Sabine Tress

Fire walk with me -2009

acrylic on canvas

160cm x 160cm

Zorg -2009

acrylic on canvas

160cm x 160cm

(images courtesy of the artist)

THE PAINTER SABINE TRESS DURING WORK from Marion M. Hetzel on Vimeo.

Sabine Tress is constantly moving around in her studio whilst painting, choosing her colours in a very sensual way. This inspired me to create a sort of “painting-music-clip”. As much as music is able to create a mood and complete a space, Sabine´s paintings seems to do exactly the same. Colour seems to be omnipresent and traces of former painting processes are visible on the studio floor. It´s like a big “colour-symphonie” in which the paint-pots represent the instruments and the colours stand for the sounds and melodies. To me, being a cinematographer, Sabine´s creative process feels like a sort of dance with colour. I´m fascinated by this slender woman who is gracefully expressing so much power in the way she paints. I also love the way she stops to think or consider what she has just painted and then continues her fluid movements -Marion Hetzel

Hi all. It's been a while, I know. I hope you enjoy this wonderful little video by Marion Hetzel featuring German painter Sabine Tress in her studio. Sabine contacted me about two months ago to thank me for the small post I wrote here and since then we've been electronically chatting away. It's been a treat to talk with someone about painting who happens to live close to the places I would love to visit and the painters I would love to see in the flesh.

Sabine Tress is known for her seriously quirky, colour rich studies of interiors or more specifically living rooms complete with creatures (cushions, lamps, couches) reminiscent of Phillip Guston. Indeed, Sabine cites her painting influences as Guston along with Basquiat and Twombly to name just a few. Like Guston, these paintings are darkly humorous even sinister, kind of hinting at a deeper psychological intent if one cares to look. Sabine Tress is a painter who soaks herself in the visual and then applies through paint her own unique way of seeing the world and I love the world she creates...they make me want to sit around in them, languish in the sensuous colours, peel back the curtain-like layers, so I can take a peek at what lies behind. Watching the video I'm really inspired by the way she is not afraid to splash paint generously over the surface, to cover something that may or may not be working in order to discover something else. It's a lesson I need to learn - to get rid of the stuff that makes you stuck and precious because in the act of erasure there is an opportunity to find something surprising. Indeed, In her emails she says that she wants to be surprised by her painting process and that, I think, is a damn fine objective and she delivers that sense of discovery every time.

Of course, colour, applied intuitively, or specifically mixed, is central to Sabine Tress' work. Coincidently I've just been reading Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting by Bob Nickas and he could easily have had Sabine Tress in mind when he dedicates the third chapter to the idea of colour becoming structure in painting - where colour is a 'fundamental building block' or a painting's central subject. True to form, her recent work (find more here and also at the end of the video) is colourful and ever playful - utilising strong floating lines against swathes of colour swatches -but it's also unruly which is what makes these works compellingly complex and dynamic. I really sense her desire to push things further- surprise herself even more. To extend Marion Hetzel's music metaphor, If Sabine Tress's early semi- abstract works could be likened to a cool funky jazz fusion the latest more non - representational offerings are deliciously brazen, rule defying, punk. I can't wait to see what comes next - Sabine Tress is a painter to watch.

Gabrielle Jones - dialogue with paint

Gabrielle Jones

'Night Storm'
2008, 122 x 152 Oil on Canvas
Image courtesy of the artist

The other day I had the pleasure of visiting Sydney artist Gabrielle Jones in her studio. We had lots to talk about. So much so that on my train trip home I madly scribbled recalled snippets of our conversation, covering three blank end pages of my current read - Night Studio: a memoir of Philip Guston.

A natural colourist, Jones' abstracted landscapes are taken from memories of shape and space in nature. She is an interesting mixture of an intuitive painter and one that makes considered decisions about how colour and form should combine. These paintings offer her own unique view of the Australian bush in all it's extremes -hot and sun drenched; dry, restful, cooling shade.

Jones related to me an early lesson she learnt at art school which was to allow a painting to take her where it wants to go. Clearly it's a lesson that works for her style and her painting process. Although periodically she draws from life, her main sustenance for subject comes from her memory. The main work in each painting comes from decisions she makes as the work grows before her ( each work springs from one primary painting and so there is a constantly active process of looking and re imagining). It's about the conversations she has with herself and the painting materials - canvas, brushes, paint - that seem to concern her most.

Jones seems to revel in formal elements such as the ambiguity of a shape. Also, space as a counter point to shape, is just as important. Her use of white might be something to do with this nuance and, to my mind, helps to tie her surfaces together so that they feel both weighty and light all at the same time. There is a meatiness to her paint too which I really like and we spoke for a long time about the way the edges - the spaces between two shapes or the meeting of two tones of colour - can keep a painting buzzing with tension or, in the case of some of her identified 'failures', leave a painting feeling predictable and deadened.

"Of course, I'm still learning to paint" she maintains. From this statement I get that Jones is willing to push paint around, ask it questions and grow as an artist in that process. Gabrielle Jones is a painter who knows her stuff and can speak the language of paint with real insight. Visit her website and her blog too where you will find her interesting ruminations about art and life as well as a wonderful collection of quotes from other artists.

