New directions

"Fraser Island"acrylic on board. 610x450
Peter Kreet

In order to jolt my mind and conceptual thinking ,I often paint a small series of work completely out of character with current work. These paintings have been developed on and off over the last year so while working on the series Fragments of Memory [ see blog]. Such activity ensures that I can continually approach my work with fresh eyes and not become bogged down in repetitious series of variations as often happens to many artists. Often galleries and dealers require a continual output of related work.

"Murwillumbah"
acrylic on board. 610x450
Peter Kreet

"Nambucca Heads"
acrylic on board 610x450
Peter Kreet

"Nambucca Heads II "
acrylic on board 610x450
Peter Kreet

"Coastal Vista"
acrylic on board 610x450
Peter Kreet

With this in mind I have attempted examine and reduce subject matter to basic elements, the simplified strong colour contrasts and surface textures enable me to look at landscape in a new way. At times I am able to introduce lively linear pattens and clashing colour effects such discords as red and green or blue and orange. This approach to painting is nothing new as both Henri Matisse and Andre Derain developed the style in 30's. Sometimes the exercise propels me towards either a new abstract or figurative series. These paintings were based on sketches I made on a trip to northern NSW and Queensland hope you like the results.

"Approximate Portrait of M"
acrylic on board
Peter Kreet

"Shepard Girls" by Peter Kreet

acrylic on board

This is a possible new appoach to portraits ,most likely I shall have to develope a different treatment of the face. In "Shepard Girls " below I reduced the figure to a siluette but this is not satisfactory for a portrait.

Dorpfeld's Theory on Odysseus' Cave

'Port of Nydri' acrylic on canvas by Peter kreet

 Dorpfeld Street was named after a 19th cent. archaeologist who  held the view that Lefkade and not Ithaca  was the home of the Trojan hero Odysseus. This viewpoint is reasonable as according to Homer his kingdom consisted of Lefkade, Corfu, Kefellonia Lefkade , Ithaca  and possibly also Zakynothos. There is evidence to support this theory although in recent times it has fallen out of favour.

The result of all this is that I have decided to explore this part of the Ionian Island on a quest to try to find a likely cave that fits Homer's description. I had already spent a week on Ithaca without any positive results. Now I intended to work my way down the mountainous east coast of Lefkade. To date I have inspected a large cave complex south of the city, unfortunately the caves proved to have been highly modified in recent times, many interlinked with tunnels down which some had railway lines. My guess is that they were used during WWII by the Germans as some sort of ammunition supply depot.

Further down the coast I inspected a bronze age site and took a boat from Nydri to Meganisi to look at the Papanikolis caves. The Germans had used these also to hold a submarine and seemed unlikely to have been the site the kindly Phaeacians would have deposited Odysseus.

It seems reasonable to give a brief outline of Odysseus' trials over the ten years he took to return home from Troy. Unwilling to leave his wife Penelope and infant son but was persuaded to go and once there proved to be a highly skilled not only as warrior, but also an orator and cunning tactician, Odysseus came up with the idea of the Trojan Horse [ not in Homer].

On his homeward journey he fought off many perils such as the one eyed Cyclops, the witch Circe [ who turned men into pigs], the seductive Calypso and then Sirens' island where he had too block his ears with wax  to stop being seduced. His blinding of Cyclops angered Poseidon [god of the sea] resulting in the loss of all his companions. Eventually the Paeacians took pity on him and returned him to his home.On arrival he found his wife Penelope was being besieged by a hundred suitors, so disguising himself as a beggar and with the support of his son and Eumaios the swine herder killed them all.

Homer's Odysseus is one of the foundation books of western literature and the wonderful think is even two thousand seven hundred years later is still in print.

Sirens Isle  acrylic  on canvas  Peter Kreet

Montebello Atom Bomb Testing

Not many people today believe me when I tell them that in the 50s I was required to walk around the ship I was serving on off the West Australian coast ,giga counter in hand to take radiation readings. Every four hours a crew member would set off in his typical tropical rig of tongs, shorts and sometime singlet to do the readings.The British Government carried out atomic testing on Montebello Island just off the Australian coast near Derby . Little or no concern what ever that such activity posed any form of health risk was considered.Our Federal government at the time assured the general population that all safety measures were in place. No white gloves, mask or safety helmet  nothing in fact was even considered necessary. I have no idea how many seaman if any ever suffered any side effects from this exposure as most would be dead  by now time heals everything. All this of course sounds like agent orange in Vietnam fiasco also claimed to be harmless. The important thing now for every Australian is to make sure such  political spin never see the light of day again.

