Ken done >
Beach with two blue towels 2009, oil and acrylic on board, 100 x 152cm
I’ve been painting the beach for about 30 or 40 years, trying to find ways to make marks on the canvas to represent the feeling of people on the beach. If you go back even to when I was talking about that helmet shell drawing, I have, in the early days, spent quite a bit of time doing pretty disciplined drawings of what people look like. But over these last years I’ve been trying to develop a language in paint of what people feel like on the beach. Now, I think you have to accept the fact that I’m making always some kind of reference to Fred Williams. Fred Williams was the great painter, or one of the great painters of the Australian landscape, making a mark to show you the feeling of the trees and the feeling of the rocks. I’m trying to make a mark that shows you the feeling of the beach; it’s where most Australians spend their time. We as a country, we cling to the edge of this continent and all Australians have some experience of being on the beach. This particular painting, which there was a film made of me working on it, I made this painting quite swiftly. You have to have kind of a bit of a degree of confidence and control of putting down these marks and within the painting itself you can see towels, bits of people, shoes, just that kind of overall joyous pattern you find when Australians are transporting themselves on a beach. It’s an Australian beach pattern: it’s not France, it’s not America, it’s not Japan, it’s not the south of France, it’s the way Australians look when they’re on the beach, or at least, to me.
BACK TO TOP