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Elizabeth Doidge  South Australian Artist
 
                       
New works for the Exhibition at Pivotal Gallery, Melbourne opening on 2 April 2008
  Wrecked Truck and Two Stobie Poles Sold  

Over the years I have frequently been asked to produce an 'artists' statement'. Now I just put that my work is the statement but, when pushed, trot out the following which I wrote many years ago:

"Having resumed painting after 22 years I have had to re-examine my original concepts and find that, despite the intervening years, they have changed only in their focus.

It has always been essential that my work is accessible. However, in order to prevent superficial interpretations of the `pictures’, their realism is disciplined by form and composition, there are no obscure alternative `meanings’, each object represents only itself, and the temptations to use surrealism, obscure symbols or portentous images are avoided.

Regardless of the above, my work is frequently labelled with artistic terms, such as 'metaphysical'. I recently came across this derivation of the word, 'metaphysical' in Bryan Magee's Story of Philosophy, Page 34:

 
Child Wearing a Dr Who Monster T Shirt Sold Cars Iron and Oil Drums 3 Sold
Fairground Sold Muybridge Wrestlers Sold
The word "metaphysics" comes from the Greek words meaning "after physics" and was simply the name of that book in Aristotle's collected works which came after the book about physics.


Thumbnails are arranged in the order that the work was completed
 
         
 
 
 
     

Work in Progress Blog

 

The exhibition opened on 2 April, everything sold and now it's back to nose to the canvas for the next stint.

         
  Saturday 3 May 2008
Feeling a lot more energetic. The exhibition so flattened me I began to wonder if I'd ever again feel enthusiastic about fiddling with my website, doing the washing or even cooking tea but I have just added all the prices that my work has sold for to the large image pages, which was an interesting exercise. (Should the tax office decide to try to add it all up, these are gallery prices, not mine, or else it would be a Mercedes rather than a Suzuki outside.)
I haven't priced the unsold works which are currently of no more value than the canvas and paint.
Also changed my Contact page from a form to an email address, having found that 25 people went to it last month but none of them used it. The Spam will now be horrendous.
Scrap Pile at Males old Slaughter Yard
 
  Friday 2 May 2008
Had a very fruitful trip to the north of Adelaide, through the light industrial area. Found some very good wrecked trucks but the very best images of all appeared over the top of a beautifully finished ten foot wall surrounding what looked like about 5 acres of a scrap piles - it was CMA Southern Rocycling (spelt correctly) and, no, they wouldn't let me into the scrap yard itself, I could peep through the gate, so I did and took this shot, much too far away to use, dammit. (Does anyone out there happen to know the managers?)
So, I continue with the truck and wrecked buildings, currently repainting the sky for only the second time. The Tattersalls entry is all planned and ready to go, possibly similar in feel to the Wrecked Truck and 2 Stobie Poles (if you're on a winner, why stop!! But that would get SO boring). Came across a much friendlier scrap yard in Murray Bridge, which had just loosely crushed several cars and piled them up. They will replace the wrecked truck, and no Stobie poles this time either.
My new car is now parked outside the studio and is wonderful.
 
Scrap Pile at CMA Southern Rocycling
  Tuesday 15 April 2008
Stretched three big canvases, went to Mount Gambier for a few days, then back to work planning the next one, not for Tattersall's yet, around a truck and some vandalised buildings. I have to work very hard now as I have rewarded myself with a lovely little Suzuki SX4 to replace the Commodore wagon that was the result of the sale of the Hydraulic Excavator and two more, and for which I was very grateful indeed.
But that was back in 2005 and I bumped it into a tree when I was using it to carry fencing materials around the scrub so it's a bit scruffy though it still goes very fast. It is also white. Petrol costs make keeping a huge car just to move a couple of paintings a few times a year a bit silly - all that is yet to be resolved.
With the (nearly) new car due to arrive this week I am almost enthusiastic about beginning again. Paintings feel so simple and straightforward when I begin - then the weeks stretch out as I struggle with one element after another and dive deeper into the black hole, but maybe not this time.
 
Suzuki SX4    
  Friday 4 April 2008
That was a wonderful experience. Regardless of the gale force winds, atrocious flight and an hours wait for a taxi to Pivotal  I met a great many lovely people and began to feel as if I really could paint. Maybe. My thanks to all of you.
Also managed to get out to Brunswick to squeeze tubes of Old Holland paint and smear them onto bits of paper, and they truly are heavier in pigment, stiffer in mix, a great deal higher in price and way way superior. This year's reward for a lot of hard work is to replace every single tube of paint with Old Holland. There is an accelerating trend towards an oilier (downright sloppy) oil paint and any complaint is met with "but everyone else wants it like that". Snarl.
Then a long chat with Tamsin of Pivotal, planning next year's strategy (oops, work). There will be no solo show. No panic. no stress, but some opportunities to exhibit one or two pieces  to keep the essential publicity going.
The next piece, a big one for Tattersalls, is already planned. So is the one after that.
 
The tree used in the Fairground
Humpty Dumpty   Friday 28 March 2008
The paintings made it to Busfreight in Adelaide on Wednesday and arrived in the midst of a power failure yesterday. Intact!
The good bits comes next - a trip to Melbourne and everyone being nice to me. It's the only time I ever really get any feedback, so I need a great deal of it to keep me going for another year. Nothing will happen for the next couple of weeks, though. I am utterly exhausted.
After that I intend to do something for the Tattersalls landscape prize and whatever comes next.
 