Gabrielle Jones has an upcoming show: "Trees for my Father" depot II Gallery, 2 Danks St Waterloo Nov 3 -15 Drinks with the artist Wed Nov 4 6-8pm

Paint revelry

Ross Laurie
Time and Light
Oil on canvas
1070 x 1400mm
2009

Image: Damien Minton Gallery

A quick post to sing the praises of two Sydney artists who have shows on at the moment.

Steven Harvey @ Liverpool Street Gallery and Ross Laurie @ Damien Minton Gallery. Both shows simply revel in paint, colour and form. Steven Harvey, in his paintings from Kakadu, continues to play with the double canvas construction so that the edges of the paintings are just as worthy of attention as the facing surface. I'm all for interesting edges and I'm always looking at them; a fascination for the 'history' of a work, I guess. Go look.

Ross Laurie's paintings and works on paper, from his home town of Walcha, literally sing with seductive colour. Painted forms, depicting trees, undulating curves and the shadows created by their interplay, are beautifully rendered and resolved.

Both of these artists have created works that are fresh, seductive and just about edible. Enjoy!

John Millei

Procession 109, 2005

Oil on Linen
20"(H) x 24"(W)
Image: Ace Gallery

I've been waiting...waiting...and, you guessed it, waiting for another show by the artist John Millei. See his work here and marvel at his impeccable ability in a staggering range of painting possibilities. The group that this image comes from reminds me of pared back Morandis. Figures (bottles?), directly rendered in beautiful clean colours, rise from the picture plane as if taking a bow on stage.

Kill Pixie

I couldn't find a title for this but check out the work of Kill Pixie, an Australian graffiti artist. Unless you've been living under a rock you would be well aware of this guy's star status. I'm drawn to the originality of his vision, the obsessions to detail, patterns and those lurid colours.

Minnie Pwerle

Minnie Pwerle

Awelye

2005

Synthetic polymer on Belgian linen

Minnie Pwerle

Awelye Athwengerrp

2005

acrylic on linen

56 x 56 cm

Please enjoy these stunning paintings by the late Minnie Pwerle, an Australian Indigenous painter. I have a yellowing and tattered magazine image of one of her paintings on my studio wall and it inspires me every day. From a formalist point of view, Pwerle's treatment of surface is entirely contemporary; layers of pigment suggest the rippling effects of wind on sand or tidal waters through kelp.

Her distinctive style used linear brush-work based on the body painting used for important women's ceremonies in her native country of Atnwengerrp. She painted with a rich array of colours and her work contained a compelling visual and spiritual power.

All the stories she painted conveyed her deep connection with the land, and knowledge of the foods that it provides. (quoted from Wikipedea)

Raquel Mazzina

"Blue Stroll" 50.5 x 61 cm - oil on canvas

Here's a painter who I came across just recently and wanted to devote a quick post too. These are really powerful and very beautiful. Slabs of paint seem to be literally driven across the canvas; no dainty dabs here. While layers of colour suggest the geomorphic structure of land there is an emotional quotient embedded in each buttery stroke of the the brush/palette knife. These paintings fairly heave and shimmer despite the thickness of paint. You can find more of Raquel Mazzina's work here.

"Chevron" 122 x 92 cm - oil on canvas

vittorio colaizzi

It's common knowledge in certain art worldy circles that a yellow painting never sells. I've been witness to these feverish whisperings. Yellow is just plain twee and won't match the decor. Shocking!

I can't disagree more. There's something about the colour yellow that always satisfies me when I paint. It pulls a picture together and activates the whole surface. I can be making mud pie then I add yellow and hey presto - a seductively satisfying balance with a certain zing materialises. Hmmm... a trite observation perhaps but, well, you know what I mean.

A painter that uses yellow with aplomb is Vittorio Colaizzi. Oh boy, how that yellow wave tingles my senses. I'm always returning to have a look at his work over on release form, a great painting blog .

Unlike the previous post these pictures are not always easy to digest. A refreshing quality in any painter, frankly. A painting, when easy on the eye, just bores the eye.

Let me explain.

On quick inspection the crisp shapes seem too easily placed. But then you notice a white space here, a scratchy unfinished brush mark there and suddenly bam! your eye begins to take in unusual and surprising placement of forms. Likewise the treatment of the painted surface, although not easily read in a jpeg, suggests a rigorousness only seen in intelligent painting.

There is a sense of paintings history here. Dare I mention 'formalistic concerns' without rousing the Greenburgian detractors humphing over there in the corner. But this is exactly what attracts me and VC fulfills the whole brief. Placing colour, juggling form, pushing paint, thick or scrappy. Decisions about when to stop doing all of these things - when to stop so that painting remains fresh, not a dead weight, is what he is master of.

Now, go look.

Leslie Baum

Unfortunately the artist has removed image link

Here's a Chicago based painter I'm absolutely drawn to and I can't stop thinking about the message behind her works. I first learned about her over at dear ada - a really sweet blog with a heart warming brief. Go check it out.

A sense of doom and imminent decay comes juxtaposed with gorgeous light washes and sumptuous cubes of candy colour, (is that a liquorice allsort popped on top?). I'm reminded of some primordial world - ancient ruins possibly - which, despite their rich and shiny structures, have slumped. Blood or a fierce hot sunset stains the white spaces. Prophetic perhaps? I won't be fooled by the surfaces of these paintings. They may be easy on the eye but here I detect a sinister barb. I'm looking forward to seeing more of her work.