'm not welding, I'm not, they're just very, but that makes it harder.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

What's it where did you find all the found objects?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Well, I had I had one and I had a little box which is one of them, and I I tend to collect a few things. I haven't done a lot of installation lately because I've just been so busy painting. But um, so I have a little storeroom with bits and pieces, but I found part of the materials from the installation when I was at Lake Macquarie. So yeah, so it's it's kind of it really does relate back in a way, although they look very abstract, it relates back to Lake Macquarie a lot.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Oh, I'm so fascinated to see these. You'll have to send me some photos.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

I will at some stage, and I I have to wrap them all up now and that's going to be quite stressful because some of the parts are quite fragile. So I'm going to have to wrap them really carefully. Are you driving them down? Are you going to show them? No, no, I know, I know. They're going to one of the people I've have offered to drive them up and and Lake Mac will uh reimburse for the petrol. So that's good. Yeah, that's how yeah, I'd have to really wrap them very, very carefully. So there's three three lots of things going to Lake Macquarie. There's two paintings, two installations, and drawings which I've pre-selected, and they'll probably select from that drawing. They don't might not necessarily show any or they might show a couple. It just depends on how the curator sees the show when everything else arrives from the other artists. Oh, I'm so excited to see.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

So is there gonna be a catalogue?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

I think they are publishing a catalogue. I'm not sure. Um usually they do. Kara did. Kara did a little catalogue. Um, so it's nice to it's an interesting scenario to work with a re this is one of many reja gauries I've worked with. And what's really good is that you have got a different, it's not that my work would change because I'm working for a commercial entity, it's what it's just that it gives you an allowance to do a little bit more experimenting, and then that feeds into your other work anyway. It's actually a good thing. So there are no, you know, it's it's it's a really interesting process in that you don't have to, you're not you're not actually thinking, well, you you are thinking all the time, is this going to work? Because these installations took forever. But it does, those installations will then fit into my painting. I know they will. And when I look at them, I see my previous paintings in them. It's quite interesting. So it all and the drawings are kind of like the armature, you know, with the drawings. It's not necessarily that I'm going to look at the drawings when I paint, but they've created a kind of it create a uh, you know, a a kind of story in there that is in my mind, and I don't have to, it's there, so I don't have to go and look at them in a way. Sometimes I might, but they are there. And my work is getting a lot more abstract, so I don't know where that will come out eventually. It'll come out somewhere. I know it will.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Yeah, well. Well that's the beauty of the the residencies, isn't it? That you step out of the studio and it's like now that I've got the corridor project coming up, I'm like in my head, and because it's come up so quickly, I've had to like I haven't had, you know, six months to kind of plan what I'm gonna do there. And so you don't have to plan. Don't plan. Well, what I thought I what I thought, I think I'm gonna work on paper. And I I had like a little bit of a testing thing that's already underway in the studio. And funnily enough, I've had this call at the moment to go back out in the landscape and do a lot more plain air work. So this could not come at a better time. And I just thought, oh, this is the universal nod saying, Yes, that's what you have to focus on. Um so when I like I wanted to get your perspective because you've done the corridor project residency before.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

And is my thinking correct? Because a week is not a lot of time.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

So no, it's not a lot of time. We were there for I think it's seven days, but you really only get five because by the time you arrive, and then you pack up on the last day. I think um the thing to do, which I find, I found a few spots that I liked, and I just went to them. And at the time I'd had a knee knee surgery, so I couldn't go down, I couldn't push myself too much in walking down the hill, or you know, so I I found that really useful to be find the spots I liked and just revisit them. Because uh what happens when you're out in the landscape, everything changes from hour to from minute to minute. So you you don't have time to decide this is you just do it. So it's not like you're oh this is the painting I'm creating, or this is the drawing, you're actually recording as you're there, and that's the liberating part. You don't have time to criticize yourself, you just do it, you go out there and draw, and it doesn't matter, really, it doesn't matter what they look like, it's what your one moment of engagement or what you're looking at, and that's what I like about a residency. And then if I really want to go back, you know, it it's it's a it's a very different landscape too, to to water landscapes. It's very it's very inland and very sort of a stoic landscape. It's quite it's quite beautiful. Um, very, very and the light change. So I I I tend to think that when you're doing a residency, that's what you do. You're just not worrying about what am I going to do. You you might have a plan, you might have a project, but when you get out there, it can all change.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Well, I think what I'm gonna focus on is just like thumbnail sketches. So what I've done is I've got like a few really big sheets of paper, although I might end up just working in the sketchbook. I don't know yet. But what I've done is I've taped them off into like hundreds of little thumbnail sketches. And so what I'm gonna do is basically what I normally do when I go out plain air is I'll bring my gouache, my neo colors, and just some pastels and basic like drawing stuff, and I'll just work over the whole surface. And so I think my game plan is just to focus on the thumbnail sketches, and my goal would be to do one full sheet a day, and I keep working over the top, and then I'll peel them off at the end. And usually what happens with my thumbnail sketches anyway is they become like colour palettes or rough compositions or yeah, all of that.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

