Essay by Christine Morrow
All that is solid melts into air
Marx & Engels The Communist Manifesto
1848 (trans. Samuel Moore)
Paula Payne’s paintings disturb states of matter. The artist uses chemical and physical properties of paint to collapse the categories of sky, soil, rock, water and ice. She coaxes hesitant forms from her brush but even as she conjures them into being, she suppresses them. Through layers and veils of paint, shapes emerge and are stifled. By muddling the paint Payne muddies the waters.
Painting is a material, physical, chemical process. To paint is to distribute liquid over a surface, typically paper, canvas, or wood. Of course, the most subversive painters use aerosols and their preferred substrate is masonry but that’s a story for another day. In the process of painting, liquid becomes solid. Polymer paints and watercolours dry through evaporation of water. Oils and enamels dry first by off-gasing their solvents and then through the reaction between oxygen and linoleic acids or resins. Encaustic paints dry by surrendering their heat to the atmosphere. That’s physics and that’s chemistry.
If painting relies on the transformation of matter between states, so does climate change. Land, water and sky appear to neatly align themselves with the states of solid, liquid and gas. It would be convenient if they occupied fixed zones as well as fixed states. Yet global warming sees them break their bounds: solid becomes liquid in the melting of polar ice caps; oceans swell, and sea levels rise; ozone gas depletes.
Payne manifests environmental anxieties by employing elisions, doubts and uncertainties in her painting technique. Her glazes are hazes and her scumbles are stumbles. There is deliberate confusion in the iconography too. Contour lines could be escarpments, ridges of open-cut mines, watercourses, or terrace farming. In Time Trace [2020] there is a hint of an underground cavern or alternatively, a detail from the realm of astronomy. Large, pale shapes in the similarly named Geological Time Trace [2020] might be crystals, eroded buttes, pinnacles or melting stalagmites. Payne’s content traverses grey areas.
Payne’s paintings incorporate solids. Sometimes these solids are perversely abstract and hollow like the geometric forms that seem to levitate over the surface of some of her canvases. Her paintings are liquid too. There is no impasto. The paint is laid on thin. Like water, her paint finds its own level. Like gas, her ethereal painted fields expand effortlessly to fill the space within the frame. These atmospheric effects are a smokescreen and a blanket of smother.
I thought I was on strong footing when I was taught in school that the physical world could be neatly categorised as solid, liquid or gas. Around the time I learned that Pluto was still a Disney dog but no longer a planet, I discovered there is a fourth state of matter. Previously missing from the trinity was plasma. Plasma is a shifty concept. Like liquid, it has no fixed shape; like gas, it has no definable volume either. Its form cannot be contained. The space it occupies is indeterminate. Positive charges roam free. Plasma is a useful metaphor for understanding Paula Payne’s depictions of the natural world. She paints in a ‘plasmatic’ way: highly charged, but slippery in its volumes and indeterminate in its forms.
In Chemistry, sublimation refers to the process when a solid becomes a gas without first passing through a liquid phase. In psychoanalysis, sublimation refers to a desire for an object and its simultaneous disavowal through deferral, deflection or displacement. This displacement typically takes the form of channelling the disavowed desire into a ‘higher purpose’ like making art. Payne’s practice encapsulates both senses of the word. She uses symbolic representations of states of matter in mid-transformation to conjure change and uncertainty. She funnels the deflections and displacements into a higher purpose, producing anxious, unstable images that act as a warning: the natural world is a site of insecurity, risk and loss.
Christine Morrow
Brisbane, July 2021
Christine Morrow is an artist, curator and writer. She is a member of Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art.
An Essay By Christine Morrow 2019
Painted Landscape: Whispering the Flame—An exhibition by Paula Payne April 2019
In Joan Lindsay’s famous novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, the Australian bush landscape is an enigmatic space where time is suspended. Past, present and future don’t exist. They are subsumed by eternity. Human subjects—schoolgirls—perform conventional social actions that barely leave a trace on the surface of the earth. Alongside the land’s mystery, solidity and endurance, their behaviour appears surreal. Through its symbolic and spiritual power, the earth strangely absorbs and vanishes them. The metaphysical potency of the natural world is at its most concentrated in the ancient geological forms. In amongst the rocky outcrops on the climb up Mount Macedon, a portal of energy beckons the girls away.
