'Navigation' September 2024
Another year passes and I have continued watching over the ocean. Tankers still line the horizon, waiting their turn to deliver or take away. Over time, I have researched more on naval exploration with the idea of healthier travel options for our environment and to further delve into the realities of the tankers that grow in numbers as the years go by. So, I navigate my thoughts as I paint the realities of my local Illawarra seascape. I navigate the more coarse marks my brushes make on the linen, the abstract moments between fence lines that cut in to the image. I navigate the love/hate relationship I have with human structures juxtaposed within the organic environment. They make great contrasts to paint, even as I experience them as interlopers in our natural environment.
The naval theme continues in the studio. My aqua vessel carries flowers from my garden with a soft sky blue for background and a striped foreground: an old shirt I found amongst my rags. A subconscious selection which I only realise later resembles the striped shirts once worn by the French Navy - for emergency situations and better sightings in case a person falls overboard.
Brightly coloured navigational buoys catch my interest, setting courses for ships to follow, as I paint in Port Kembla. The emergency yellow of the buoys cuts into what would be a vast blue of the sea filling the canvas or a cylinder of green floating within a soft blue void within the inner Port. I make clay objects to resemble the buoys for my still lifes. First, they are shiny and bright and hold flowers to allow for juxtaposition of organic and human structure. Underneath, an aqua blue representing the sea and a deep blue in the background to complement the orange of the marigold. More clay-made buoys develop yet they become faded like the bleached shells lining the beach. The vessel holding the living flowers navigates through the buoys and the deep yellow of the nasturtiums and calendular sits boldly against the deep blue background. These colours soon reveal themselves to be the colours of a nautical flag signalling ‘I wish to communicate’.