Eclipse

A few months ago southern Tasmanian was treated a beautiful eclipse, often the colours in such events boarder on the sublime. In this painting I have tried to capture the feeling of midnight lit at first by bright moonlight that suddenly  veiled by some hidden hand. The topic was quite difficulty as to how to enliven the painting with moonlit trees while showing the eclipse.



"Eclipse" by Peter Kreet
acrylic on board



Search for Memory.Lefkade ,Ionian Island.

Strange how childhood memories seem imprinted deeply into your brain, how each year seems an eternity, where a lifetime passes  between each Christmas. Then slowly the passage of each year gathers speed until you are suddenly in your sixties  then seventy were one year follows the next seemingly in a matter of weeks, only on holiday does time return to a childhood dimension .This is sometimes explained that as a child's memory is a blank plate the mind records every detail as new experience, but when on holiday  however particularly if somewhere exotic, ever detail is recorded allowing time to return those golden years.

The scene that greeted me a  few years ago while drinking coffee on cobbled Dorpfeld Street, Lefkade remains fresh in my memory ,even though I have witnessed many crowds of equal absurdity in other parts of the world. I suppose the variety of different images all jousting each other as they surged up and down was etched deeply into my head. The setting most certainly helped, Lefkade has been destroyed several times during its long history by earthquakes a constant danger in this part of the Adriatic. The citizens after the last big quake in 1953 decided on an ingenious solution to rebuild in galvanized iron , each building painted in a soft range of pastel colours that complemented its neighbour in tone and proportion that result in a most beautiful vista akin to a vision onto a fairytale.

Upon this stage the local population perform their daily tasks in slow motion. Sitting there drawing, drinking coffee I became enthused with the variety of players and all the supporting cast as they drifted up and down the street. An Orthodox priest would come running out of a side street waving a sheet of paper to anyone who would take notice, he appeared over and over again during the morning in much the same way a clown suddenly appears in a circus. While this continued elderly ladies dress in obligatory black, scarves firmly tighten beneath chins wandered all over the place while viewing critically the various offerings displayed by various street hawkers. One fallow caught my eye as he diligently plucked at various leafy greens or rubbed eggplant  on his shirt in the hope of improving shirt their saleability.

Cars, vans, the odd donkey would wander past fashionably dress young women in the latest styles. White jeans contrasting with bright red tops and scarf nonchalantly thrown over their shoulder. People would walk slowly alongside a car or bicycle in deep conversion with the various occupants through the open window, no one seemed to be in any hurry to get anywhere . Every now and then the owner of the shop opposite with its array of Visa, American Express and MasterCard  would rush out to carry out some repair on their rickety table held together with bits of wire and metal strapping to fend off its imminent collapse under the weight of doormats, pillows and workmans' jeans.The street had a constant change of clientele, young men clicking their worry beads or keys, older men in their cut away cowboy boots complete with cut away heels and large metal buckles as seen  in Marlborough advertisements.

Most of the motorcade traffic traveled at about 5km in order to shout to friends or anyone willing to listen which was just as well as young mothers would leave their prams out on the road as they negotiated some purchase from the the fishmonger or butcher who all operate out on the pavement. Our priest reappeared again for the fourth time  with a different coloured piece of paper, the old ladies were started to drift off home to prepare lunch, a motor cyclist stopped to talk to a man who I had meet earlier having lost his thumb that was still raped in its shabby bandage. Everything here was sold direct, the shouting continued in competition with church bells, car horns as waiters weaved themselves between everything balancing trays of coffee for clients who for some reason could not leave the safety of their building. The mother had successfully purchased her fish, as the whole scene became surreal. At this point a herd of goats appeared making their way along the street grazing on anything within reach. Dogs barking, vendors shouting, waiters running around with cigarettes in the corner of mouths it was getting a bit too much. I just ordered another coffee while a roar went up as someone had scored a goal on the TV screen.

Julian Ashton Art School and Henry Gibbons

Henry Gibbons
Drawing by Susan Dorothea White.   1961

Peter Kreet [Creet]
Drawing by Susan Dorothea White.  1961

Life is made up of many choices and often it is hard to understand why we make the ones we do. When I left seafaring as a career I had no fixed idea as to what direction my life should take. Douglas Dundas had recommended Julian Ashtons Art School as a good place to start an art career. In enrolling at the school I recall a lunch time discussion with Dick Watkins were he confessed that he could not make up his mind as to whether he wanted to paint or simply that he liked the idea of an artistic life style'.

