Past Exhibitions

These are only a few of the works in the sale - come and see us before we must finally move on 31 March.

The Charles Hewitt Gallery is pleased to announce the most extensive exhibition of French etching ever to come to Australia. This exhibition and sale of over 300 pieces feature the work of more than 60 French artists and represents virtually the entire history of French graphic art from the commencement of the Etching Revival, which began in France in 1835, to its end in 1930, nearly 100 years later.

The exhibition focuses on the youngest of the French members of the Etching Revival, Edgar Chahine (1874-1947), who was a prominent exhibitor at the Salons, the Venice Biennales, and modernist art galleries in France and Italy from the late 1890s to the late 1930s. Chahine also was an important illustrator of beaux livres by prominent authors, including Anatole France, Octave Mirbeau, Gabriel Mourey, Maurice Barrès, Gustave Flaubert, Colette, Charles Baudelaire, and the Frères Goncourt. The exhibition is particularly rich in both studio etchings as well as extremely rare artist’s proofs of Chahine’s book illustrations. In addition, the work of Chahine is complemented by comprehensive coverage of representative works by his confrères of the French

Etching Revival, including his predecessors Corot, Rousseau, Jacque, Millet, Daubigny, and Méryon as well as his contemporaries Lalanne, Bracquemond, Legros, Buhot, Lepère, Besnard, Raffaëlli, Forain, Steinlen, Helleu, Leheutre, Legrand, Jouas , and Béjot. These works are placed in a contemporary context through their contrast with works by more recognisably modernist artists, including Jongkind, Fantin-Latour, Chéret, Morisot, Maillol, Bonnard, Rouault, de Vlaminck, Laboureur, Denis, Frélaut, and Derain. Further, the overall range of these works is placed into international perspective by the inclusion of representative graphic works of artists outside of France working at the time, such as Klinger, Orlik, and Heckel in Germany; Rops in Holland; Haden and Whistler in the UK; and Pennell and Arms in the USA.

The works in the exhibition are drawn principally from the significant lifetime collection of Pierre Chahine, the only child of the artist, and his wife Anne. This collection has been supplemented by works from a major Sydney collection and the stock of a prominent New York art dealer. They include drawings, hard-ground and soft-ground etchings, drypoints, aquatints, book illustrations, posters, and illustrated menus by many of the well-known and lesser-known artists who were active during the Belle Époque heyday of the Etching Revival, which spanned France, Italy, the UK, and the USA. The themes explored by these artists focus mainly on landscapes, genre scenes, portraits, pastoral scenes, urban settings, and architectural works. Many of these works are of exceptional rarity and include unrecorded works and impressions that are unique or of which there are only a few known copies.

 

Artist’s Statement – Tree Ballad

Tree Ballad is a series of landscape paintings that explore the mystical qualities of the natural environment, and reflect an intimate journey into an imagined whimsical world. Whilst the series is not a realist rendering of specific places, the landscapes depicted are based on the very real connections I feel with the natural world. I focus on evoking the feeling and mood of a landscape, rather than the physical place itself. To me, landscapes are inherently spiritual and a place of personal contemplation. For this reason, my intention is not to produce a pre-determined narrative, but to invite interpretation that is personal and subjective.

The Tree Ballad landscape series have involved a process of initially distilling images onto small sketches, followed by an intensive seventeenth century Dutch paint layering technique on canvas.

 

Ursula Kolbe Unravelling StoryIt is tempting to begin an essay about Ursula Kolbe’s work biblically, with the sentence ‘In the beginning was the word.’ But it would be a mistake. Because the spiritual in her work is not expressed in words. The numinous is articulated by the imagery and the floating consistencies of her colours. Words are an important part of her oeuvre, certainly, but they are used to signpost, to flag, to suggest - as much to her as to the viewer. Words are vital to her process and integral to her product, but they are not her starting point.Like her characters and shapes, like the haunting figures and the luxurious hues, like the intimate spaces and the vast depths, that render her work three-dimensional, the words float towards the surface of the canvas from a place very deep within it, and then glide, dreamlike, away. But although the canvas is full of words, they don’t jostle each other, anxious to be heard, rather, they become the ambient poetry of her art, and like poetry, they are melodic and quiet and full of meaning.Although steeped in a misty current and flow, Ursula’s work is clear. It is rich and textured and it glows. It just glows. There is distance and endless space. The places she creates are humane and inhabited. People in various stages of emerging, move forward, towards the front of the canvas and then recede, ceding their place to those who follow.It is Ursula’s style not to use the artistic conventions, but rather to embody them. There is no deliberate use of perspective, but perspective is there anyway - deep and endless. During her process of working and reworking the canvas, feeling and allusion grow and transform, allowing her work to evolve.Ursula’s words are the most intriguing elements of her work. They are ambiguous. Acting as both palisade and portal, they are delicate, lyrical, but above all they are meaningful. There is no room for random lettering in Ursula’s work; her words require you to pay attention. To extract your own meaning - to make of her work what you will.At the heart of Ursula’s art is the desire to connect with the artist, the subject and the viewer. It is strange and subtly unworldly, yet deeply familiar. One connects with what one recognizes, then reaches forward, towards that which one does not yet know.Kiriaki Orfanos, 2012Writer

My latest body of work is based on observations of the landscape and flora in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park during the recent La Nina event. La Nina is said to be Spanish in origin and means “the girl”, (as apposed to el Nino, “the boy”). The wet weather that is associated with La Nina, has made the bush burgeon with thrilling life.  Creek beds and pools of water create new directional flow; grey skies enhance the vibrancy of colour; light is intensified after rain; the nature of the new growth brings a certain softness in texture. This natural landscape presents as an intriguing paradox. Whilst bodies of water lead the eye in and outwards through reflections, there is a mysterious chasm in time, yet it also appears infinite. Up close, is an unruly entanglement of prickly menace; from a distance, are distinct interlocking shapes that can be ordered by the eye into Cezanne’s geometry. Patterns that appear on the macro level are reiterated in the micro. Shadows of texture hem and define vibrations of light. I endeavour to capture some of these subtle ambiguities in my work.  I retrace the place, coming closer to the essence of form, yet ironically remove it, by carving back through the surface. The image becomes a visual description that blends aspects of botanical documentation (like the early Australian artists); a journey through nature, (influenced by Japanese scrolls); and a personal expression through patterns of whimsy, and reflections on experiences past, of the Carigal people.