The European-derived tradition of Australian landscape—in film, art, literature and in our national mythology—is always framed in terms of anxieties and threats. Not only in Picnic at Hanging Rock, but in the disappearance of baby Azaria, the lost child in the bush of Frederick McCubbin, Henry Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife, the flattening of Darwin by Cyclone Tracy, and the fires and floods that regularly ravage this land. Even Mad Max tells us that when human civilisation ends, it will exit via the Australian landscape. Our country is the setting for the end of the world.
Paula Payne’s art works explore the existing capacity for unease, fear and disquiet within Australian landscape traditions. But she chooses to work against the colonial and twentieth century narratives that pit vulnerable human subjects against the strength, terror and relentless hardships of nature. Instead, her work shows it is the natural world that is at risk. And far from seeing the earth as a monolith—potent, solid and enduring—she reveals it is obscured, fragmented, unstable and tenuous. Unlike the dominant White Australian landscape narrative, in her work, human beings are not separated from the land and overshadowed by its power. We are entwined with it; it provides our bedrock and our life support.
The exhibition Painted landscape: whispering the flame spans medium to large-scale paintings displayed alongside selectively-coloured found plant forms. The main body of work was produced as part of Paula Payne’s ongoing doctoral research in Fine Art. It is supplemented by studies made en plein air while in residence at the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre in Northern New South Wales earlier this year.
Payne’s images reveal glimpses of geological forms, other topographical features, plant motifs, built structures and some ambiguous shapes we suspect may even be human body parts. Western landscape traditions (including, for example, the modes of picturesque, realist, impressionist, romantic and sublime) have limited capacity to express the shifts that climate change causes in the natural environment. Some of these focus on the cyclical aspect of nature, depicting a single season through climatic indicators (for example, scenes of trees bare in the Winter or under blossom in the Spring) or cultural ones (like Autumn crop harvests). But climate change disrupts these seasonal cycles. The artist needs to look outside of these landscape codes and find a different means to express changes in nature that are erratic and jarring rather than predictable and recurrent.
Even the symbolist approach to landscape—focused as it is on profound and subjective meanings communicated through the natural world—is too obsessed with conveying spiritual intensity to lend itself to this purpose. And while romantic and sublime landscape painters know how to sing out the drama of majestic landscapes and the cataclysm of short-lived weather effects, their vocabulary would be overkill for an artist like Paula Payne who chooses to depict slow and subtle environmental transitions that elicit human foreboding.
Instead, the artist has had to reach past the historical limitation of the landscape genre and feel out her own unique visual grammar for expressing unease. She uses partial abstractions to achieve this. Her depictions of the environment don’t describe spaces that are logical, continual or seamless. She employs a collage-like strategy of fragmentation and layering. Some sections on her canvases are painterly monochrome areas of colour that appear parallel with the picture plane, while other parts are fragments of figuration. Where these segments meet one another, they create deliberate ruptures across the pictorial field. This acknowledges the landscape genre as a careful construction based on conventions and codes. Two of the works even take the form of diptychs wherein the vertical break between one panel and the other enacts a tear in the picture plane. The breaches and fissures give symbolic expression to disruptions, jolts and slippages in the physical world. Sometimes the artist pushes this abstraction to the extreme: an entire or partial surface is striped by alternating vertical colour bands. The striping motif—one colour strobing after another—acts as a cipher for the concept of change, alternation and flux. Irregular stripes are a pure expression of the abstract concept of ‘variability’.
Linear perspective doesn’t really appear. And there is no flat ground to provide a stable base in these landscapes—because rising sea levels guarantee no firm topography. There’s rarely anything resembling a horizon line, except in some of her plein air painting studies from the Tweed. But even then, Payne tilts up the horizontal topography towards the viewer as if the ground is climbing up the painting’s surface.
