A few years ago, Janelle McMahon, The Gap High School head librarian asked me to paint four of the working doors in the school library, just to make it more interesting to students. It was a marvelous experience planning and working in situ, in full view of students, teaches … Continue reading The Element Doors have found a new home in 2018
Water was the first door I painted in this series. It all came about because there was a door going nowhere in The Gap High School Library, and the Teacher-Librarian, Janelle McMahon asked me if I would paint it blue (because she liked blue…lol) 🙂
I’ll do better than that, I said, I’ll paint a picture on it and it will include blue! Little did I know where that casual remark would lead.
One formal proposal to the Principal later, the one door had turned into four and the images were to be the Elements. No better topic to express my love of landscape! The school gave me a good lump sum of money for the art supplies and I agreed to do it free of charge – I kept the left-over oil paints, brushes etc.
Water paved the way for the rest of the pictures. I had no idea how the paint would stick to the surface – the doors all had a textured good-quality vinyl surface in a limestone colour. But I need not have worried – it worked perfectly.
I used acrylics to ‘map’ out my design first, glued down the mixed media of the printed poetry on rice-paper, then slowly built up glazes in oil paint. The individual images in the picture I added as I went, building up their surface with oils.
‘Water’ – ‘Down by the Bay’ – Sheryl Gwyther 2003
Water focuses on my other job at the time, a part-time teacher at Brisbane’s Nudgee Beach Education Environmental School. It’s on Moreton Bay and is mangrove coastline with estuary beaches – a really important part of the Bay’s eco-system.
Jelly fish in deep water
The Bay (as Brisbanites call it) is constantly under threat from over-fishing. We had a shipping accident last year that tipped containers of chemicals to the ocean floor and swamped tons of oil across beaches. Now the sea-grasses where dugongs feed are threatened after the recent floods in Brisbane.
Moreton Bay in danger of being loved to death, and so are the estuarine mudflats of Nudgee Beach. I haven’t been back there for a while but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s denuded of its micro-life.
Water is a multi-dimension landscape painting – mapping out a bird’s-eye view of Nudgee Creek as it flows into Moreton Bay. The macro image of a Soldier Crab represents life on the mudflats, and the water-poetry inserts are there because the painting is in a Library.
The chosen poetry extracts are some of the most evocative words written about water by poets from several continents and times. I chose my favourites, Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot, Five Bells and Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor and others.
Human symbols for water include in the painting are Aboriginal water-hole circles, the ancient Egyptian wavy hieroglyph for river, the zodiac water signs of Scorpio, Pisces and Cancer, and the Brisbane tidal patterns. See if you can find them all.
Some of the larger images include baby turtles (not from Nudgee Beach); my favourite creature of the Bay – the Soldier Crab; flowers from the Red Mangrove and shells.
Soldier crabs armies look like pieces of sky moving across the mudflats.
This is a painting about conservation of a fragile environment – and I don’t care if it’s not subtle. The estuary mangroves are the nurseries for Moreton Bay’s fish and mud crabs. Below, in and above them live countless creatures. The most destructive creatures at Nudgee Beach walk on two legs.
If you’re ever near The Gap High, call in and ask Janelle or Karen to give you the guided tour. 🙂
All images are copyrighted. If you would like to use them for educational purposes, please acknowledge them and contact me first for permission. (c) Sheryl Gwyther 2011
Yesterday’s post featured my painted door, Fire, from The Element Doors installation at The Gap State High School Library, Brisbane. Today’s art is the second door, Air. Monday’s blog – Water. Tuesday’s blog – Earth.
“Air” – Sheryl Gwyther 2003
Each of the four doors has its own name – Air is also called That Eye the Sky. You recognise that name maybe? Yes, it’s a Tim Winton novel – a great story by an award-winning Aussie author.
Why call it after a piece of fiction? Because like most of my paintings, this one is about our Australian landscape. And in particular, the massive wheat-fields of Western Australia. It’s about the wide, open outback skies – their blueness with a light unlike any from Northern Hemispheres. I’ve never been to South America or Africa – maybe their sky is the same blue? 🙂 Or maybe it’s a trick of the light caused by reflection from the bare earth of Central Australia.
When I painted it, I imagined being able to see from horizon to horizon in one go – like you’re lying on your back in the air (if you know the artwork of William Robinson, you’ve know what I’m talking about).
William Robinson – ‘Summer Landscape’
So my wheat fields are both at the top of the picture and the bottom. The blues range from the yellow-y, pale blue closest to the horizon to the deepest blues in the middle. It’s the deep blues that draw the eye into the centre. I go through many tubes of blue paint – all types, but mainly Phthalo Blue. I can’t help it. I mix it with Burnt Sienna to make shadows, or pure, luscious colour in other parts. Phthalo Blue with a cool red, makes the most delicious Purple. 🙂
The colour blue has an amazing history – especially ULTRAMARINE Blue. Given its name by the medieval Italians (Oltramarino – ‘from beyond the seas’), most of the true colour pigment of Ultramarine comes from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. All of the real Ultramarine in both Western and European art came from one set of mines in a valley in north-east Afghanistan, Sar-e-sang, the Place of the Stone. (if you want to know more about the fascinating history of colour, read Victoria Finlay’s book, Colour.
