Full time

I’ve almost forgotten I have a home, because I’ve been bunkered down at the Atelier which I pretty much never want to leave. You may recall I’m taking a three-month intensive, having thrown in all steady employment in favour of a full-blown art frenzy, and I’m happy to report that it’s everything I hoped and dreamed.

My glorious new routine involves getting up at the same time every day (what luxury!), and this time is not remotely near 5am, taking some brain food such as Bammes or Scott’s ‘book’ to a pleasant, sunny café, and cruising down to the studio by 9.30 to work intently until late afternoon (tea breaks allowed).

Scott’s book

I then potter around a while, working on some illustration and such before the evening class, and head home after about twelve hours of making art. Some days there are models, some days there are casts, some days there are cylinder horses. I’ve investigated the properties of cylinders, discovered three-point perspective, faceted David’s eye, explored turning points through colour, carved masses out of charcoal smudges and rendered some velvety legs. It’s extremely satisfying to work hard all day and to feel like all the knowledge one has gained barely scratches the surface. A lifetime of challenge and intellectual stimulation awaits—art is inexhaustible.

So much of what we do is learning to see, and we learn to see by doing. There’s no fixed curriculum, no exams, no term times, no lectures. The teachers attend to us one at a time, demonstrating their own distinct methods and directing us through exercises that correspond to what we already know and what we hope to gain. I don’t note down anything, I only listen and question and try for myself, and listen again and try again. The teachers bring new explanations, new examples, deftly trailing their pencils across my page to unpack things, connect things, describe things. A new language is penetrating my vocabulary as anatomical words drift along assured pencil strokes. Hearing a piece of information doesn’t cement it, but there is always a day when the new knowledge leaps from the page and everything becomes clear.

Tools are always to hand—skulls, flayed figure casts, iPads, books. Books on bones and muscles, books on artists, historical books, philosophy books. Discussion trips from brushstrokes to politics to sugar-free diets. Cake is shared. Those who find scant time for art feel something when they come—they feel compelled to justify their life choices, assure us of their artistic capabilities, make us understand how big they are in the outside world. But at the atelier, life is art. Nothing else is as pure or simple or profound, and those who seek refuge elsewhere are but making weak excuses for themselves.

Also, we are having a summer show. It’s soon! It’s in Paddington, Brisbane! If you want to hear us wax lyrical about art and see a bunch of drawings of Nicolo (and some other things), you should drop by the RQAS gallery on Petrie Terrace on Saturday 8 December. I’m going to be showing Rufus (‘a painting worthy of its name’—‘well I’d best name it, then’):

Rufus © Samantha Groenestyn

 

‘This willingness to continually revise one’s own location in order to place oneself in the path of beauty is the basic impulse underlying education. One submits oneself to other minds (teachers) in order to increase the chance that one will be looking in the right direction when a comet makes its sweep through a certain patch of sky.’ (Scarry*, p. 7).

Time to go make some more art. x

*Scarry, Elaine, 1999. On beauty and being just. Princeton University Press: New Jersey.

Pint size

 

Come along to another little show in West End next month! I’m showing two small pieces as part of a group exhibition hosted by IncStamp. Over thirty Brisbane artists are taking part, so there’ll be a plethora of tiny pretty things to dazzle your eyes.

Thursday 6th December, 6.30pm-10pm
Chambers at 32, 32 Hardgrave Road

Bring your mum! Bring your friends! We’ll go for beers afterwards!

Action and preparation

Princess © Samantha Groenestyn

How does one go about pursuing a career in art? My educational background puts me at something of a disadvantage in terms of knowing anything at all really about the accepted career progression of professional artists, and this has forced me to be somewhat resourceful and unorthodox in my approach. I dream up things, try them, and see if they work. My rather brash method is to act—quickly—and then to stop and evaluate the response to my efforts before taking another brazen step. I’m learning by doing—arranging shows, talking to strangers, and most of all, sharing. I can’t afford to keep anything under wraps; I have to be open about my work, have it ready to show anyone who is interested, and ready to react to their response. I’m learning on the job: learning both how to establish myself as an illustrator and how to go about my craft. I’m trying to grow both at once.

Sketches from the Prado exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery

I’ve been fortunate enough to learn more about the big, bad art world through my artist friends, big-deal gallery openings and talking to the types of people who buy (or don’t buy, as the case may be) art. I’m discovering that one might approach a career in art in a deliberate and measured way. One might take a lengthy period of time to think and to ready oneself, to prepare. Being sure of your work and intentions can enable you to present something solid when the time is right.