The artist is far more interested in earth than sky. In many ancient languages, the name for human beings is synonymous with the word for ‘earth’* while the name for gods relates to the word for ‘sky’. And Payne depicts humans embodied and embedded in the land that names them. This reveals the symbiosis between human beings and the environment that provides their life-support. In one panel of the diptych Fragment II, we see part of a linear network that might represent human arteries, and on the other panel is a depiction of a branching structure that may be either a plant’s inflorescence or the bronchi of a lung. The same work also features a softly faceted biological form. It could equally be a bodily organ, a flower bud, or a seed pod. In Fragment I, a motif appears to be simultaneously a leafy stem and a human rib cage. Elsewhere in the same painting is a reddish shape that may be an organ. A spleen or liver? Its surface is the colour of oxidised blood and a white lattice partly shrouds it; reminiscent of caul fat.
Even when pictorial elements overlap, this is not a device for expressing spatial depth. We don’t know the scale of anything and can’t be sure there is any fore, middle or background in Payne’s treatment of space. A ring of white posts in one of the paintings appears to levitate. The laws of physics do not apply. A leaf or a seed pod is not necessarily larger or smaller than a tower. This is especially true of Payne’s ongoing series Architecture for Unknown Worlds wherein solidly modelled structures are portrayed in front of, or behind, thin linear elements. Some shapes are assertively tangible and others are tentative. In the early images within this series, flimsy architectural depictions of famous seed banks seem to float. They appear as hopeful but feeble attempts to hold off doomsday’s reckoning. In all the paintings, the ghostly linear elements suggest something that is barely beginning to materialise, or already in retreat. These thin drawings aren’t part of the same physical realm as Payne’s chunky, solid and faceted forms. And none of them follows the rules of Euclidian geometry.
But their function in the paintings was never to articulate three-dimensional space. They are there to interact with one another allegorically. They represent concepts like words side-by-side in a sentence; they symbolise elements like motifs side-by-side in a story. Glazed shrouds of colour may refer to atmospheric lighting effects. Red elements suggest heat and flame and global warming, as well as blood and organ meat. Blue sections might symbolise water, sky and ice, and hint at weather patterns—perhaps even melted glaciers or polar ice caps. Linear forms in the paintings may represent latitudinal or surveyors’ lines, the ridges of geological forms or ley lines. But these are only vague possibilities. The colours and shapes are not tied firmly to literal referents. They may equally represent overlaid memories or half-formed glimpses and ideas. Veiled impressions may be views seen from behind a barrier—an image closed-off from the past, or an apparition of the future.
Alongside the paintings, Payne shows three-dimensional objects that began life as the cast-off inflorescences of the piccabeen palm (archontophoenix cunninghamiana), an Australian plant native to the wet subtropics. On the living plant, they form the stringy network that supports the bunched red fruits. After they drop, these desiccated forms appear strangely like three-dimensional drawings. On the palm, they hang down from a stem, typically branching out wider near the top and wicking to a point below. But when they are turned upside down we suddenly see in their shape the upthrust of a tongue of flame. The artist painted parts of the piccabeen bits in red aerosol. An additional few, she sprayed black. These dried plants are already flammable but their red and black colouring encourages us to project onto them images of burning fires and the carbon aftermath.
Combustion is one means by which greenhouse emissions and global warming occurs and this connection underlies the artist’s choice of sub-title for the exhibition: whispering the flame. Whispering something into being is a kind of cajoling. And this is an apt metaphor for how Paula Payne slowly coaxes from her materials a unique visual language for expressing climate change. But whispering can originate in uncanny and otherworldly voices that slow-stir anxiety and madness in us. The constant whispering of escalating climate fears is an incitement to insanity; the mood of these art works is quiet and disquiet.