And I think it's uh it's amazing. I mean, I a lot of people were were trying to do a few people did quite big. I I think one of the things I say about teacher um doing a workshop is don't try and fit the whole bloody picture in. There's just just concentrate on one area because that one area can tell you everything. To actually try to do it all for me is impossible. So I find concentrating on a few places and in just engaging with those places is for me personally far more productive than trying to do a bit of everything. I just can't advise that I can't do a bit of everything. Um, so I found one day I went down to the river, and a lot of people were going down to the river, and I had to uh get a lift down. I think Elizabeth Cummings got a lift too, and we went down together with David Collins, and I hadn't spent much time at the river, and I thought, no, I'll go back. That was enough. I went back to looking at the rock formations, which to me look like effigies. They look like almost human and they've been there for thousands of years. So I got that out of the landscape a lot more. I just concentrated on that, and that was okay because then I got more out of just looking at that one thing. And interesting enough, when we went back for the show at the Regional Gallery, we then went and had uh breakfast at uh at uh the Corridor Project, and it was interesting seeing them again without even drawing, just seeing them. I I think that sometimes looking is really important, just sitting in a space and looking. So um, that's how I work anyway, but other people worked very differently. I mean, um, it just it's just how you work. Some people work very fast. I actually did gouaches, I took a few pastels, and I did a lot of black and white sketching, which I then filled in, some very colourful ones, but they were always mostly all referring to the place that placing things in the landscape, how the rocks did that for me. But um, so my paint my little paintings I did were three very small ones, and I just concentrated on a few shapes. But everybody, everybody does different stuff, you know. It's it's very it's what how you personally engage with that landscape, I think. What it is that you I think the nice thing about a residence is you I find very quickly, oh, that's really got me. But some people get overwhelmed by the whole lot and they want to do it everything, which is fine, and some people can do that. I can't. I just need to focus on one thing, and I've always been like that. So uh I like the residences because they're liberating, you don't put any pressure on yourself to produce. It's not about producing, it's about recording in a way. And recording you want to record. Yeah, it's not about you're not going there to there's not an outcome in that you've got, oh, I've got to make seven drawings or ten paintings. Yeah. Some people work that fast, but for me, it's about being in that place and recording what that place gives me, rather than saying, oh, I've got to put, you know, do all of this and I've got to do that. I don't operate like that. Some people do, I don't. So for me, it's about that that being there is the most important thing. And then it all if you if you go there and just make your marks, whatever, you are there in that landscape doing it without any preconceived ideas, without anybody tapping on your shoulder and saying, that's right or that's wrong. You're just doing it.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah, well, I think what I've I've also been quite intentional about is I haven't done any research as to what it looks like there, what I potentially want to, like what the landscape's like. I just think that's what almost peels it.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Yeah, that I just want to see exactly how it should be. I think that's the good thing about doing a residency. Quite often, if you don't know the area, uh it's it's kind of it's such a surprise to be in a place like that. That's the luxury of being able to go to these places and which you might never have gone to or known about unless you did the residency, and that's what the residency gives you. It doesn't give you um, you know, I mean, uh it in the Corridor Project has got a very intentional um uh focus on the environment. Um so they're very environmentally minded, but you don't necessarily have to do that, but uh if you're trying to start to fill your head with, oh, this and that, it cut for me it almost spoils it. I want the surprise of arrival and what is this? And you know, there were some buildings there that I loved, and I know that they're not they're kind of man-made, but they're part of the landscape. And I took some night shots of some of them, which I loved and they loved, and I thought sooner or later I know somewhere that will because they are, I think unintentionally, you know the shapes and the places that you use in your practice. Unconsciously, you're looking for those shapes.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Like I'm the landscape, like where I go, like around my local area, like I have a few key spots and I know the different perspectives of those specific areas that I want to focus on. And so I think this is gonna be a little bit of a shake up for me because that's good.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah, I mean it's gonna be fair too. I mean, my work's got more reduced. Um, but for example, going to Lake Macquarie, two of the works I've done, it's they're they're quite different and very, very in your face almost, but um, they're still very abstract. They can read, they read as landscape, but they also read as abstractions. And um, you know, what is not abstract? You look at a part of a cloud and it's abstract. You look at if you if you put a a little lens on a tree bark, that's abstract. So um they're they're very intentionally looking at sky and lake, but they're abstract and they're very, very a lot more not detailed, but a lot more uh what's the word? There's a lot of uh kind of construction in them, which in in minnow work there is too, because it's so hard to to actually you shift shapes all the time. So for example, going to Cara, I know I was looking at shapes because I like shapes. So whether you like it or not, your sensibility is going to impose itself on what you're looking at. Yeah. So whether you're in Cara or Italy or wherever, you're going to find your eyes, your your emotional content, your mental whatever is going to find where you're at, I think, in your practice. I think it does. Unless it's something so different that it's disruptive, which can happen. But I find on and it's taken me a while to realize. I mean, I do know now, but there's certain things I'm finding that I know I'm finding because I am engaging with that, which other people might not even look at, you know. So It's it's an interesting thing, you know. Is it texture, is it space relationships, is it silence? Well, I'm always looking for silence, so and relationships. So that's another interesting thing. So it's wherever you are, I think, regardless of what you're looking at, you're going to zero in on the things that you think, oh yeah, that's that's what I want.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Yeah, funnily enough, it's it's one of those things where like lately, as much as I've been doing my regular like thumbnail sketching practice, I've gone back to doing like a lot of walking drawing. And actually, like I've got like a little mini series going on that I don't know if it'll ever be seen, but I'm testing some things with other mediums at the moment and using some of T's machines downstairs to kind of excavate in different ways. And the way that you know I'm thinking about it is you know, we're kind of telling a story through like the soles of our feet when we're doing these maps. And yeah, it's like one of my installations has got a little bit to do with that.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Oh, really? That's cool. A little bit, yeah, but it it it's along those lines. It's about walking and yeah. So it I mean, that is the landscape. If you're out there and you're there, you are doing all that. I mean, you're you're feeding the drawing to the soles of your feet, to your brain, through your eyes, to your hand. It all comes into it. It's kind of, you know, you can't help it. It's you're not just saying, oh, that's four trees and that's green. When I mean that's very basic, but I think if you're walking and absorbing and not thinking too much about whether the tree's crooked or straight because you've depicted it incorrectly, it's all going to still come into the drawing. It really is. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

