Courbally-Stourton Gallery - Cork Street - London - 1996
'The Dulcinea' - pen & ink wash drawing - 1992
This project began in Spain when I was offered an artist-in-residence by Delfina Studios in Casa Manilva, Andalucia. The objective of this project was to develop a body of work, which interrogated the concept of 'QUXOTIC', through the representation of Cervante's classic 'Don Quixote'.
As a post-modern Australian artist, my methodology was to appropriate a genre which had long ceased to be fashionable within contemporary art circuits - the rigourous genre of painting and drawing that the Prado museum refers to as 'The Spanish School', represented by artists such as El Greco, Goya and Velazquez and extends in the representation of Don Quixote in the work of Honore Daumier, Gustav Dore. This genre is best characterised by a rigorous mode of representational drawing and painting which, despite its origins in the real, aspires to the representation of the the mytho-poetic. The Spanish School has had a significant influence on an extensive lineage of artists from William Hogarth through to the German Expressionists to 'The Antipodean School' artists such as Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker & Joy Hester. In effect this project enabled me to examine the underpinnings of the Antipodean approach to painting & drawing since, I was at the time, living in London under the patronage of Arthur Boyd, and in association to Sidney Nolan.
Although I did do a couple of paintings in Spain, my time was largely spent filling drawing books and developing pen and ink wash drawings in a bid to synthesize the subject of the Quixotic. Later, on my return to London, this drawing process continued to underpin the development of the larger paintings and also led to the development of a series of etchings (dry point, sugarlift & aquatint), some 24 in all. What are represented in these images is a fragment of the graphic work produced during this period 1992-1995.
'Don Quixote' drawing - 1993
'Giants' - Pen and ink wash drawing - 1992 - Collection - David Langsam - Melbourne
Drawing books - 1993
'Born to live dying' Etching (drypoint, aquatint & sugarlift) - 1994
"Every bit as good as lost' Etching (drypoint, aquatint & sugarlift) - 1994
'The least beam of her ...' Etching (drypoint, aquatint & sugarlift) - 1994