Christine Morrow
Brisbane, April 2019
TEN: Contemporary Painting at
White Canvas Space, Newstead
White Canvas Space presents an exhibition of ten contemporary painted works surveying the ways that painters continue to explore and re-invent abstract painting. Ten Queensland artists with individual painting practices are invited to participate in the exhibition exploring paint as the idea, the subject, and the medium, on large scale landscape or portrait formats. Formalism, abstraction, and the stylisation of a number of personal and historical realities are expressed through spatial painterly renditions. The significance of the number ten is threefold: The number of artists; The paintings exhibited; The numerology of ten (10) symbolising the completion of a set and, or a new beginning inspiring new behaviours and interpretations of ways of being in the world.
The 21st century is characterised by globalisation and a media infused technological world, yet artists continue to explore a painted pictorial logic, the question arises, why painting, why now? One of the attractions may be that painting and its process of production that takes time; time to think, play, and secure an image. In many ways painting can be considered a conversation with time as the act of painting can represent long durations of creative practice influenced by the visual, and the origins of painting. As an artform painting is deeply historical, self-reflexive and manages to encompass elements of yesterday, today and at times predictions of tomorrow. The painter expresses discourses and thoughts of the world through working with materiality, context and painted conditions that come together as images, during a search for a personal voice.
Because the imitative arts were prominent in the history of easel painting, the visual arts is associated with easel painting. In this context visuality is represented through oil paint, brushes and mimetic imagery. The skillful mimicry of nature through colour and mark were considered, and still to some extent the mark of an accomplished painter. Although painting originated in a technical mimetic context those who paint understand there is an imagining that will not be defeated that arises from the symbolic and painterly nature, and the very act of working with paint. The pleasure for painters is to respond in empathetic and visceral ways through paint and visual languages that are relevant to the maker and the time in which works are produced. In this context, painting can be identified in a number of terms; as an ongoing search for a way to define meaning, a visual language, and a seeking of a particular kind of pleasure.
In any context painting remains deeply connected to its origins and all paintings exist as images that continue from points of reference or departure to be re-invigorated and or explored. By referring to historical origins in a search for meaning the horizon is extended as are interpretations that refer to the origin of the new painting. In this case, the history of painting and the history of the visual itself extends from and toward beginnings new and old.
In this exhibition you will experience the layers of time that are expressed through many influences and languages evolving from the origins of painting. Each artist extends their own visual language through particular ways of seeing and applying the medium, through mark, form, space, colour, fat and lean paint. A continued pursuit of painting can be conceived of as a series of propositions that unfold within the studio. It is a form of labour that is instigated by the self and the projects are defined on their own terms. Through capturing and constructing images, the painter is intent on communicating visually with the viewer through an insight, a glimpse into a feeling, a meaning, or story to be shared. By reflecting imagery back into the world, an act of giving transpires and an exchange of thoughts flow through the visual image that detaches from its maker into the sight and minds of others.
In the exhibition ‘Ten’ works are presented in the context of contemporary art and design as ten voices that respond to the intersection of historical and contemporary worlds that exist in the realms of visuality.
Paula Payne
It all begins with an idea.
Without a Trace
I am arriving at an austere old derelict looking building. It is used as a youth detention centre. The weather is weird for Darwin, the sky is white and there is a chill in the air that feels like it is not moving at all. Everything in sight is shadows of grey to white.
There is a process of course and I have to sign in as a pre-approved visitor. The girl on guard looks surprisingly like Amy Winehouse a dark beauty fully clothed in military style clothing and boots, with the fashionable thick intense drawn on dark brows of the day to enhance her mysterious tough look. She also has amazing black hair all pilled up on the top of her head and she is efficient.
No cameras, no phones, ID please, sign in time, date, both in and out of the building. Keys rattle, doors open, and I am let through to first base the office to prepare my materials and wait until the participants have finished lunch. We will start at 1pm sharp and finish at 3pm as the boys are locked up at three for the afternoon and evening.
Time to go to the class room space for workshop, I am led by the team leader through a silent yard, quite large, minimal, dusty surrounded by a high wall adorned with a linier twist of double-edged barbed wire and shards of glass. There is a white tower central to the yard which seems to merge with the white sky and one would never suspect that 29 boys between the ages of 12 and 18 live and breathe behind the walls of the surrounding austere buildings as one can hear a pin drop. Total silence permeates a scene of white in a dusty baron landscape. And I wait, guards come and go no sign of any boys and I wait.
