was a term that was first used to describe my ‘style’ of painting ‘way back’ in 1970 – I am certainly not a stylist but then this is a convenient label. I cant believe that was over 30 years ago!
Although this had it’s seeds planted long before this, it was not until my first ‘one man’ exhibition in 1972 –‘PENTA” _ 5 Worlds of Expression’ that this ‘label’ was applied.
World 1. of this exhibition was entitled-
‘Embryonic Painting –The Divergent Landscape’.
The best description I can muster to date.. ”The crust of Mother Earth (Guya) is a macrocosmic view of the lining of my mother’s womb where all things I have ( and am) grew from. There is a cycle of life that is constantly being born, examined, studied, ROBBED and killed……I depicted….the crust of the earth/womb where all things grow from in a much simpler way as the crust or lining of the mother’s womb where we all grow/grew from……. ( or used to if you’re reading this in a future world where wombs are either obsolete or it’s not politically correct to ‘use’ them any more)….along with the thousands of different cellular and organic shapes that make up each..’
Along the way this became ‘confused ‘with a range of pessimistic warnings of the age of the machine and just where technology was dragging us. I say ‘dragging’ because I was alarmed at the increasingly complex choices that ‘man’ had at his/her disposal and would it be used for the common good or indeed the ‘common end’ – And that WAS ONLY AT THE START OF THE 70’s! – my God what have we witnessed since then?
These days, nearly 30 years later, I'm into more simpler and less precious explanations.
I thought it was very clever to depict the crust of the Earth where all things grow from in a much simpler way as the ‘crust’ or lining of the mother’s womb where we all grow from; along with the thousands of different cellular or organic shapes that make up each. I guess I was able to build up a ‘vocabulary’ of very efficient symbols to show life, Re-creation of life, theft of life forms and even death. It somehow got confused with mechanical forms that I was always drawing from when I was a kid. I loved to draw ..’how things work’-and still do. Quite possibly it was my first attempt at structure and the meaning under things.
And so I head back to deal with my past to represent the present for the future!
In 1969 as I struggled with the structure and forms of nature as well as being exposed to the freedom (in painterly terms) of great artists such as John Perceval (McLelland Gallery Exhibition) I was considering my own biogenetics as marriage loomed closer – and perhaps that was a larger influence than I first thought. With the knowledge of structure and form and the pessimism of the continuing machine age it all came together in a series of Ink and Wash drawings that actually were exhibited at the end of my Art College assessment. This was quite an honour as believe it or not we were allowed remove older paintings from the walls of the old ‘College of the Arts’ building to hang our own works . My drawings (and paintings) took the places of two larger paintings and a serigraph from two artists named ‘Streeton’ and another one called ‘Nolan’!
It was a hot afternoon in November of 1969 and I chose pen and wash as I was too poor to afford paint and at that stage 8 canvasses – but at that stage it turned out to be the right medium. Originally these were numbered and on the backs a sequential commentary is written across the baseline of each drawing. The phrases in italics and parentheses below are taken from these commentaries.

Transfering all this to a Painted IMAGE!

The development to a linear style of painting came with the use of a mixture of liquitex and marcus pigments combined with equal amounts of clear acrylic emulsion and clear or aqueous gel medium.
Essentially a ground of thick gesso was applied and the medium above was then applied with a ‘top secret’ process (WHOOOOO!) directly onto the primed surface (following very detailed basic line drawings) and left to set in a horizontal position for up to 2 to 3 weeks depending on the humidity and how many inches (sorry metres) of rain we had received. We had many catastrophes and initially it was very disheartening. Of course the most famous of these was when ‘Eliza Dolittle’ – affectionately known as ‘Boo’ (Our famous Mother Cat) walked across an entire painting one night leaving forever her imprint on history. When this stuff sets it’s quite indestructible!
When the line work was set it left confined areas that were similar in style to that of leadlight windows that could be worked and filled with pure liquitex colours (for permanence). Occasionally (See ‘Fatality) other materials were added to the under painting such as muslin or gauze to change the texture of the grounds. After the painting was complete a whole series of clear varnishes were tried and I ended up using a brick or stone varnish that cured very quickly and which gave a glossy almost enamel finish. Ed Marcus (Marcus ART) once told me he believed that it could weather EXTERIOR CONDITIONS for up to 5 years before you could notice even the slightest ‘yellowing’. (Oxidisation of the top layer of varnish!)
I never tried this but I have hosed one of them down without the slightest problem. However I DO recommend cleaning with a damp wettex only!