And actually, one just before you keep going, I have to ask one question while it's on the forefront of my mind because I'm curious as about like about how you the order in which you approached your day. Like, did you work in the mornings and then everyone come together at the end? I know we're cooking meals together, so each of us are gonna have a night cooking a meal for everybody. That's what we did.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

We cooked uh um, we cooked a meal at night in the morning. You take your own sort of food for lunch and breakfast. There's a few supplies of there's a tea and coffee, but you can kind of get stuff. There's a shopping centre just down the road. Oh, that's down the road. There's a coals, and I think there's even an I'm not sure whether there's an algae. I think there is, but you kind of come together, you know, you everybody does their own thing. Nobody kind of hangs out, oh let's go drawing together. It's not about that. Uh, and there was nine of us, so it was quite a lot. Oh, that was a lot. We only have six, yeah. Nine was a lot. Um, so um we kind of did our own thing. Uh, and some people work really well in the morning and not so well in the afternoon, so they might just write or sit or even go for a nap. Some people get up really early, some get up later. Um, we all come together at night, um, and definitely like I think out of the nine of us, seven cooked. Yeah. So um that was good. We had our night feast and conversations and uh what we did. And some people didn't, some people actually even worked in the shearing shed, you know, it just depended on what you wanted to do. And the good thing about that is that it's crappy weather, you have got the shearing shed to look out on or draw, do whatever you want to do. I mean, it in itself is a beautiful building, absolutely beautiful. So there's a lot you know, there's a lot it doesn't have to be just about sitting outside. You can there's so many things you can sort of absorb. And yeah, five days is not a lot. Um, and that's why I went back to Lake Mac, because I just wanted to solidify a few things, particularly as they were keen for some of us to do installation, because most of the people in this group show at Lake Mac are wall people, they're 2D people. So um it was a bit of a challenge because I hadn't done anything and just the ideas that I generated worked very slowly and going back. I started them up there and they went through so many stages of changes and transformation to get them to where the the installation wanted to go. Yeah. And that was too, I just didn't know how they'd end up. I had some ideas, but it we you know, had to the idea was still there, but I had to keep refining it and refining it and refining it. So that took a long time. That was two or three months of work.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