 

Sara Freeman grew up in Melbourne, travelled through most of her twenties, spending time living in Europe, Japan and India before moving to the NSW Far South Coast in 1995. In 2006 she completed a BA Visual Art with Honours in Printmedia and Drawing at the ANU School of Art. Currently she is completing a BA in Cultural Heritage (Paper Conservation) at the University of Canberra.  A fascination with fine mark making and patterning brings the influences of printmaking into her paintings. She follows an ongoing interest in the power of art to transmit subtle or sublime states. These paintings have a rare surface quality, built up of wax and egg tempera by carving, washing and reworking layers to create textures rich with traces of life and time.

asmp.org/articles/best-2011-sleeman.html

http://digitaledition.manlydaily.com.au/#folio=021

Wonderful Clouds J’aime les nuages…les nuages qui passent…

là-bas…lá-bas… les merveilleux nuages!

 Charles Baudelaire I love the clouds…the passing clouds…over there…over there…the wonderful clouds. Clouds are the things that dreams are made of, building up across a distant horizon, changing colours and shapes every moment and scattering away when you turn your head. Reflecting and highlighting the landscape below, splashing the valleys and mountainsides with light and shade or sweeping over broad stretches of shimmering sea.To me clouds are an integral part of every landscape providing drama, and in turn tranquility, either angry or calm the wonderful clouds provide me with a dream. Duncan Stothart

This series of work continues the artist’s exploration of nostalgic urban landscape subjects in Sydney and the New South Wales Coast.   Since the body of work was started several of the subjects have been altered for evermore by development or destruction.  Others instill sense of yearning for another time.  All of the paintings in this series have been made on a coloured ground or priming, to reflect the mood at a particular time of day.  To control for a sense of light, a strictly limited triadic palette of earth colours has been used in the under-layers and a similarly structured palette of primaries (each having a relationship to their corresponding earth hues) for the finishing layers.   As each layer builds some of the previous layer is left exposed, creating surface complexity which in turn creates depth and luminosity.

The Macquarie dictionary defines the word eclectic as, ‘derived from many sources’, a word I think fits perfectly my concept for this exhibition. My principal inspiration is landscape, that place where we find meaning and a connection to a sense of place. I’m not particularly interested in virgin bush landscapes, what interests me is the ‘cultivated landscape’, that is the visual traits of our attempts to fashion this land to our utilitarian, sometimes aesthetic notions of what ideal country should look like. Our landscape shows evidence of the many successes but equally it is littered with failures, ruins, abused earth, a testament to our clumsy struggle with forces over which we sometimes have no control. There is also the ‘landscape of the mind’ an altogether much more subtle and complex, shadowy place, inhabited by countless images and sensations looking to find meaning in a complex world. The more I paint, the more I see, and the more I see the more I want to paint, to try and fix that place or that sensation in a concrete image by the timeless technique of oil painting. By selecting an image or concept to paint and isolating a subject in a frame, I am inviting the viewer to consider my perception of that subject, to take a second look. My painting is all about the language of perception. My aim is to trigger an emotional response, an, ‘I know that’ moment. I believe that we all share a very sophisticated collective visual memory bank, and if an image draws a response then it’s doing its job.

This exhibition deals with the pictorial representation of situations arising from the complex relationship of our psychological structure and the external world. ”This involves the conflict of the self and the persona - on the one hand the self, with vulnerabilities and desires, and on the other, the persona, operating in a role of power play ‘through the mask’.This conflict within the self parallels a universal situation we all endure, creating a dilemma where internal drives are set against the competing demands of the external world. Tension resides in the moment prior to the ego regulating the id and the superego, at which point a compromise is reached which is an acceptable behaviour in the world. This prior moment is a liminal zone, a transition of being on the "threshold" between two contradictory existential planes. In this case they are psychological. Freud encapsulates the mediating process occurring beyond this threshold in his statement: ‘The ego is the mediator between the two contradictory terms, the instinctive corporeal strivings of the id on one hand and the demands and requirements of reality or civilization for the modification, control or postponement of instinctual satisfaction on the other.’1Within the imagery of the artwork I am seeking to create the psychological tension which is inherent in these conflicted states. In this discord there is an unspoken moment in which the figures are caught between two opposing demands, and are rendered mute. Many conflicts are involved here: first, between the self, with its inherent vulnerability, and the persona which presents an empowered position; second, the position between action and reflection which in this case renders the figures static and mute; third, the internal drives of sensuality that are restrained within codes of morality. All these conflicts leave the figures powerless and immobilized. My intention is to portray the threshold between these conflicted states in a moment of immobilization within the unspoken drama.Within these images I am seeking to represent the relationship between the interior and the exterior in which my subject’s body becomes an extension of the expression of the psyche.”  -  Deborah Marks1 S. Freud, The Ego and the Id (Martino Fine Books, London, 1927), p.54.