Smith's latest exhibition presents a series of completed paintings alongside a selection of key preliminary sketches necessary for their construction. As a suite they continue the artist's enduring interest in his surroundings on the Mornington Peninsula, but more crucially they offer a rare glimpse into the technical processes of this esteemed landscape painter. From drawings, colour studies, iPad prints to final resolved acrylic works, Smith latest exhibition serves as a masterclass into the complex and technically nuanced processes so characteristic of his oeuvre.
A VIDEO WALK THROUGH OF THE EXHIBITION
KEN SMITH DISCUSSES THE NEW WORKS
Ken Smith: Recent Works In “Landscape Painting Now” (2019) Barry Schwabsky discusses the paradox of realism and states that in a painting “… the more complete the resemblance, the more poignant the disconnection between image and reality”1. In other words, a painting becomes another form of reality the more it uses the conventions of realist technique.
Clearly there is a difference between the everyday lived, dynamic experience of the visible world and the stillness that a painted representation of it can evoke. But is the distance between the two all that great? The constant and demanding dichotomy for us all is to reconcile the world outside our bodies with the world we experience inside our minds, to balance sensation and perception.
Visual images are expressions of states of mind and as such they are as much about their maker as the subject represented. But they are also metaphors and models for how this difference between the outer and the inner can be negotiated and temporarily bridged in a world of fragile certainties.
So how did I make the images presented in this exhibition? Firstly, by trying to understand what I respond to in the wider world and in other works of visual art. For me the tension of trying to combine the fugitive qualities of colour, light and atmosphere, with the clarity, precision and geometry of compositional structure has always been a dominant ambition and a strong determinant of the subjects that I choose to work with.
For this exhibition I have continued the visual exploration of the coastal regions of my immediate neighbourhood on the Mornington Peninsula in southern Victoria. The specific locations that I worked from to make these particular images were selected for their potential to offer powerful visual contrasts: the contrasts between man-made and natural forms and colours, between phenomena that are close and intimate and those that are distant and remote, and between forms that demonstrate both hope and folly. For the beach locations that I have worked from are places of pleasure and relaxation, but they are also constantly changing environments where human aspiration is continually challenged and eroded by both contingent events and inexorable natural forces.
This exhibition presents a number of completed pictures alongside a series of studies that were necessary for their construction. The intention of this manner of display is to inform viewers about how my paintings develop from drawings, colour studies, digital images (mostly done on-site) through to resolved studio works and to reveal aspects of the visual thinking that characterizes this process of painting from an edge.
1. Barry Schwabsky “Painting in the flow of the world”, essay in Landscape Painting Now. From Pop Abstraction to New Romanticism. ed. Todd Bradway. D.A.P. New York. 2019. p. 24
ABOUT THE IPAD DRAWINGS
Over the last half-decade, I, like other artists around the world, have been exploring the creative possibilities of using digital drawing tablets.
My career started long before these technologies became readily available and my early training as an artist focussed heavily on traditional drawing processes and skills. This knowledge has, I think, enabled me to make the transition to contemporary digital drawing systems, for while the technology is very different, many of the concepts and descriptive terms of the tools that are used with it are the same.
So, I use an iPad tablet with the digital pencil that is offered to accompany this device and with both of these the SketchBook Pro app.
Sometimes I draw on the tablet directly from observation, as I would with traditional techniques – I can even prop the iPad on an easel and draw with it outside in a landscape setting.
More recently I have used the device to assist in the compositional development of my paintings. To do this I upload a photographic image of an in-progress painting into the drawing app and then make editorial changes to this; adding or subtracting parts, changing colours etc, all to assist me in clarifying a pictorial idea. I then apply these changes back to my painting using its older techniques. The wonderful aspect of this process is that you can “save” all aspects of this idea development and refer back to these changes to further clarify a picture’s final composition.
For this current exhibition I have taken this process a little further by uploading photographic images taken at the various landscape sites that I have been working with into the drawing app and putting them through the same editorial process. Through this, raw photographic visual fact is, I hope, converted into organized compositions of sustaining visual authority. Through this process much extraneous visual material is removed, some is added, most shadow areas are extensively reworked (a constant problem with photographs) and every element of the image is considered, and changed if necessary, in relation to the totality of the composition.
The most successful of these compositions have been printed onto paper using an archival pigment process. To maintain the integrity of the whole process I have kept the image size of these prints roughly the same size as they appear on the iPad screen.
Working in this manner I have been reminded of the original definition of the word photography given by those who developed this technology in the early to mid-nineteenth century. These inventors often had an understanding of and interest in traditional image making processes (drawing and painting) and so they called their new creation photography; that is, drawing (graphy) with light (photo). Digital tablets now make this original description of process even more pertinent.
Smith was Lecturer in Drawing at MADA, Monash University's Faculty of Art Design and Architecture until 2014. Most recently Smith has been a finalist in the Fleurieu Art Prize (2018), the Tattersall’s Club Landscape Art Prize (2015, 2016), the John Leslie Art Prize (2016) and shortlisted for the Geelong Acquisitive Print Awards (2015). In 2018 Smith undertook a Ballinglen Arts Foundation Residency in Ireland, where he was able to spend time in the Irish landscape, allowing it to influence his practice. In 2012 he was awarded the Rick Amor Drawing Prize for his work In The Light Of History I. He has previously been shortlisted for the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award, finalist in the Heysen Prize, and multiple finalist in the Jacaranda Acquisitive Art Award.
His work is in the collections ofthe Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ireland, Artbank, Leeuwin Estate, Arbitration Commission, and the collection of the Commonwealth Bank, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Bundaberg Arts Centre, Devonport Galleryand Arts Centre, Grafton Regional Gallery, and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. In 2014 the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery showcased a major solo exhibition of Ken's work, spanning three decades of painting the Mornington Peninsula seaside.