What I'm curious about actually with your installations, because with your paintings, and I have a soft spot for your work because I get to look at one of your beautiful paintings every night of the week. And one of the things that I'm in love with about your work is that they are less about looking at something and they really do feel immersive. You feel like you're in the landscape, you're absorbing, you're looking through the light, the yeah, you're looking through it. And so when I think about you and installation, I'm like, ooh, what do we do with Anna's work now that we're not being like consumed by the painting? Like what I'm really curious about. Well, it's the same thing, actually.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

It's it's it's looking through. And I I'll tell you a story about that years ago when I had my studio at Hill End and I was selected to have a solo show at uh Western Plains Cultural Centre, and I had a fantastic curator working with me called Kent Buchanan, amazing guy. And every time I had this um sort of kind of thing where I because I find I find painting is the hardest thing, it's always the hardest thing. So um when I finished a group of painting, because I was at Helen, I'd go for a lot of walks and I'd find all sorts of things. And I my first show out of art school, I did some installations and the the uh sculpture department liked them. This is after I left art school, they they really liked them. So I kind of didn't pay much attention to them. And when Kent Buchanan came to the studio to pick my work for the show, he said, I really like those installations, and I still thought they were play. They were like play in between a body of painting work, they were kind of like problem solving, they were and I had all these things I'd found, rusty bits, bones. Um, I had to defy devise a system of joining them together, so twine and all sorts of materials like that came in. So I didn't give them much sort of importance really. And then another friend of mine, another artist came and he said, You've got to show these. I said, Oh no, they're just bits I do in between. And then Kent Buchanan, after I had a show there, he had a few other shows and he wanted some of those installations and some of my paintings. And I said, They don't really go together. He's no, no, no, they do. And he saw it, and then I started to look, and I saw that some of the same things, that looking through that space, that's that kind of quietness, although they're more complex in some ways, because you see an installation, you see the complexity, whereas in a painting, a lot of the complexity is underneath. So the viewer doesn't get to see that, and that's why you get that sense of walking through. So the installations do um they are good companions to the paintings. I didn't realize that for a long time, but these have made now uh you would see the relationship, I think.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

So that's that's an interesting thing. I was gonna say, are they similar to your beautiful paperworks that you had in your last solo show in the beautiful perspective?

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Kind of then yes and no. They're they're more like um, you know, your painting, you have them not quite like that, but there's an element of that. Okay. So they're flat, they sit flat, and you you they're very, very they look very plain. Oh my god, they were not. To actually and a lot of it's to do with the placement. So bit like the painting where they're moving to actually get particularly the new ones, even the one you've got on all of that series, to actually get that relationship between certain elements in the painting, so it does go in and out, is really hard.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Maybe you should explain that actually, because I think when people actually view your work, one thing I will say is that you have to see Anna's work in the flesh because there is just so much depth in the textures and in the tiny little marks. And I mean, every single time I look at your work at home, I pick something different out of it that I haven't seen before.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

It's very reassuring when somebody keeps looking because that's my when I buy a work that is my provisor, that that work takes me back all the time.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Oh, 100%. Same same.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