I’ve always been in a hurry to do all the things I want to do, and far more inclined to dive right in without adequate forethought, be it moving to Edinburgh to study having done zero research on Edinburgh, or buying lovely musical instruments on a whim, or signing up for a graphic design course three days before the beginning of term. I think of it as engineering luck by pushing myself into situations that might become opportunities. I suppose it’s a bit like playing those old computer games, like Street Fighter, and just pushing that one button really fast so you get the most kicks in and you more or less have to win because something has to connect. But now that I think about it, look at all the energy I have to expend in so many directions! What if I had the focus to work at the one thing I knew mattered to me most of all?

But while I may be over-stimulated, I certainly don’t have a limited attention span. I work most satisfyingly when I work intently on one thing for hours at a time. I like not having to rush; I like labouring over my task and doing it well. Perhaps I’ve reached a point where I’ve tried enough things and need to consider which things are really worth my attention.

Coffee date with Bammes

In fact, I am culling a few things from my hectic schedule just now and am quietly thrilled to be adjusting to probably the best phase of my life so far. As of this coming week, I will no longer be working part time at a café to pay my bills, and I will no longer be spending several evenings a week wrestling with Photoshop and InDesign. It’s hopes and dreams from here on in, baby, and I won’t be pouring away a minute of my time on anything that isn’t art. I’m starting with a three-month intensive at the atelier, peppered with a week at Julian Ashton’s in Sydney, and making a lot of hot dates with Bammes.

Wish me luck!

If you make it down to Vulture Street, West End in Brisbane, you can see some more of my paintings in The Happy Cabin and SOL Breads, as well as some brand new works and my blog banner at The Box.

Auction

Just quietly, Venezia has gone up for auction on the Illustrators Australia website. All the 9 x 5 paintings will be auctioned on the opening night, this coming Friday, but you can get in early if you so desire (or if you can’t make it to Melbourne) and make a bid.

Some of the other submissions are looking pretty swish, why don’t you go and take a look?

Details:
Space 39,
39 Little Collins St,
Melbourne

Friday 9th November, 6pm.

Quality time with Bammes over coffee.

The creek

Nest © Samantha Groenestyn

I was fortunate enough to attend an artist floor talk in Noosa the other week, given by one David Paulson at his retrospective exhibition. The guys at the atelier spoke of him—their former teacher—with starry eyes, and I had to tag along to see their idol in the flesh. His fleshy self is every bit as sparkling, witty and intimidating as his self-portrait, and the man had a lot of irreverent and insightful things to say.

David talked about hiring a model every day for an hour. Thirty dollars a day, five days a week, amounts to a significant sum for a financially precarious artist, but David filled sketchbook after sketchbook this way, refining his understanding of the human form. ‘Some people put a deposit on a house,’ he explained, ‘I invested in my skill.’

Now, I have no grand aspirations to own any sort of property or dwelling, and not only because my financial situation is also on the precarious end of the continuum, but mostly because such things don’t interest me. You are going to work all of your life, and you are possibly going to achieve something. I’ve known people who have proudly announced to me that since the age of twenty-six they’ve been locked into a thirty-year mortgage which they, a sole parent, must spend the majority of their part-time income on, but that it’s the best thing ever and in their fifties they’re finally going to own their somewhat average house in some backwater of Australia. While that’s no mean feat, it’s not exactly a very clever sacrifice in my estimation. No, what I’m interested in is my own skills and abilities, and working at them to achieve the most productive life possible. I’ll always find somewhere to live, and while I cherish the idea of ‘home,’ I won’t make it the driving motivation of my life.

David’s work over his lifetime is varied, but always strong and bold. His angrier stuff from his youth is confronting and bitter, and his student work—realistic portraits and such—is tight and confident. David took awkward questions from the floor and responded with an intensity and honesty that was as unsettling as much of his work. This is a man who says it like it is, and doesn’t accept people applying concepts like ‘metaphysical’ to his painting method. ‘I like the creek, so I paint the creek. There’s so much to discover in the creek. I wish I’d found the creek when I was thirty.’

Said creek is at the back of David’s property in Maleny (it’s also reassuring to know that one can preference skills over house deposits and still wind up with property, creek and all), and his explorations of it are crisp, brash and full of depth. Light shimmers knowledgeably over rocks, sticks and leaves, but those debris hold their own. These are no impressionist paintings playing with ethereal light: these paintings drag you to the bottom of the creek with their heaviness. And you want to be there: this creek is a veritable Barrier Reef of thoroughly delightful underwater plumage.

David spoke of limiting his palette in more recent times to eight colours. Each painting draws on this palette in different ratios: while the creek bed paintings burst with vivid reds, yellows and blues, saving the darks for striking tonal effects, a series of smaller paintings of girls on the creek bank are predominantly dark, saving tiny flecks of pure colour for eerie glances of light off skin and water. J has often spoken of style being a matter of limiting yourself in a particular way—of making a choice about what to leave out—and in David’s case, his palette has forced him to explore other things about the works, though I suspect it has also given him a virtuoso grasp on the limits that his colours can be pushed to.

