Jean Burman

The rain took up and the sun peeped out… if ever so unconvincingly!  It’s difficult to explain the significance of the weather for this event… especially when for all intents and purposes artists were high and dry and painting in relative comfort indoors.

But despite the cool winter days… the rain has kept humidity high… making it nigh on impossible for stuff to dry!  Given the process we were attempting… working on cartridge paper and reworking the paint… recycling unsuccessful attempts by collaging ripped up bits it into new works etc… and generally evolving and morphing paintings into new ones… a healthy preoccupation with the weather was not an unreasonable obsession given the circumstances!  If I had to describe it… the air feels like soup… and not a good rich minestrone either… more like a thin reedy broth!  Okay… rich creamy pumpkin then… cos that was the only photo I could find!  grin LOL

“eek… waiter there’s a line in my soup!”

However… weather aside… Day 4 kicked off in a very productive way.  For my part I knew I only had a couple of hours to work before heading off to the funeral of a very dear friend who passed away on Monday night after a long and courageous battle with cancer.  The funeral was set down for midday… so I attempted to put aside all other thoughts and just focus on making the most of my morning.

We had a male model today.  A nice young man with a very calm aura and centred attitude.  I love it when life models possess this quality.  They are so easy to paint.  The female model from the day before was way more difficult to capture with her predilection for “challenging” and unnatural poses.  My preference is for easy relaxed poses with plenty of “emotional content” for the artist to work with.  And for those who may be wondering… painting a nude model is not weird at all.  In fact… I give it around two seconds before most people forget altogether that the model has no clothes!

These three examples are early stage works… but I loved the rawness in them.  The first one looks like cro magnon man!  The second… in all its simplicity (I think) captures the sitter’s zen quality.  The third looks a bit like Ned Kelly… not sure what the significance of that is but hey… (!)

It’s odd… but I found this morning to be my most relaxed and productive time so far.  Pressed for time and kind of distracted by the fact that I would have to leave half way through didn’t seem to hinder my progress at all… in fact I think it helped keep the focus going and hurried me along.

The funeral was moving and very beautiful… (if a funeral can be described as beautiful)  It was a fitting tribute to a woman who had lived a full and meaningful life… focussed on her family and her garden… and the people she walked the planet with and touched along the way.   The fact that there was standing room only in the church said it all.  We gathered afterwards at historical Whitfield House (a stone’s throw from where we were painting at the Tanks precinct)  The setting was simply beautiful and I couldn’t help but wonder what Kate would have thought of the lillies.  The air was filled with them.  It was all very lovely.

Today… artists from all over the country gathered here in Cairns, Tropical North Queensland, Australia for the annual Winter in the Tropics  “ArtEscape” event.

Organised “by artists for artists” the ArtEscape is a weeklong workshop conducted by invited guest tutors from all over the country. In the past I have helped with the organising… but this year I decided to join in and try my hand at flexing the creative muscle in Peter Griffen’s “A Line Takes a Walk” abstract workshop.

The Tanks Art Precinct - converted WW2 oil storage tanks

Day one was great fun. We did indeed take a line for a walk! (and then a run)

By day’s end… it was fully out of control!

That damned line was lost and then found… over and over again… as Peter led us through a myriad of ways to express ideas in the abstract form.

“Decorate… echo… and destoy” was his constant mantra… and we didn’t let him down!

Inside Tank 5

By days end… the ground was littered with mutilated examples of his process… albeit bent and twisted into shape by each artist… in their own particular way.  We tried.

My early efforts - rather Zen I thought… (chuckles)

Tomorrow… we shall see if anything is retrievable from our day’s endeavours.  If not… it matters not… because we have all week to get it right… if in fact there is any such thing as right!  (laughs)

Artists taking a break from taking a line for a walk!

Until tomorrow!

Pen & Watercolour Copyright 2008 Jean Burman

It’s funny… but the human mind is not something that we “think” about all that often.  And that’s a paradox in itself isn’t it?  Here are a couple of mind teasers to kick off this post

You know… I could have sworn there were only 3.  But there’s 6.  Honest!