That's what I want to do with my work. So I even the new still ones, um, they take so much to get them to that point. So that thing about looking through is a way of taking you away from a flat canvas where you're looking at something sitting on a canvas. So you're actually looking beyond the canvas in a way. So I'm trying to get you to go into that space. So I'm it's kind of all this trickery where as a painter you're trying to dissolve the edges. You want you want that that little thing you painted or that big thing to be a little world where you're losing the size, you're just entering it. A bit like what you know, Roscoe did it, Agnes Martin did it, Mirandi did it. So that is a really difficult thing, and it's something I've strived for all the time. And when you're a tonal painter, it's even harder because you're working with these close relationships and you're having to push and pull and push something back. Is that sitting in the space I want? Yeah, you're walking through, like I had one in this very last show in November, which was two arches. And it it was actually about are you walking through that space, are you getting into that space? So that it's always that, and it's always this kind of silence of of being in that space and and slowing you down. And that is it's all very well to say it in words, but then practically to do it is difficult. So it's something that makes me paint because if I didn't have that, I'm looking at this huge one I'm working at the moment, which is almost two metres long, and at the moment it's a mess of marks, and I've got some vision of where I wanted to go, but I don't know until I start layering it where that's going to sit.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Do you kind of I never know? I don't plan. You just start, you just start on the canvas. Okay, right, right. And I start with, and what I quite often do, which sounds crazy, but I learned this from John Piat, who's sadly now deceased, and he was an extraordinary painter and a really good model in terms of how he viewed painting and how he thought about painting. So he used to um have a whole lot of uh canvases and he'd wipe his brushes on one canvas so that if you had too much paint on one brush, you'd go to another empty canvas and wipe it on. So you start integrating this volume of marks, which I still do. And it's very interesting because what happens is gradually those marks coalesce into something. I do have an idea of what overall of what my work means, but I don't have that idea for each painting. I want them to coalesce as a body of work, but I also want them to hold their own space. So one of the things I struggle with is having to frame them because I really want them to float. Yes. And and if you look at a lot of the painters uh who work like that, like Aida Tomesco, she doesn't frame her work, and the the framing of work is you're boxing it straight away.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Yes, but your frames in the last show. This they were, you know, it was the first time I've ever seen someone use a frame like that, and man, yeah, did it work successfully. They were absolutely beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Yeah, it was quite good, and it was interesting because I knew their work, and I I was in London the year before, and I saw Nagnes Martin in the Totem Modern, and I just adore her work, and it was quite a big painting, and she had a very it was literally a silver strip stuck literally onto the edge of the painting. It was similar to what I did, only even flatter. And I just saw it and I thought, yes, that's that's because I'd already started on my body of work, and I knew that I wanted them to float outside the frame. So and going back to that show, the drawings in the in the big boxes, that's why I wear the frame like that, because it meant that you were looking at an object, you're looking at a box, but within that there was a kind of a floating sensation. Yeah. So I wanted that, and that's something that for me is it's a really big struggle because you're working with these sometimes flat surfaces, and then you have to use texture and depth to actually you know how colour gives you depth and all those things. So at the moment, I'm as you saw in the last show, they were very quiet areas, and then you went up close and you saw the text in some of the others. So that holds those very dark, quiet shapes, it gives them gives them weight in a way. So that's that's really what I strive for all the time. Um, so I'm I'm now that I've finished this Lake MAC, I'm I'm actually I've just completed, so I've completed six paintings, two are going to Lake MAC, and I'm working on another three at the moment. So I tend to work in a group. And then one might take me over the other one. But um I like working in a group because then I can't kill them too much.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Oh yes. I feel like I have been having this murdering of painting discussion constantly lately, but it's okay. I think I've moved out of the the the well don't know.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

I mean, if you did one of those uh photographic uh, you know how they now can run a light over your paintings, they do all the old paintings and they've found other paintings. If you'd run one of those over some of my paintings, there's 25 layers in some of them. 100%. Yeah, and so that's what gives it the weight in a way, and and the the viewer doesn't see that, but photographing those works is near impossible because it flattens, the photo flattens everything. So you're not getting that the colour is painters like colouries, they've got colour to kind of get you, you know, that's kind of the the whereas in mine that's not the focal point, so it's it's a it's a s it's a fight to kind of you have to go in and look at them, really.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah. And I think um we were talking like recently when Aida Tomescu's show was on at Fox Jensen, we both went and had a look. And I had this really incredible conversation with her. I felt like I'd been touched by the fairy godmother. Yeah, yeah, she's amazing. About this battle with um allowing things to remain unfinished. And I said to her, My biggest battle is like, you know, when you have deadlines and you're trying to meet things at a at a deadline, and so inevitably what happens is you start pushing shit uphill because the resistance is building on the fact that they need to get done. Yeah, and so you're not creating any space for the work to just allow it to be.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

You're actually, yeah, you're actually dictating to the work person, you've got to get finished, you've got to get finished.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

And that's right, and everything goes backwards. No, so what she said to me on on that um night, she she said, Oh, I never think about finishing my paintings. No. And I thought, oh, that's exactly what I needed to hear it. Just so simple. Yeah, so simple.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