When I enrolled in 1959 , still very much still walking with a seamans' roll I was confronted by Henry Gibbons by then an institution at Ashtons. We got on very well from our first meeting no doubt his own experience as a spud barber helped [ peels potatoes on ships] when he worked his passage on a ship to America as a young man . Ashtons was very much a 19th cent academic institution were the drawing of classical plaster casts was mandatory such as Venus Di Milo and so on.This was considered the the best way to train the eye to record accurately what was in front of you, after all the  subject matter could not move unlike humans.

Henry would insist that your efforts in the cast room be put out in front, next door to the subject and then from a suitable distance ask "How do you think it looks"? Generally as a young student full of enthusiasm you would reply that it was not perfect, perhaps the right eye or ear were too high or low.To this the reply would be "Yes but what about the overall form or shape. He would then go on to explain that sometimes the eye would get in front of the hand in critical analysis, at others the hand would be in front, this would traverse through out your drawing career, so there would always be this love hate relationship with your work. Some people draw naturally but unfortunately I was not one of them and I suspect Henry despaired at my efforts.

This philosophy about training the eye was central to the school whether it be tone, colour or form.

Henry Gibbons was somewhat deaf and often at lunch time a father would phone the school enquiring about the course before enrolling their daughter. In those days it was quite customary for fathers to do this sort of thing. The school had an old fashion telephone, one that was fixed to the wall and you had to shout at the fixed mouth piece ,while the hearing section was located at he end of a long cord.Fortunately for the students the phone was quite close to the lunch room so when ever one of these call came in we were all privy to the discussion. The conversations if I remember correctly went something like this.
H.G.  "Whats that, can you speak a little louder. How long is the course? Well I have been here over thirty years." this would be followed by, "What do we teach? Nothing we only help people to see, yes to see. No there is no structure if you can't see you are not able to do anything."

As students we would be falling off our chairs with laughter particularly if we had spent the morning fighting our cast drawing. In retrospect one of the great tragedies of art education in this country has been the abandonment of this principle whether you work realistically or in abstract. I know not every one will agree but without critical sight there is nowhere to go.

Istanbul

On first impressions Istanbul appears to be both first and second world at the same time. Very third if you happen to arrive via Topaki Bus Station on a wet winter's day. Where you will discover the station to be no more than a chaotic puddle ridden parking lot of ankle deep mud surrounded by piles of garbage. Garbage seems to be the key ingredient to Istanbul as you hunt for the city's jewels. Garbage bins and the employment of street sweepers do not feature high on the city's priorities. I can understand why its' citizens live in a  state of constants reflection as they walk past broken fountains, damaged sculptures and buildings. It must be depressing to hark back to the days of Empire when Istanbul was one of the great cities of the world with its constant reminders of that glorious past. The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk discusses this melancholic relationship in his book Memories of a City.

During our ten days stay my wife and I walked all over the city, somehow it all seemed familiar as though I had been here before in some past life. Even when we walked long distances across Istanbul we always emerge from the labyrinth of alleys and streets of the old city a block or two from where we thought we should be. I must confess I was very reluctant to visit Turkey, my Armenian heritage ensured that I had been fully briefed about the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1918.However I was only meet with kindness and good will ,at times complete strangers would come up to me and apologise for past events, at other times I would be greeted with a tacit smile from some unknown facet as a local returning with his German bride [my wife is blond] .

On one of our walks along the top of the old Byzantine city walls looking out across the rooftops of the old Armenian quarter towards the Sea of Marma we were quite shocked by the number of homeless men who seem to have made their home there. I must say they seemed quite threatening and I would not recommend you go alone. However the view across the mosques, palaces and churches is worth the effort. You could dream of the sum total of the city's multi-faceted history from Greek through Roman, Byzantine to Ottoman. Turkey in this sense is a must ,no where in Europe is it possible to view three, four thousand years of history in such detail.

Whether Turkey will ever become part of the European Union is any ones guess, there is certainly a lot of paranoia on the European side, a lot of distrust. This is a great pity as such hard line positions are not good for the world. But for all of that, the disorder, traffic and general disrepair there is always the people , their optimism in the future they really are waiting for the west to respond.