And how about this one?

Seems no matter what you do… the answer will always be that infernal 9!

But the classic is the Spinning Lady… and I will come back to her in a moment.
(You might want to scroll her out while you read on - she can be extremely distracting! LOL)

First I wanted to tell you what I discovered this week whilst having my eyes tested for new glasses.  As part of the test the Optometrist tested my eye dominance.  To do this… she asked me to look though the gap between my outstretched overlapped hands and focus on a point in the distance.  I then closed one eye and then the other without moving my hands.  The eye that continues to see the focal point is the dominant eye.  For me… it is my left.

This got me thinking… and when I got home I did a little research to see if my left eye dominance had any influence over the way I see my world.  And guess what?  Turns out it does.

As most of us probably already know… the left brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa.  [I feel sure this was God's way of showing us that he has an overtly perverse sense of humour] (grin)

And we’ve heard a lot about left brain dominant people being analytical… whilst the right brain dominant are considered to be more creative.  What I wondered then… was whether my left eye dominance had anything to do with my being right brain dominant.  And guess what?  Turns out it does.

Getting back to the Spinning Lady and the test which is supposed to sort the left brainers from the right brainers. Take a look at this.

Hmmm… now what does it mean when she spins both ways.  Does that make me a no-brainer?!

When I first watched this… she would only spin clockwise (which puts me fair and square in the middle of the creative right brain dominant camp).  No matter what I did… even standing on one ear… I couldn’t get that aggravating woman to spin the other way!  Then someone interrupted me with a question.  It was a question that required an analytical response.  Sure enough… when I looked back at the screen… off she went in the other direction.  But then I couldn’t get her to go back!

I have since perfected this… and can now control her at whim.  When I want her to go clockwise I listen to a beautiful piece of music and dream of my next painting.  When I want her to go anticlockwise I have to think about… um…well… what I’m going to cook for dinner… (ha… and you thought I was going to say econometrics didn’t you?)

Seriously… anyone can do this.  And here’s the trick.  Stare at her pivotal foot and the shadow crossing the floor.  Soon you will see that she is in fact not even making a full rotation… but simply going back and forth!

Mind bending?  Yeah… you betcha.

In reality… I believe our brains are multi-functional and multi-dimensional.  Our ability or otherwise to use elements from both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously is determined by how often (and how well) we utilise the abilities of each side… and how well we are able to “make the swap”… (further developing neural pathways between the two).

Certainly genetics has some part to play in this… but I believe most of us ultimately “become” what we think about (and do) the most.  We are the product of our own activity and learning.  To limit the potential capacity of our brilliant minds to one hard and fast rule about whether we are left brain or right brain dominant seems somehow to insult the creator… whomever “she” may eventually prove to be!

Truth is… we are more than probably… a little bit of both.  Or maybe even a lot.  Exactly how much of both is determined by you.  Each and every one of us is unique in our own special way… with something to offer that no-one else can.  Our challenge is to find that uniqueness and bring it to the table.

It’s a no-brainer really!  (laughs)

Next up in the Coral Seas series…

Shoal Water

oil on 6″ x 6″ gallery wrapped canvas

Artwork

Copyright Jean Burman 2008

sideview

Not much I guess. Unless it’s yours! And I remember well… the day I stumbled upon the existence of a man who once, long ago shared my name… (as well as my love for the watercolour medium!)

Intrigued? Well… so was I!

When I was younger I used to daydream about my heritage…. and as a fourth generation Aussie descended (on my father’s side) from Scottish immigrants to this wide brown land… have even (okay maybe only once or twice *wink*) romanticised the notion that I may have been related… somewhere way back… to someone important! Okay… who hasn’t? (chuckles)

Back then I used to wonder about which branch of the family we might have been descended from.