She all yeah, she said to us at art school, I was lucky to have her, and she said, I like to look at a painting where there's a space to go in and there's a possibility of expansion. So she's she's looking at paintings. Sometimes a perfect finished painting is chokes you, it doesn't have room for you. Where do you go in there? So she she talks about the possibility of the painting having a continuous life in a way, and that happened to me with the last show. The very last painting I was working was a really big one, and it went through so many changes, and I was getting to the point where I think, come on, come on, I've got to finish it in two weeks. Come on, come on. In the end, I thought this is ridiculous, you've never done this before to yourself. I got so uptight, so I just let it go, and once I let it go, I just kept working. Suddenly I could see where I was going wrong, and then the solution came really quickly, and that one was one of the probably the one of the paintings that took me somewhere else, and I had done a little one not unlike that for a Christmas show, which sort of was very bright, but the the shapes and that started to come out there. But when you move to a very big canvas and you've got all those spaces, and you're only putting three space three three pieces of construction and volume into the canvas, that was hard. So once I let go of that, you've got to finish it, resolution, resolution, it just suddenly talked, it talked back to me. And it just, you know, it just talked back to me. And that was one thing she she, I mean, I she's an extraordinary woman, artist and knowledgeable, and so um, and I think a lot of artists will tell you that, not just Aida, that when you start to create that sense of, oh, it's I have to complete it, that's the end of it. I mean, Philip Augustine, another of my heroes, he um the classic story about him was he he was an insomniac, so he used to paint all night and he painted this fant what he thought was a fantastic painting, and walked in in the morning, he said, No, actually, no, it's not. And then and that was one story, but the really classic one, and you can see that in a video. She actually said he he painted this painting, and he said, Yeah, it was an okay painting, but it was too much like a painting. Yes. So he scraped it all up and he said, I corrected one end, and then I corrected the other, and then I didn't have a painting. But he said that was okay. And then he said, five, six years later, I started to paint the things I corrected because I couldn't live with them at the time. I wasn't ready for them. Yeah. So that's interesting learning. Uh, you know, I've actually photographed different stages of my painting, and then I look back and I think, maybe I should have left it there, you know. But but that's okay. It's just a painting. You're not saving the world. Um you know, you you can actually it's it's what makes it what makes a better painting to make those mistakes. I I find my mistakes are the ones that take me forward always, always, always. I just suddenly one of the classic ones, and I think Sophie said it in my opening last year. I I was starting to scrape off some paint, and I had a McDonald's wooden spoon, a wooden fork, and I started to scrape, and I thought, oh, I really like that texture. So that was something that I I thought, no, I don't need to get rid of all that paint. I can texture it in this way through a tunnel's fork. But it were it it's just those little things. You don't know, you don't know. I mean, you may I've got a whole lot of one of the canvases I tore up, I've got strips, I've cut a whole lot of strips of it, and they're like little mini landscapes when I look at the strips, and I I it's quite interesting. I just cut them up. I was going to throw them on. I thought, no, they look interesting, I'll keep them, you know. And they're there. I you know, they're just in the studio. So it's it's amazing what you find that you didn't know. I think all artists have got their eyes open. They they take I I take things in. And Peter says, What are you looking at that for? Oh, look at that mark on the floor. Isn't it's how our our visual intelligence portrays itself on what we're finding. And I think I haven't got the enormous technical perfection skills that some painters have. And I I see what they can paint. I think that's amazing. I could never do that. But then I know also painters who have got enormous technical skill and it gets in the way. Yes. Because it takes them a while to jump out of that. And I can draw well if I want and all the rest. But I feel like that's there. That's the armature. We've all had to draw, we've all had to learn how to mix paint. But then it's what you do with that, you know. So I think having a lot of technical skill, unless you have the vision to take that further, can be problematic.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Yes, and I think curiosity, I think the thing is it's all at the end of the day, it's all about learning how to be curious again. Absolutely. All the time.

SPEAKER_01 45:07

Well, the world's so tight now. And that's what going back to residency, that's what's good about them, because you're not going there to finish anything. You're going there with an element of everything's new. So everything is going to awaken you something that maybe you didn't see before, even though you might look for a particular shape that you're familiar with, it's going to be different in how it's in that environment. So that's what um, you know, I actually now, because I've done a couple of residencies last year and this year, I don't really want to do any more because I find that my my cup runneth over. I if I do too many, it starts getting a bit it it it doesn't, it decenters me anyway because I've got too much information. But what I've done will feed me. Yeah, it'll feed me. So uh it was great to go back to Lake Macquarie, really, really good. And that'll feed me for a long time. I I've got that that sort of memory bank, if you like. There's a little sort of part of my brain that's got all those images. And if you've got good photographic memory, you can kind of remember certain things, uh, and also the sketches, but I don't necessarily I'll have them in my studio here and everywhere, but I don't necessarily um look at them when I'm painting. I might go back and think, oh, I like that intersection there, but I'm not I'm not using all that information to paint the painting. They start and they're on their own. They're like a different language in a way.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

Yeah, so I think that's one thing that people ask a lot is that when it comes to thinking in a more abstract way, which this is this is what you're so good at. I often get people that ask, well, when you look at a landscape, how do you actually simplify it? Like, how do you go from all of this information down to this flattened yeah? And so I'm curious to know how you would explain that to someone. I know how I explain it to people, but how do you explain that?