The original Fairground Humpty Dumpty  who appeared anatomically incorrect and got changed.
Crow   Monday 10 March 2008
It has been over 41 degrees for the past 4 days and is forecast to continue for another 5, so an early start, but there's still too much low sunshine to work. Whoever built our house and shed faced them squarely onto the road, vaguely south westerly so there is always sunshine coming in somewhere. It is already very hot., although the airconditioner cools the shed by around 10 degrees.
The fairground painting is going well, and is on course to be finished in time, along with the other 4. The frames are ordered, Ken has volunteered to make the crates, and the flight and hotel are booked. This year, a friend has written a press handout for local papers here in South Australia and that went off last Friday. It would be nice to be recognised locally.
Back to the coalface.
 
There was a photo of a truck here, but Pivotal Gallery has told me that there is an expectation it will be my next painting. It won't! So, here's a crow instead.  
Black and Yellow Wreck  

Thursday 28 February 2008
The pile of cars, after weeks working without a break, got itself finished and the wrestlers has only a day or so to go. The car pile was horrendously complicated and got blacker and blacker - very difficult to photograph. Then my email server decided to have another dummy-spit and wouldn't send the image to Pivotal for a long time when all I wanted to do was get away from the studio and all its mess. But it did go eventually, and Tamsin kindly sent many congratulations, spurring me on to the wrestlers and the last one, the tent.

 
Image for the Pile of Cars
 
 

Saturday 2 February 2008
Having struggled to work through a particularly nasty bout of flu that Ken brought back from the UK I finally, at long last, resolved every single square millimeter of the truck (well, as near as possible anyway) and finished it, just in time for Pivotal to start publicity for the show. Now it's on with the wrestlers which should, in theory, be easier.

 
Image for the Pile of Cars
 

Wednesday 23 January 2008
Day after day, everything progressed a little bit more, which is the way it goes when things are going well. Things go bad when, every day, I have to obliterate what I did the day before and do it again. Smashing my head against a brick wall and all the time knowing that if I just left the painting alone in a corner it would (sometimes) just magically resolve itself in my head, I'd know exactly what to do, and finish it. This doesn't work if there's a deadline coming, but is proving to be effective with four paintings unfinished at the same time. There's always some little corner I can work on somewhere.

The mess in the studio is unbelievable.

 
Bare Vines - an unused image
 
 

Friday 4 January 2008
Well, the plan to write this every week didn't last for long. Christmas intervened and a phone call to tell us my UK mother-in-law had died came just as Ken was carving the turkey, after which things got a bit complicated. While he's still in the UK it's difficult to settle to a good long day's work. That's the worst of exhibition deadlines.

I did, however, get more done to the truck, then obliterated a section of it and repainted the sky (again). Now it's drying for a while.

Worked out the fifth painting, no fences - a fairground again - and got the drawing transferred to the canvas ready to colour it in, then find that it doesn't quite work and go over and over it again and again. Maybe this time it will, just for once, sail through easily. Everyone will see the tent and go, Jeffrey Smart, Jeffrey Smart and that makes me so cross!

 
 
 

Sunday 23 December 2007
Not a good week. Endless interruptions but the truck moved much closer to a conclusion and is now  being 'finished' bit by tiny bit. The tree didn't get used (yet) and the sky got changed for the umpteenth time, maybe permanently. The pile of cars also got a kick-start with a big change to the foreground. The wrestlers gathered dust.

Photographed the old wharf at Morgan coincidentally with picking up a book of abstract expressionists.

 

Morgan Wharf

Franz Kline

 
 

Saturday 15 December 2007
The weather is currently very hot so the paint gets thick and sticky very quickly, particularly with the air conditioner on as well, but I press on. At least it dries overnight. In the winter I have to use a hot box that my husband Ken made for me - a big enclosed box with a row of globes and a small computer fan at the bottom, with the paintings sitting on a rack above them. Never could get into painting 'we-on-wet' (I always ended up with a slimy mess) so if they're not dry enough to work on straight away more weeks and weeks go by.

The finished one is of the vampire child I used in 2002 with a wall behind him based on the Melbourne lanes which I photographed during my last exhibition in March. Although I once found a reasonable wall in Adelaide, which I used for the Hula Busker, Adelaide simply does not have the same grunge factor as Melbourne. The image alongside is part of it.

A second painting is finally, at last, after a couple of months work, getting finished. It's another truck (though Tamsin, director of Pivotal, very kindly didn't insist I did one) and it was supposed to be easy - a truck, a bit of landscape and the sky. It ended up being one of those endless, difficult ones where one section gets painted over and over and over again, very much like the Tar Truck, Sign and Drystone Wall, but today I could see the end of it. Maybe another tree. Maybe the one alongside. Maybe not.

The truck came from a truck wrecking yard which I came across when I had to suddenly duck up a side turning when the phone rang. I was actually looking for a foundry just north of Adelaide, which may appear sometime. The truck yard was the most stunningly amazing place. I took  a great many photos and then went back for more. A great hulking bloke said, "Look, it's that tourist again" and I felt very old-ladyish but I shall give him a print of the painting for him to scrutinise at his leisure and find all the bits that don't join up quite right.

A third painting, also approaching the end, is another pile of cars. I began this, feeling very enthusiastic, last April, but paused to do the second Fence and Header and the two little ones for the Savage Club prize, and it has dragged on ever since. Almost got right back into it a week or two ago but, having mixed up a paletteful of rust colours, realised those were exactly the colours I needed for the truck, so that was the end of that.

The problem of doing two rusty paintings at once is I get bogged down with all the brown paint so the fourth painting currently only just begun is another simple, straightforward and fun piece based on Muybridge's wrestlers with a great slab of red at the bottom.

The fifth one will probably be another fence but I recently took a lot of photos of some nearby hills, so maybe it will be those instead.

 
Torn poster from Melbourne Lane  
 
Twisted tree on road to Murray Bridge  
 
Foundry  
 
Pile of scrap at AAA Wreckers  
 
From a Muybridge Wrestlers sequence  
  Hills behind Reedy Creek