We spent some time admiring David’s life drawings, and he took great delight in telling us that a drawing must capture the person. Being correct and accurate is not the same as understanding a person through their physical presence and describing that in lines on paper. I’m reminded of Bammes* (p. 10), who says of this ‘sensitivity’ toward the model: ‘we are building up the body’s physiognomy—expressing character through a physical description.’

Meeting David Paulson was a real honour, and hearing his straight-up thoughts on art and life has given me plenty of hope for the unconventional career that is being an artist.

* Bammes, Gottfried. 2010. Complete guide to life drawing [Menschen zeichnen Grundlagen zum Aktzeichnen]. Trans. Cicero Translations. Search: Kent.
Nest is a picture of my house, nestled in her leafy jungle of a garden. It’s pretty much the best house ever. We’ve made it a cosy little haven, productive workspace, and buzzing party hive. We call her The Duchess because she’s so regally dilapidated with her sprawling verandas and high ornate ceilings, and this blog is named after her, a tribute to the importance of place in my life.

Of past selves

Breakfast, Edinburgh © Samantha Groenestyn

Until this week, I had the idea that I make two types of art: small and quite stylised illustrations in gouache on paper, and large and quite realistic paintings on canvas. In fact, my large paintings have been neglected this year, unsurprisingly, since I have been fairly prolific in my illustrative output. I pulled out an old unfinished one on the weekend, one that would have been part of a series of pre-illustration pieces depicting breakfasting friends in Europe. I’d started it in acrylics, since I’d never learned to use oils until starting at the atelier, so I dusted off my old acrylic paints and set up on the veranda and worked solidly on the rather sizeable piece—about a metre by a metre and a half.

The trouble, of course, was that this painting existed in some distant, dark-aged past, and while my untrained self had managed to reproduce things like shadows and planes in a near-enough sort of fashion without having any real knowledge about such things, trying to go back to this old painting was just maddening. My past self certainly wasn’t kind to my later selves: my drawing was hasty and inaccurate, the perspective dire and my brushwork (most likely due to the quality of my brushes) abysmal. I tried to repaint sections, neatening up the lines and coverage, paying more attention to planes. When it came to painting an entirely untouched section, I realised what a liability the cheap acrylic paint was, and the (probably cheap) surface: the paint would not stick, it went on patchy and rough. I wrestled with it for two solid hours, and then I stepped back and surveyed my efforts. I felt suddenly at ease: this painting is not to be—not this way, not now. Because I don’t paint this way anymore. Breakfast, Copenhagen might resurface as an oil painting or as a gouache painting: either way, it will rely on sturdy draughtsmanship, careful brushwork, informed anatomy. But this painting can’t be salvaged, and I’m going to feel very relieved to remove the canvas from the frame and dispose of it accordingly.

The most significant thing I’ve had to admit to myself is that illustration has become my main art form. I didn’t feel I thought of it that seriously, despite having thrown myself into it so vigorously, and I felt I always had my other kind of painting, but this isn’t the case. Perhaps I ought to think more deeply about what kind of painting I most want to do, and most want to be recognised for. I enjoy illustration, and love that it can be in people’s lives and is in many ways less intimidating than art gallery art. Perhaps best of all, it has forced me to explore subject matter I wouldn’t have approached otherwise, and to explore qualities not associated with realism: distorted textures, imposed patterns, amplified colours and simplification of forms. Illustration may have just saved me from a creative rut. It brought my imagination to art, something I was always afraid of in my aspirations to be a human photocopier.

I certainly won’t be abandoning illustration anytime soon; I’m throwing myself into it harder than ever. I’m thoroughly enjoying this part of my artistic career. But I’ll be making sure to make time for the type of art that is really what I’m about.

And so: to celebrate art of bygone eras, I’m pleased to share that I’m displaying my Breakfast series for the entire month of November at SOL Breads in West End, Brisbane.

Breakfast, Paris © Samantha Groenestyn

Breakfast, Paris is of two Australian girls, Melinda and Sarah, whom I met in Paris and even spent some time in London with. We shared many a croissant in the sunny window of our Montmartre hostel.

Breakfast, Edinburgh (above) is a portrait of my free-spirited Scottish friend Judy, a wee sprite of a girl. We worked together at a bar, and spent some time in bars in Italy. Her approach to life is so chilled, but so adventurous.

Breakfast, Berlin © Samantha Groenestyn

Breakfast, Berlin is a painting of my favourite friend, quantum physicist Nathan, playing guitar at ‘the guitar café’ in Prenzlauerberg after 2€ crepes. I love that his future self seems to be sitting behind him. Closed time-like curves, anyone?