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Well, the first thing if I were teaching how to the very first pragmatic technical thing is make yourself a viewfinder. Oh, is that good? By a viewfinder, I mean a little square piece of cardboard and you cut a shape out of that that's either square or rectangular, so you've got other panoramic. So if people are completely bamboozled, which a lot of new painters or new people learning to paint are they look out then thinking, oh my god, look at all of that. Get your viewfinder and put that on your landscape and find a little bit, and that's your painting. That's number one. If you can't, if you yourself can't divide up when you're looking, I can do it now, but a lot of people find that difficult. The second thing is that I the way I look at landscape is not just to record it, the landscape has to do something for me, it's got to slow me down. So if I'm going into a landscape, I'm not. I think in my statement for the last show, I said I'm not doing a mimetic version of the landscape. I'm actually doing a version of the landscape and how I respond in that one moment. And it's not necessarily a reproduction, it's how what that landscape gives me in that moment, silence, all of those things. So it's a combination of looking, being, sitting, and I always look for that in a landscape. So if I go to a landscape, it has to be something that slows me right down. For example, if I go to um Brooklyn, where I go with the drawing group, it's always I look at the mangrove roots. And that those shapes are abstract, so that immediately takes me to an abstract condition. Um, you know, it it's all and it's always looking through, it's always that silence of the Australian bush is quite weird, it's quite sort of um it it's straggly, it's untidy. You're looking through layers and that. So I'm looking at layering all the time, which is what you said when you look at mine. So there's a sense of space, and for me, the space is silence and slowing down. So that's the only way I can explain it.

SPEAKER_00 49:40

No, that's a great way to explain it. And the other thing I think sometimes when I'm taking people out plain air on like sketchbook adventures or whatnot, one of the things that I always say is less is more. Don't take heaps and heaps of supplies. Keep with like a limited amount of notebook.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

Yeah. Sometimes a small notebook and a and a pen is all you need. Yeah. Because you're doing lines and things. I mean, one of the cases of that when I went to Lake Mike this time, we went to a few different spots, and I was looking very closely at all the she oaks and their movement, and I found this one spot where they were actually growing quite different differently. And when I looked at them, I thought, I took these incredible photos, and I thought this is like a Japanese screen. They were just so oriental, and that's when you're laying another relationship, another reaction to what's out there. It's your reaction. It's not necessarily what the landscape is, but it's how you see that in that moment. So that I did one very, very detailed drawing and one that's just the marks. And when I looked at it, it's just the she-oke pin needle swaying. And that's that is if you're an abstract painter, that's what you're looking for, that momentary uh engagement that with that space. That's not necessarily depicting the space, but how I feel, how I react. So I always want to slow down, I always want to be quiet and and just take one little portion of it. You know, is it and sound, sound's another thing. You know, if you're in a landscape and you hear the water moving, how do you paint the water moving? That's abstract and it's that's a sound thing, and it's a silence too. How you know, how do you? I mean, some of the paint the two paintings I've done for Lake MAC are essentially about the lake and the sky meeting. How beautiful. So they're shapes, but they're quite wild. They're a little bit wilder than my last show. They're very quiet. Um sorry, they're not as quiet. So there's things like that. So when I'm looking at it, I'm thinking, oh, that's a lake, that's a sky, but isn't it interesting that they're meeting or that they're becoming one or that they're moving together, or how do I do I see them optically as one body? All of those things come into how I paint the landscape, or how I because essentially, even though my work is very minimal now, it's still influenced by something I saw. Everybody paints, you can't not, you know, you might be walking down the street and see a square on the footpath, and you think, oh, that's cool. Uh well, why did you notice it? Yeah, that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

That's that curiosity piece, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Yeah, yeah. It's all of you know, it's what you were saying about your curiosity podcast. It's about that. It's how uh as different artists and for some people, you know, people who are figurative or whatever, the curiosity might be in how to depict uh hand in different ways, you know, all sorts of things. It's just what you find. And for me, abstraction is just such a it's another world, really. I think in a book that I was in, I wrote it's learning another language. Yes, which it is.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

It's it a hundred percent is.

SPEAKER_01 53:09

Yeah, and it's it's hard. You've got to have all the other stuff before you get to that.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

Yeah. Well, I think I think in fish finishing up today, here are the takeaways that I've pulled out of this conversation. One, I am gonna bring my viewfinder because it stays in the back of my sketchbook the whole time. Yeah, mine, you know, and mine actually changes. I can pull it like in or out. It's like a plastic one that has like one of those slidey things. So it's quite handy. So I've got that. So I'm gonna take my viewfinder, I'm gonna take my gouaches, and I'm gonna take basic drawing materials. I'm not even gonna allow myself to take acrylic because that's too much.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

No, acrylic's too hard. I find it too hard because once it's dry, it's dry.