Did you know that BLUE is the world’s most favourite colour? It’s a multi-cultural experience. I’ve often thought about that – could it be harking back to our prehistoric days when blue skies meant good weather=survival?
I did a quick survey of the teenagers in the Library at The Gap High School. They walked through the Element Doors every day, most didn’t even notice them, but some stopped to read the mixed media words on several of the doors and many of them watched as I painted the doors in situ – rather than work on their assignments etc at desks nearby.
My question – ‘What’s your favourite door and why?’ 90% said Air. And why? A shrug of the shoulders and, ‘Dunno. Just do, that’s all.’ Interesting. 🙂
Note: Over 7 years, the students did not make a scratch or a mark on those four doors. The only cleaning I’ve done is a little grubbiness around the door handle, and a few scuff marks from the cleaner’s vacuum.
The Element Doors symbols – Sheryl Gwyther 2003
All images are copyrighted. If you would like to use them for educational purposes, please acknowledge them and contact me first for permission. (c) Sheryl Gwyther 2011
I admire those talented author/illustrators, those high-achievers of children’s books with dual creative minds – like Shaun Tan, Gabrielle Wang, Sally Rippin, Narelle Oliver, Kerry Argent and Pamela Allen (and heaps more). I’m so jealous!
How do they split their time between both activities, especially if they’re writing novels as well as picture books? What comes first, the story idea or the first little mental image that pops into their heads? And the biggest question of all – how do they find time to do both activities, and the housework as well?!
I’m endeavouring to interview a well-known author/illustrator in a future blog so might have some questions answered soon.
I have a special interest in the way illustrator-writers/artists work, as I struggle to find a way to paint while writing full-time. I don’t illustrate my stories, except for the chapter headings, the motifs in Secrets of Eromanga. But I am an artist and printmaker – and have been for the last 18 years and 3 months to be precise.
‘Layers of Time’ – my final illustration from ‘Secrets of Eromanga’ – pen and ink
Eleven years ago, WORDS took over my head and my life, usurping the painterly life and gradually relegating my easel, paints, brushes and print rollers to the downstairs cupboard. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE WRITING more than eating, sometimes. But!
When I was new at this ‘game’ of writing children’s books, it was easy – one day writing, one day painting, one day in the Evil Day Job (that’s all I could handle). But then, with stealth and muscle, writing crept into my psyche like the first flow in a dry creek bed. Hardly noticeable at first, then the flood.
Making art became more difficult – not the skill side, it was the thinking side. Because like writing, painting requires many hours of thought as well as craft skill.
So, here we are in 2011, I have some books, articles and short stories under my publishing belt; many more on the ‘drawing board’, and the easel is still under its sheet so I can’t see the large half-finished canvas I started 6 months ago.
If anyone has any suggestions to get my writing/painting life into order, I’d love to hear from you!
Have to admit even when painting, dastardly WORDS crept into my work. Maybe they’ve always been there and I didn’t recognise the love of my life (sorry, Ross!) 🙂
Here is an example where words figure in my artwork: Fire – one of The Element Doors (an installation at The Gap High School Library, Brisbane) – painted in acrylic, oils, mixed media on real doors. Metal door handles are engraved with contour lines – an important motive in my work. All of the Element Doors have words of some sort ’embedded’ into the paint. Fire has newspaper headlines about bushfires in Australia. See the story of Fire below.
These 4 doors were real doors, used every day by hundreds of students. But a re-modelling of the library last year meant that 3 of the doors are now up on the wall and one, Fire is screwed to another wall all by itself – it was deemed too heavy to put at a higher level because it is an actual fire protection door. I had no idea it was the library’s fire door when I chose it for the Fire painting.
Painting ‘Fire’ in The Gap High School Library before it was put back in place
FIRE– A nation hostage to the gum
Laden with volatile eucalyptus oils and as recognizably Australian as the koala, the gum tree evolved to fit this land like a glove. Its many varieties have adapted to the seasonal flare-ups of bushfires – surviving and sprouting with new growth when the rains arrive. Bushfires are a natural part of the renewal across this land.
We want to live close to the natural beauty of the Australian bush, but even after many decades of bushfire tragedies, it’s ironic we ignore the gum’s ability to increase the destructive path of fire.
If we want to live in harmony with, rather than hostage to the gum we need to understand its place in our Australian landscape.
For the next three days, I will post the other three Element Doors with their particular story attached.
All images are copyrighted. If you would like to use them for educational purposes, please acknowledge them and contact me first for permission. (c) Sheryl Gwyther 2011
Sheryl Gwyther 