Ken SEARLE
Around Papunya
2 July – 26 July 2008
I see my city paintings as maps, and also as portraits.
My aim is to portray place, and the people who are part of that place.
The finished painting should express the complex and unique nature of
the subject, both through the images which it presents, and through the
composition itself. I feel that the inhabitants of an urban area make
their own interpretation of their place through time (past and present)
by the various and overlapping ways in which they organise and utilise
public and private spaces. In this way, a city is a vast living communal
artwork. My job is to try to capture representative images of this artwork
and reassemble them so that the viewer can see them conveniently all at
the same time within a frame.
My method is to walk into a painting, letting the area itself shape the form and content of the portrayal. For two or three months I explore the area, gathering information. I collect maps, research local history, and try to get a feel of the community by talking to people. Consciously and subconsciously I select, edit, and compose as I walk around looking at things and deciding where to work on site and which images to portray. I keep a notebook and jot down compositional ideas as they come to me. As I explore, I paint and sketch on site, producing 60 or more finished sketches in oil paint, crayon, pencil and charcoal. While I sit on the street working on these preliminary sketches, I pick up the area’s interpretation of itself. This will be reflected in the composition.
In depicting an urban area, I need to find the keys to its singular identity. The first two keys are topography and architecture. As I study the topography of a place, I also have to work out the topographical orientation of my composition. Unlike the traditional landscape painter, I don’t just position myself in one place and portray everything I can see in one ‘view’. But this doesn’t mean that I can portray a random jumble of images. There has to be an overall orientation, to provide a unity to the viewing points. The architectural key to the community includes the new housing developments, as well as car parks and shopping malls, murals and suburban fences. It is through the architecture that we discover the third and most important key to an urban area. This is the demography – the kind of people who make up the place.
When I have gathered enough information about my subject, I go back to my studio and begin to compose my material into a shape which will express the unique nature of the area and its community. By the time I start composing on paper, I already have the broad shapes in my mind, and I know how various sections of the city slot together.
In the final stage of my work, I transcribe in oil paint on canvas the information from both the composition sketch and the works done on site.
January
2008