|
Here simple marks are used to denote people on the beach. In a
light-hearted vein, Hot Day shows people scattered across the sand
with one umbrella, framed by a yellow and red frame. In Very Hot
Day, the picture plane is dark yellow and the languid figures have
gravitated to the water's edge. Sunlight 1990, is inspired by the
spectacular effect of light on the harbour and by the exquisite
patterning effect created by the boats. The speedily executed image
conveys fleeting moments of sheer beauty, in Sydney Harbour.
Paintings of storms also occupy an important place in Done's oeuvre.
Such works reveal the artist's inner creative struggle and personal
vulnerability just as much as they display his passion and fascination
for the unpredictable and dramatic forces of nature. Before the
Storm 1993 is filled with trepidation (and a febrile tension). By
contrast, Sudden Storm 1994, one of Ken Done's darker images, is
redeemed by dramatic formal qualities; brilliant yellow and pink
sails on boats.
The Storm paintings are therefore more complex than the first cabin
paintings which seek just to celebrate life and the environment
in a direct and effusive manner. Ken Done observes the harbour in
Sydney from a number of different vantage points, in particular
from Mosman and Balmoral where he has lived for most of his life.
He never palls of the remarkable range of natural phenomena. Of
particular interest is the effect of light on the water. Like, many
artists before him, such as Turner, Monet, Bonnard, Dufy, or Lloyd
Rees in Sydney, Done is constantly inspired by the beauty and extensive
range of emotions to be evoked by the dramas that unfold during
different seasons and at different times of day.
From a very young age, Ken Done has been interested in making pictures
of sea, rocks, and boats. Although not himself a boat owner, Done
frequently accompanies his friend Dennis on his boat in order to
take in the visual splendour of life on the Harbour. Light effects,
reflections, the colour of boats, shapes of the sails and spinnakers
form endless combinations and infinite visual and creative manifestations
become possible. Ken Done draws from the boat, without distraction,
visiting different parts of the harbour, so choosing inaccessible
coves and favourite sites. He enjoys the opportunity of making descriptive
and anecdotal images as well as the better known reductivist views.
He often revisits parts of Sydney that he drew as a student: Watson's
Bay, Lavender Bay for example and enjoys local haunts such as Balmoral
Beach which attracted artists such as Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton.
His contribution therefore, forms part of an artistic tradition
in Australia, including more recently Lloyds Rees and Brett Whiteley
whom he warmly acknowledges as influencing his harbour paintings.
Ken Done's work has developed greatly in painterly terms over the
past 20 years. He has also developed the means to convey subtle
and haunting moods. While the Balmoral paintings by and large are
images of the bon vivant, there exist images with more sombre overtones.
A tragic and appalling incident when Ken Done was fourteen altered
his perception of the harbour. A shark attacked and killed a boy
he knew just half-an-hour after he himself had been diving off the
same rocks, fishing with a spear gun.
Done acknowledges sadness and disappointment with increasing visual
sophistication, and in many of his works there are undercurrents
of despair. For the most part, however, Ken Done intentionally celebrates
the good and the beautiful. He himself distinguishes between works
that have a limited audience and those that reach a very wide audience
via the various processes of his design business. Boats on the harbour
epitomise a way of life that is associated with the city of Sydney.
The traffic of water provides a most superb repertoire of images
for an artist, the combination of shapes, colours, movements light
and constant change.
In Sydney Harbour the traffic of vessels and the marvellous variety
of craft symbolising different parts of history, and the rich and
complex character of modern city life, provide endless images for
a painter of light and life. The use of such imagery, the variety
of activity is underpinned by formal considerations and the development
of a formal language over thirty years. Boats on Sydney Harbour
as subject for Done share Raoul Dufy's bon vivant.
They are images with wide appeal and Ken Done has been highly successful
in selling them in Australia and to visitors from abroad. These
works represent a way of life that Sydneysiders are proud of and
that visitors want to be reminded of. As paintings and drawings
they celebrate life in rich and vibrant colours.
An early example showing his interest in the formal qualities of
boats on the harbour is Fifty-One Boats 1977. It shows Ken Done
experimenting with the compositional patterning of the boats, and
empirical approach which relates to his numerous series of beach
paintings. The early boat paintings are abstract images, tentative
yet with serious intent. The Wind Dropped 1992 some fifteen years
later is an understated work and yet it contains evidence of the
devoted struggle on a formal painterly level and also in terms of
implication:
"I happened to be watching one boat sailing across and there were
a few rocks in the distance and suddenly because the wind dropped
the sail instead of being a triangle becomes a much more fluid shape.
It is the shape of the spinnaker moving and clearly the sea wasn't
yellow and the beach wasn't orange and it didn't have pink in between
it and this boat is white, not redŠ so it's an invented harmony."
The Wind Dropped 1992 and Sunrise 1990 represent the fleeting
moments that are however hard won in personal terms. Their brevity
nonetheless provides an eternal quest and optimism. Ken Done's admiration
for, the American artist Milton Avery has stimulated his interest
in tonal harmony which his recent work achieves. Boats are placed
in various contexts to denote different meaning. In Some Boats in
Winter I and II 1995 the boats assume the vulnerability of humans
in a sea of darkness. In the storm paintings boats epitomise vulnerability
and are vessels of struggle. In the Balmoral series of paintings
of 1993 the boats represent movement and a free spirit. The large
canvasses were divided almost in half. An industrial blue paint
was applied to represent the sea and the boat shapes were drawn
by scraping back into the blue revealing the white canvas. The speedily
executed method creates the speed at which the traffic on the harbour
was moving. In the Balmoral series I - XII the boats assume an iconic
quality. They are shorthand for the descriptive variety of shapes
on the harbour; they celebrate life and the joy the artist experiences
from his subject. These paintings exude the confidence Ken Don was
experiencing as an artist after a long struggle. By the early 1990s
growing confidence in his work led Ken Done to larger canvasses,
often in series. The development of an iconic language is asserted,
sometimes by an empirical code. Nowhere is this more pronounced
than in Beach Dreaming 1991, Between the Flags 1996, a series of
large canvasses and in the masterly minimalism of Harbour and Beach,
1995. These paintings represent years of dialogue between subject
and artist, between drawing and painting and the development of
a rich personal language, including references to aboriginal painting.
Ken Done highlights the elemental in nature. The feelings evoked
range from the sensual and erotic, at times hedonistic to the rawness
of feelings that intense light, heat and natural beauty precipitate.
Exhilaration and the intensity with which life is lived in a city
are evoked by the rapid application of lines, the swiftness of brushwork.
The beach traditionally represents freedom from city life, yet within
the picture plane Ken Done creates a parallel existence equally
intense, teeming with life but connected by a primal awareness to
nature, harmony in another guise. Harmony in this form is established
through a coherent visual language suggesting that redemption through
nature is possible.
|
