NOVEMBER MUSINGS

When I think back to the early 1970’s when I first considered painting as a profession I spoke to my beloved Marie, the wisest person I know, and she suggested that I try to find a teacher. She had already bought me a paint box and so I sought out someone who could ‘teach me the basics.’

The Red Ball

I had been dabbling for some years and had been fortunate to have had some instruction in Graphic Arts and drawing at RMIT. I had been drawn to oils through their buttery quality and of course the heady perfume of gum turps and linseed oil.

So, I set out to visit a recommended school at the Victorian Artists’ Society in East Melbourne. As I was still working at a ‘normal’ job at the time, the only oil class available to me was on a Friday night with a Ms. Shirley Bourne, about whom I knew nothing, although the salesman at Camden art supplies assured me that she was a great teacher

Grandma’s Vase

The class consisted of around 20 students crowded into its historic studio and was presided over by this rather stern lady with unruly hair, with which she had a constant battle. She sat at the back of the room doing puzzles when not stalking us. We were forbidden to talk and had to mix our tonal puddles after separating the lights from the darks and woe betide any ‘little one’ who put brush to canvas before those puddles were complete and correct. As well there were no cups of tea, we were there to work!

The subjects varied from bottles on check table cloths to plaster casts and daisies, of which Shirley seemed to have an endless supply and towards the end of term, a portrait or a figure which was great because we got to down tools when the model was not sitting. This was another rule, ‘no painting when the model is not sitting!’. Those who did were punished by having their paintings taken away and they had to continue mixing tones for the rest of the night. We also had to ‘hurtle’ back from our canvasses to our observation points and not look at the subject unless we were at that point, or a similar punishment ensued.

Doesn’t sound like much fun and it wasn’t initially, but I persevered and found that these few simple rules enabled me to get a half decent likeness, whether a sitter or a bunch of daisies and that Shirley had a wicked sense of humour.

Daffs

Back then there were four ten-week terms per year and at the end of each year we would have what Shirley called and orgy. This meant after cleaning up, we would have nibbles and wine and a darned good laugh. I believe this tradition harked back to Shirley’s days at the National Gallery School where she learned from William Dargie and was ultimately his studio assistant.

I spent nine happy years in that studio under Shirley’s ‘beady eye’ and don’t regret a minute of it. She taught those willing to undergo her disciplinary regime, how to see as a painter sees.

If there is a secret to realist painting it is that to successfully paint from life, whether still life, landscape, or portraiture one must employ their objective eye and to battle the very human habit of subjectivity.

Some may be surprised to learn that the method has less to do with the pushing of paint around a canvas than with the way that the painter sees the natural world.

The key to it all is that if a student can be taught to work by this maxim and develop the consequent skills, they stand a good chance of becoming a competent painter.

Near Cowes

To quote  J.W.M. Turner, “My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there.”

This is also articulated by Max Meldrum and is a good basis on which to build the skill necessary to produce good or maybe even great work, but it needs to be taught properly in the realization that the student is learning a craft. For this to occur the instructor needs to have been trained in that craft and the student needs to be dedicated to the learning of it.

Don James

November 2024