Right on one pm I see a small group of indigenous boys different ages and sizes and two guards walking down a pathway in my direction, they enter the compound I am in, we walk to the classroom in an orderly fashion of course a couple of the boys ask if they can help carry the materials and canvas and off we go.
More keys and regulations and we enter another small compound with a high-powered hose, drain and a small concrete room off to one side. It has one table and I think perfect place to sit on the floor with two 2m x 2m canvases and paint. The guards position themselves either end of the room and instruct ‘keep the noise down’. The boys ask what are we supposed to do miss?
Okay we are going to paint two big paintings today on these canvases in groups. Who would like to think about the earth colour, sky colour, water colour? Not a great deal of response so I delegate, who said sky , who wants to work with this guy? Hands go up and people join to work together.
And so it goes and before long we have four grouped around one canvas and five the other. What should we do miss? Mix colour , purple , yellow, pale blue, green, pink, earthy red, and white and black to add or paint shapes with. Paint a shape from the edge with your colour into the canvas then fill in the spaces with other colour. So we spend time mixing and painting and swapping colour, brush sizes and ideas and silence and focus fills the space as we sit on the concrete and in harmony with each other feel our way into multi coloured grounds drawn from the environment and this moment in time.
When the canvases are covered in coloured shapes I encourage the boys to think about their own mark, story, texture line work or signature, which can be worked over the top of the surface. One or two are resistant and seem insecure about such a commitment but with gentle coaxing we talk about feelings from home country, textures of the earth, movement of the sky and ways to lay images over the top and it happens quite naturally. An image of stick figures of a boy and girl under a rainbow emerges as a solemn young man eludes that this may be an image of him and his girlfriend. Some masterful cultural dot painting under high levels of concentration, delicate hatching in fine reds over green start to bring the surface to life
The head psyche and team leader of the juvenile detention centre come to take a look at how things are going and were amazed at the quiet and focus and stuck around for the rest of the afternoon. They had some one on one chat with the boys and even pushed a bit of paint around and spent some quality time.
A young boy from Alice Springs about 12 is helping with all the mixing and swapping of colour and is so helpful and well mannered I comment to him that he has lovely manners and his response to me is ‘you’re very welcome miss’.
Delicate tracks meander across the vast interior of the painting as pathways are explored and compositions emerge from sensitivity and feeling. Nearing the end of our time together I ask who would like to sign and three or four boys carefully signed their names on the edge of the work.
‘Miss can I use my hand or foot to sign?’ Sure but be careful not to spread the paint everywhere, ‘miss can you do this for me paint my foot? ‘ Sure, what colour come over here hold my shoulder and I will paint your foot, and he gracefully place a large purple footprint over the orange section of the painting and hops into the courtyard to hose off. Two or three other boys lined up and I painted hands and feet, signatures were made and printed on canvas.
At this point I looked up and one of the small boys had painted a blue purple mask on his face, the guards were grinning, I wondered if it was such a good idea…. Then white wrist bands were painted on bodies, blue hands, patterns on faces and (my kingdom for a camera and permission to use it) the boys were in the grip of creativity and paintings were make on bodies and canvas.
At this point the guards became anxious about three o’clock lock down and cleaning up and boys were instructed to go into the courtyard with the big hose and clean themselves and any paint on the floor up. This of course was a bit of fun as they had been under lock and key most of their stay and smiles and eyes were shining with stars. A couple of older boys were taking turns cleaning the floor with a mop and two large paintings were moved into a storeroom to dry. I thanked the boys for having me and they thanked me for coming and we parted.
I was instructed that time was up and myself, team leader and head psyche gathered materials and headed back to the office. The Amy Winehouse look alike signed me out of the compound and I left feeling a strangeness, knowing that I will never see those boys again and a feeling of hope that those boys could find their way. I suspect quite a few of them could be natural painters, and I left with no real trace of ever being there of course but for this story.
Paula Payne