Titanium

I’m exceedingly happy to announce that I will be taking part in a group show at The Box in West End next month. The Box is an exciting new venture in Brisbane that, as I understand it, seeks to bring creatives of all different disciplines together in true Brisbane cross-pollination fashion. The space stood for some time as Box Vintage, and has resurfaced as a gallery space, music venue, performance space and all-around party station. You can read up on the motivations behind The Box on The Native Press. I can’t express how excited I am to be a part of it.

I’m also thrilled to be sharing the night with my friend Nadia Raineri, the talented alter ego of Minuscule Designs. We’re working hard on some new works that (if all goes to plan) are a little off-kilter and a little bit surreal. Jonathan Ford will be providing some tunes, and the Mirror Mirror (modelling) Agencies folks will be doing their tall, beautiful thing. (Plus I hear that The Box has recently acquired a grand piano, and this makes me a little weak at the knees.)

Consider this your invitation!

Cigar box show

Venezia © Samantha Groenestyn

This brave little guy is on his way to Melbourne to be a part of the Illustrators Australia annual 9×5 exhibition. He’s a little different to my usual offerings–he’s painted directly onto wood, completely unprimed. I love the way the wood licks up the gouache paint and alters the colour, and sometimes the texture. This show is a throwback to the 1890 cigar box exhibition held in Melbourne by the Heidelberg artists. The theme this year is Carnivale, and I can’t stop painting European street scenes, so I’ve whipped up this vibrant little Venetian one.

If you’re in Melbourne and you’d like to go check up on him, have a few drinks, and see some roving carnivale artists, the opening night is Friday 9 November from 6pm. All paintings go to auction at 8pm. The show is right in the city–Space 39, Level 2, 39 Little Collins Street. You’ll be able to visit the gallery over the weekend between 11am and 4pm as well.

For the Winn

Snowflakes, Paris © Samantha Groenestyn

My friend and fellow illustrator, Nadia Raineri, and I recently banded together to put on a joint exhibition in Winn Lane, Fortitude Valley. I’d been approached to be part of a larger amalgamated big-top affair of fashion, music, design and art, a recent American import to Brisbane that goes by the name of RAW and purports to promote independent artists in an independent manner—but, not having the fortitude to stomach having myself filmed saying, ‘I’m a RAW artist!’ nor to bother my friends and relatives with the prepurchasing of $15 tickets, I passed this up and got on with the actual independent method of organising a show with a small band of friends and acquaintances. Winn Lane puts on a monthly event to showcase local creatives and to attract people to their cute-as-pie neck of the woods, and graciously agreed to host our pop-up show. It doesn’t get much more grassroots than that.

© Kaitlyn Fitzpatrick

Nadia was very secretive about her works, but had nothing to fear: her intricate black and white pen drawings—stippled, lined and washed—were striking and inviting, with slightly offbeat subject matter—authors, messy rooms and vintage cameras and bikes—that exuded a quiet intimacy and a certain solemnness. All framed in black, they were pitched well against my own bright paintings all framed in white, such that we presented a complementary wall of illustration.

© Kaitlyn Fitzpatrick

I held onto many newer, unseen paintings for the show, half of Brisbane and half of Europe, mostly exploring the crevices of cities. Since moving back to Brisbane just over a year ago, I’ve been thoroughly in love with the place, and indulging my passion for it in paintings and drawings. It’s important to me to embrace the place where I am, and to wholly own it—to call it and no other place ‘home.’ When I left Brisbane last year, for a brief and unsuccessful sojourn to Canberra, I was determined to claim Canberra as home, but my efforts were thwarted. Brisbane, Round Two, thus cemented itself in my heart as a true home, neither my birthplace (Sydney) nor the place I grew up (Far North Queensland), but my true stomping ground. I don’t think I’ll ever get it out from under my skin.

© Kaitlyn Fitzpatrick

Painting Europe has been difficult—it is both an escape and a torment, because I cannot be there right now. I slip into my ever-vivid European memories and elaborate on old photographs, injecting my paintings with colours and patterns that recreate the happy dizziness of travel.

© Kaitlyn Fitzpatrick

The Valley—a creative hub of Brisbane—turned out to be a fortuitous place in which to stake one’s artistic claim. I’ve even been noticed by The Weekend Edition: Thank you, Emily Nelson, fellow illustrator and also photographer, for sharing the glittering evening in a local online sheet.

❤ Brisbane

Book

Atavist © Samantha Groenestyn

This wee painting was a present for Siân of the gloriously cosy Atavist Books, who kindly hosted my art show last night. Thanks Siân! PS Please reserve all Simone de Beauvoir books for me! (Illustration Friday)

Media: gouache.
Listening to: Karen Elson