This is the sixth in a series of posts looking at my art collection. I’m taking questions from an old school friend and answering them. Roger lives in the north of the state and I live in Sydney but we’re both passionate about art. He asks five questions, each of which I answer below.
It would seem that such strong frames may overcome the more modest pictures they house, yet I agree the heavy black frames really compliment Adelaide’s drawings. Was this serendipity or did you purposely match the two? And the coloured mount boards are such a bright and fun way to present the pictures and echo their colours. Again, pre-planning or spur-of-the-moment? Your idea of using the designs for tea towels seems workable. Really the possibilities are endless with strong source material – what about table mats or curtains for a rumpus room?
I usually go to the framers out at Richmond and just decide on the spur of the moment how to house each work of art I want to get finished. Even before going out that far from home I’d already considered using nothing too ornate. Something simple because there are five in the set and to make sure the works themselves were privileged.
You’re right that the heavy, dark frames work even though they’re quite different in tone from the drawings, and perhaps that’s the key. The contrast between the busy artworks and the stark borders made of wood stained to a deep brown give a dramatic counterpoise. The mounting boards were also chosen while I was in the framer’s studio, and Amanda Edds, who runs the business, keeps a wide range of samples (with different colours and textures) nearby on little racks, so I just picked out colours to go with each work. The green is more muted than the other colours, and while I could’ve chosen a more insistent green I decided to use a gentle olive shade.
Since Ada is a commercial artist it’s possible to make something out of these designs. I will ask her what she thinks about the idea next time we talk about the drawings. She’s planning to come to stay in Australia sometime soon, so I’m sure there’ll be an opportunity for me to raise the subject.
These pictures are enchanting and show the natural understanding of design and sense of colour that children have. The flowers, trees and animals are free of intellectual analysis and exist only in the moment, a zen creation. We often lose such joy, and arguably fall prey to the endless digressions of over-thinking our creative work, under the mantle of adulthood. But some, such as the Naïve art of Paul Klee, Captain Beefheart, and our own Ken Done (!) retain the sense of childlike wonder in their mature work. Do you think we all have a reserve of, often latent, creative energy that is waiting to be rediscovered in a personal ‘Indian summer'…or does the true light only shine on the young?
The emotional cost of making a mistake is lower for a young person than it is for someone older. Stress accumulates over time, so people who are older naturally have a more delicate emotional balance that they have to keep stable – or static – during the course of an average day.
Young people are naturally more impulsive. Once you reach our age you’re very conservative due to all the shocks you’re weathered over the years, so a child has the ability to make sallies that would make an older person hesitate. When you’re young you think nothing of making a picture with an orangutan sitting next to a pink rabbit, and while Ken Done might also think nothing of doing such an unlikely thing, he’s a particularly driven individual. I love his work and admire what he’s achieved over the course of a long life. I wish I’d had the support necessary to enable me to do what he’s done. Unfortunately it’s not water under the bridge and I’m still coming to terms with the way my father altered the shape of my existence due to the pursuit of his own demons. In the meantime I seek solace by looking at pictures that other people have made, and by making wonderful objects framed with quality materials that I can travel past as I go about my business every day I’m alive. It’s a privilege to be still kicking at 59 years old!
There are some similarities in the design of these paintings, are these deliberately grouped as a set or were these the only ones you had in your possession when the time came to getting them framed?
Three of the drawings have a sky, and in each of these there’s an orange sun (I think Ada likes warm colours). These resemble landscapes, and because there’s a horizontal they invite the viewer to enter the frame.
The two drawings with no sky are different in how they draw the viewer’s attention, and appear to be more like studies made in a studio or some sort of controlled space like that, perhaps a zoo enclosure. They’re more like dioramas you might see in a museum. I loved the tiny, compact underwater displays at the Australian Museum when I visited as a child. You can see similar displays at the aquarium in the CBD where fish and eels are housed in small tanks full of water that people walk past as they learn.
These five drawings I somehow still had loose hanging around on a table after moving house but I don’t remember when they came into my possession. I moved back to Sydney from Japan in 2001 (just before the Twin Towers) and I think the drawings came to me via my mother, who might’ve received them in the mail from Japan in 1998 or thereabouts. Once back in Sydney I went back to work in 2003 and six years later moved north to live on the Sunshine Coast then came back to Sydney in 2015.
In Pyrmont these drawings were in the library – a third bedroom that I used to contain books and the remnants of mum’s house after she went into residential care – which was a place that I eventually cleaned up in November 2019, shredding stacks of paper and putting valuables aside to have framed or repaired. There was an old Bible that belonged I think to Ada’s great-great-great-grandmother which I took to International Conservation Services in Chatswood because it’d got damaged in the 2011 flood in southeast Queensland and needed attention.
So much has been lost over the years that it was a relief to frame these children’s drawings. The process allowed me to permanently fix things representing a time of flux, of great instability.
The dreaded cliché, often heard, is “my child could have painted that” and in this case it is a truth. But your daughter Adelaide has grown up to be a commercial artist. Is her current style much more sophisticated in approach to her early output? Are there any Japanese, or other cultural influences readily seen in her mature style?
Ada’s drawings, which she now makes on an iPad with a digital stylus, are very competent in the use of colour. While her line is often flexible and quite impressionistic, intuitive and free – she’s able to render any type of object or scene – I think her use of colour is particularly attractive. Obviously her palette is more diverse now than it was when she was limited to a set of children’s crayons.
I know you are currently considering tertiary study in the art field. Have you ever considered running a picture framing business, or perhaps a gallery, to take advantage of your artistic flair? Does the future hold such possibilities?
Framing is a very skilled occupation and I don’t know that I have the inclination to do something so physical although I’m detail oriented and the meditative aspect of the craft would probably appeal to me. There aren’t many conservation framers in Sydney. Amanda took over the business from a guy named Jochen Letsch who used to operate in Annandale (Jochen now works for ICS). Conservation framing is quite expensive and it’s not a popular option for many people even though artworks are better looked after if you get the work done properly. In the long term it’s cost effective because it protects the artwork from damage that cheaper options permit but most people would baulk at paying $450 to finish off a child’s crayon sketch. The way I think of it, these drawings should be available for my great-great-grandchildren to enjoy.
People sometimes refer to my house as a gallery – so I’m almost in the business already! I’d never thought of running a commercial gallery. I wonder how much it would cost? You’d have rent, electricity, insurance, telephone, broadband, domain name registration, website hosting – a range of expenses associated with the operation regardless of whether you actually sold anything or not. It’s an interesting notion to think about, and perhaps I’ll give it more thought next year.
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