pic of the day

Stone cairn on top of Mimosa Rock, Mimosa Rocks National Park, NSW

walking on water…?

Yesterday I went for a walk on Lake George (or Weerewaa in the indigenous language). Though no, I wasn’t walking on water, Lake George hasn’t had any water in it for years, since late 2002 in fact. (Besides, I lost my Jesus-like locks recently). The lake bed is quite expansive and rather flat. It is not a salt lake, but rather converts to sheep grazing when there is no water, which is not that unusual, though it can be up to 5 meters or so deep when full.  The Federal Highway from Canberra to Sydney skirts the edge, so I have passed it often and it is an incredibly beautiful landscape.  The play of the changing light on the lake bed and the hills on the far side mean the view is never quite the same.  Yet, though I sometimes stop briefly at one of several rest stops along the way, I have not before walked out onto the lake bed itself.  At the moment even the grazing must be quite marginal, the soil was cracked and crumbling and the dry plant cover sparse.  I did a few sketches, took many photos, collected two sheep skulls and some dirt to take back to the studio, and made a bone circle to leave on the lake bed.

Many Canberra artists have made Lake George the focus of their attention for a period, it seems to captivate people.  One of my favorites is Rosalie Gascoigne’s ‘Suddenly the Lake’ made from tin and ply. There was water in  the lake in the mid 90’s when she made it, and when I first saw the lake.  Click here to see an image. Perhaps I will have a Lake George period soon?

beach tripods

We humans just can’t help ourselves can we. We just love to make things. If we find some scattered raw materials, we just love to gather them up, re-arrange them and create some sort of order out of the previous dis-order, even if the resulting construction is entirely useless. We like to try to reverse the universes natural tendency towards greater entropy. For whatever reason, there always seems to be a bit of driftwood about on the beaches of the south coast of NSW, and mostly sawn timber rather than tree branches etc. (Or maybe the real question is why is driftwood less common on the beaches further north?). I’ve been to two beaches on the south coast recently, and both had these driftwood tripods on them. Above is Mimosa Rocks National Park, and below is Seven Mile Beach near Nowra.

some thoughts on black line

Some time back now, I wrote about beginning work on some wood engravings. That has still been going on, I just haven’t been writing about it here. Indeed my approach to engraving underwent something of a rapid evolution during the year from my first beginners attempts at mimicking traditional forms, to working in a way related to my own drawing style. This has led to a lot of “black line” style prints. That is an image that is made up predominately of thin black lines like an ink drawing, rather than the image being created from white lines on a black background. Why the distinction? You have to remember that I’m talking here about a form of relief print taken from carved wood, so creating thin black lines requires carving away all the spaces between the lines, a rather more tedious process than thinking of an image in terms of white marks on a black ground.

Peter McLean 'Phragmites' wood engraving, 2009

The following is something I wrote in my sketchbook some time back when I was thinking about this stuff.

On one level, these prints seek to reproduce an ink drawing.  On another level this reproduction is bound to fail.  This tension may be the essence of a black line relief print.  There are inherent binaries in these prints.  The line retains the fluidity and spontaneity of the ink drawing on the block, but in addition it has been given weight and solidity in the process of carving and printing.  I have spent time with every line.  I have had the opportunity to alter or erase as I slowly move the burin across the wood.  Every line has been given consideration and certainty.  The gestural has been balanced by the solidity of physical form in hard wood.  The instinctive has become emphatic.  Each line says “I am here and could not be anywhere else”.

Peter McLean, untitled, wood engraving, 2009

rain !

This is the view out an upstairs window today.  It has been raining the last couple of days, best rain for months.  The gun trees have been shedding bark recently and the colour looks great in the wet.

bone prints

An exciting new direction my work has taken in the last few months has been relief prints taken from bone – that’s right, bones.  In this case a small animals’ jaw bone that I found in the bush has been sanded flat on one side to print from.  I didn’t do any additional carving into the bone, other than create a flat surface, so all the intricate shapes and forms you see above are a direct result of the structure of the bone.  A series of these prints were taken from the one bone and bound together in a little hardcover book I called “Sequence of Life”.  I’m very excited by the possibilities for a lot more bone prints next year, and other natural structures that I find on walks too.  I’ll keep you posted on that.

lost momentum

It has been such a long time since I added to this blog, rather lost momentum on it.  I do have a few excuses – I’ve just finished my honours degree in visual art which has kept me busy for one thing.  I’ve mostly been making prints and other works on paper recently, rather than ephemeral work, which is what this blog concentrated on.  Nonetheless I’m going to try and regain the blogging momentum, though I’m not sure yet what the main focus should be – time will tell I guess.

roadway leaf stencil

This image was taken on a pedestrian crossing in central Canberra.  A leaf must have been lying in the roadway when the markings for the pedestrian crossing were sprayed on.  Of course the paint stuck to the leaf and not the roadway, and now this durable stencil is left, so no matter the season, there is always at least one autumn leaf on the ground!

found art on a grand scale

 

I was poking about looking at things in a patch of pine trees beside the bike path that goes around Lake Burley Griffin.  A popular route with cyclists and walkers, and with only a narrow strip of accessible land between the lake and a fenced off golf course.  So I was surprised to find these massive earth sculptures amongst the pines.  Well, of course they aren’t really sculptures – they are a series of ramps for use by daring mountain bike riders.  No less impressive though.  You can’t really tell in the photo, but trust me, these are some very well made, and quite substantial pieces of work.  They are entirely hand made as far as I can tell – there really isn’t room to get any machinery in there – someone has spent many clandestine hours making these things – and they have built them to last.  And all just 20 meters or so from the busy path.  Goes to show that lack of ownership or sanctioned access to land is no barrier to some peoples desire to build things.  I was so glad I strayed a little and found these lovely objects – doesn’t the red earth look just fine against the green pines.

Gully cairn

I built this rock cairn in a stony gully next to where I’d camped for a couple of days.  A pleasant little spot, though definitely only for when no rain is expected.  A little pretentious to build a cairn to mark my own camping spot, though that feeling was tempered by building it in the gully since it wont survive the next downpour of rain.  Of course in Canberra that may not be for months. 

Rock cairns are often a little pretentious really.  I’m thinking particularly of the tendency to build a cairn at the top of a mountain, as if we think we are bettering nature just because we built a little pile of stones on top.  On the positive side it’s a nice little ritual to add your one stone to an existing cairn, playing your part in the maintenance of a cultural mark on the land.  Of course the balance between nature and culture has shifted somewhat the last couple of centuries.  Still, it is fun to build a pile of rocks so maybe I shouldn’t try to think about it so much.