frances blythe



 


introduction

Frances Blythe was born in London and migrated to Australia in 1994, after a career as a senior administrator at The Royal College of Surgeons of England. She now lives in South Fremantle, WA, and has a Master of Arts (Visual Arts) from Curtin University.

She is interested in memory and our relationship to time, and how our perceptions of everyday sights can lead us into different places, different times. She is particularly interested in how the language of paint can be used to lead the viewer into the open possibilities of a painting.

The following pages contain a selection of recent and past paintings. Comments and feedback from viewers are welcomed. Please contact the artist for details of availability and prices, or if you would like to be added to the mailing list for exhibitions.
 

curriculum vitae



 

paintings



2010-11 –  These works are an acknowledgment of the frequent use of organic forms as a motif in my paintings. I have always been fascinated by the wealth of visual material provided by nature in my immediate environment, such as a vase of flowers, the garden at different times of day, local trees and streetscapes. The intimacy or familiarity with ‘domesticated’ natural scenes allows an appreciation of the smallest variations within them; and the observed daily and seasonal changes offer a rich and ever-changing resource.

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass

That darkness is about to pass.

Emily Dickinson
The connections between gardening and painting are many: the ground is prepared, a plan is made and a dialogue begins between unruly materials and a desire for order. Both activities involve a certain amount of pruning, removing and deciding when to leave well alone. There is always a degree of artifice even in the most ‘natural’ gardens. In painting, unexpected marks – ‘weeds’ – can be satisfying or covered over.

A few words about two of the paintings:
Ikebana 
it seems to me that I have often spent time arranging flowers across a canvas.
Kaiyu-shiki is a Japanese strolling garden which requires the observer to walk through the garden to fully appreciate it. It is based on the principle of ‘hide and reveal’ – a technique which I have always been interested in exploring in my paintings.





2007-2008 – Most of these paintings were inspired by a partial solar eclipse in February 1999, when I observed the effects of the changing light and shadow-shapes in my back garden. Everything seemed to be hushed with expectancy and there seemed to be frozen moments when the image of the sun, partially eclipsed by the moon, became a crescent shape echoed over and over in the shadows of the leaves. Sometimes ideas surface slowly.

The moon methinks looks with a watery eye;
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,

Therefore the moon…
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Eclipse is from the Greek ekleipo, meaning fail to appear. An eclipse does not solely veil or obliterate an object or light-source. The change also reveals objects obscured or gives new emphasis to unnoticed aspects. Certain objects pushed into the background allow other, previously unseen, objects to be revealed; and shapes and shadows mutate as the light source changes.
There are always ambiguous states between one thing changing from what it was and becoming another. And of course paint itself is layered, is changed and changes.
In an eclipse – as in life – even when you stand still, things change.
These works explore what is hidden and what is revealed by the layering of paint, focussing particularly on the transparent and opaque qualities of layers of white paint in an image, below, between and above other layers.



2005-2006 – These paintings were inspired by the richness of our immediate environment, which can often be overlooked as we pass by, absorbed in our own interior world. Sometimes small, fleeting things catch our eye and are transformed by our thoughts into momentarily strange and unrecognisable sights.





2004-2005 – These are from a series inspired by the sights of materials/surfaces/objects that are seen 'underfoot' in areas that the artist visits daily. The material of our everyday environment, whether it is from a landscape or a domestic space, can be full of strangeness and surprise. Things can suddenly be seen as if for the first time and then associations and memories attach themselves and complexity multiplies. The materiality of the paint has been used as a response to these glimpses of the everyday.

If the purpose is to understand paint, then there is no utility in making a sharp line between concepts and chemicals: a concept can be a substance in the mind just as a chemical is a substance in the world. Substances occupy the mind as concepts, and concepts occupy the world as substances. Thinking in painting is thinking as paint.
James Elkins



                                                         
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

paintings 2000-2003


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contact information

painting@francesblythe.iinet.net.au



Copyright Notice: The paintings reproduced on this site are copyright and may not be copied or used in any way without written permission from the copyright holder. Please contact Frances Blythe to request permission to use any works.

Photography and site design by the artist.

Last revised: 16 November 2011