SPEAKER_00 53:55

Yeah. So gouache is so malleable, you know. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. At least with the gouache, I can like keep it.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

Oh, you can just keep working, you can run the tap over it, you can do whatever you like with it. I a lot of people are frightened of gouache, but I love it. I've been using it for years, it's just fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 54:13

Well, it's handy because it just keeps reactivating. You can take it, take it out, and you can keep the same paint on the palate and you're good to go.

SPEAKER_01 54:21

Yeah, absolutely. And whereas watercolour is a lot more tricky. Um I I think gouache is very forgiving. And just, you know, uh a few pens, a few pencils. Uh I I had some oil pastel and pastel, which I took, and I took a black pen, which I used a lot, uh, a nice gel pen, and I did and also for the drawings at Lake Mac, I used a lot, I did a lot of black and white drawing because I wanted this I wanted to see how the structures worked. You know, I was talking about relationships and structures, so the relationship between tree trunks and the space behind. So sometimes if you put too much down, you don't see that, you're covering it. So by it's like negative and positive space. So the the uh in a way that feeds into installations too. So there's a lot of positive and negative space.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

So yeah, I think I would I'll focus on that, and then I think the the other thing that I've taken out of this conversation is to document, not produce. So I'm just gonna use it as an opportunity to do all my work.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

Don't don't think about the word production in itself is a is a difficult word for me. You're not producing, you're actually engaging, you're investigating. That's a better word. Yeah. Love it. Yeah, yeah, that's sort of that. That's I never go on any expectations when I go on these plays. And quite often I find the first time a bit tight, the first few drawings, and then I just think, oh, what the hell? And I let go, and I start to really look and pick what I want. And that's that's when you're kind of doing stuff. And when I just don't worry about I don't like the idea of show and tell comparing to other artists, I like to I mean, I'm it's f I'm fine with it, but I always find that a little bit less intimidating. I think it's such a personal thing when you're working like that. Um, that immediately the minute somebody's oh, let's do show and tell, it's it's okay, but I find it a bit com like a comparison. So that's my personal reaction. I get very oh, you know, um, because I don't necessarily do uh a lot of detailed drawings. So I think, oh gosh, you know, but anyway, look, I think everybody you might find people may not draw at all. They might just do installation, gather things. It's it's it doesn't matter what you do, but you are there, and that's the important thing.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

Yeah, just be present to that landscape and use the time to fill my well, and it will be the first time since like having my daughter that I've been able to like just be somewhere separate from the studio, which I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Number one thing, because we all work in our little caves, and that I tend I tend to I can be a bit difficult. I can get into my cave and not want to see anything or anybody. So to actually put yourself in a situation where you are you are sharing with other artists, there's some great conversations that come out, and that's a sharing of of knowledge of you know, just conversation, which is really, really important. It's really, really good. So that's that in itself is one of the valuable things of a of uh residence. Even that alone is valuable, you know.

SPEAKER_00 57:42

And I like I know so obviously I know Susie Jureau and um uh and beautiful Marissa Bell, but the others I haven't met in person, so it's gonna be really good.

SPEAKER_01 57:53

Yeah, I didn't know I had met Sophie, um I didn't know Kate Dorrow at all. Um I didn't know Leah, I'd met Leah once, but I didn't really know her, and we became really good pals. It was a really nice thing to to have that experience without it. And even if you don't see them much again, it doesn't matter. You've had those moments together and that conversation, that's important, you know.

SPEAKER_00 58:20

Yeah, it's gonna be really valuable. That'll be fabulous, you'll love it. Yes, it's gonna be a bit chilly, I think.

SPEAKER_01 58:26

So I'm gonna have to pack some winter woolies. Yes, put a take a hat because your extremities get cold. If you've got half mittens, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:36

Yeah, that's cut off ones that I usually use when I'm out playing them, so I have to pull those out again.

SPEAKER_01 58:42

Yeah, yeah, they're good. Yeah, I've got a pair like that.

SPEAKER_00 58:45

Thank you for taking the time. Yeah, so that's not far off. It's a no, it's literally like I think I've got like this week and next week, and then I'll be there. Yeah, so you'll love it.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

It'll be it'll be really, really wonderful, and um, you're it it's always a growing experience no matter what you get. I mean, I had a fairly difficult time up there because I had a bad knee and my husband wasn't well, but I still got a lot out of it. You're still you're there, you know. It's amazing, it's really, really good.

SPEAKER_00 59:21

Yeah, you have a good day. Yeah, no worries. I'm gonna get back to painting.

SPEAKER_01 59:27

Yeah, me too. About I'm looking at these and thinking they're not painting themselves, so I'd better do something.

unknown 59:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:34

Same here. Same here. Okay. I'll tell you soon. See you. Okay. Bye.