My father was a silent man who never spoke of family… it was only recently we discovered the existence of not one but five great aunts (all of them… now long since gone and silent as the grave!) Okay - way off track now…

So was it Herman’s (Moby Dick) branch of the family… or was it the Lord with the ancestral seat near Edinburgh? Hahaha… truth is… probably neither! But surely we had to be related to someone!

And so it was into this mood of wishing to belong to “someone somewhere” that the unwitting Arthur Melville inadvertently stepped… poor man *wink* No-one could have been more surprised and delighted to learn… just a few years ago… about a man I’d never even heard of before… an artist no less… and not just any old artist… but one who had been one of the greatest and least known watermedia artists of his time!

Surely I could be related to him…oh please!? ~laughs~

Incidentally… Elinor shares his name too (that probably make us sisters)… hers being a middle name… and mine being my maiden surname!

Okay… here’s the skinny.

Arthur Melville lived at the turn of the 19th century (1855 - 1904) at the height of the Impressionist movement…

But he was not one of them!

He was labelled an Orientalist as many of the Impressionists of the day (who painted in the near and middle east) were…

but he wasn’t entirely one of them either!

Stephen Quiller in his 2004 article for The Artist’s Magazine described Melville as one of the greatest yet “least known” watermedia masters of all time”. His loose style could easily have been mistaken for Impressionism… but in truth Arthur Melville leaned more toward the Glasgow Boys (although he was never one of them) than either French or American Impressionism! No… it appears that Arthur Melville was a leader not a follower… and very different to them all.

Born in Scotland… during his early years he travelled to Paris where he was introduced to Impressionism.

TECHNIQUE: Around this time he developed what later became known as the “blotchesse” technique which entailed soaking his watercolour paper and then saturating it with Chinese White. The paper was then stretched and dried… giving a surface which could easily be scrubbed back and reworked back to the paper beneath. This process… innovative at the time… gave great atmosphere to his paintings. Quiller remarked “looking at Bravo Toro you can smell the dust and hear the crowd!”

He travelled extensively around the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea… drawing inspiration there for now famous works which hang in galleries such as The Tate in London and the Victoria and Albert Museum in England… where Bravo Toro (watercolour 22 x 30) now hangs.

His watercolours were not small and intimate but rather bold and expressive and considered quite radical for the times.

Quiller points out how for this reason “Melville’s works were often “skyed” or placed out of eyeline at national exhibitions” (Some things never change! LOL)

He befriended John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler somewhere along the way and served together with Whistler on the hanging Committee of the Walker Art Gallery. In a letter to his beloved Beatrix (Chinkey)… Whistler remarked:

“I get on well with Melville… well indeed I could not have got on without him!”

And so it was that Arthur Melville was a man ahead of his time… but although he enjoyed moderate success during his lifetime… he was never fully appreciated… much less understood. Why does this not surprise me? (slap… ooo ouch… that hurt!)

And the reasons for his lack of acknowledgment were simple. He was at the heart of it a modest man… and nowhere near flamboyant enough in his persona to ensure his own immortality. He took no mistresses… he hadn’t escaped to the South Seas… and hadn’t gotten around to cutting off an ear by the time he died suddenly from typhoid… on the verge of his artistic prime!

Sadly… while his work embodied the spirit of the coming age… it “apparently” lacked the blatancy that would attract the criticism to support it. In short… critics of the day either missed the point… or couldn’t figure it out!

The thought occurs to me… that perhaps this may have been different had he the chance to live a little longer!

Sadly for me… I will never get to meet him. And the truth is… I more than likely share no blood connection to this man who shared my name once long ago.

But it was fun getting to know him… and making the discovery that we have at least two things in common… a love of the watercolour medium… and a healthy disrespect for the conventional way!

That’s more than good enough for me… *wink*

“Castaway”

oil 6″ x 6″ on gallery wrapped canvas

 Copyright Jean Burman 2008

3/4 view

Copyright Jean Burman 2008 

Here is the next one in the Coral Sea series. Still fun… but I can feel a cartoon coming on!