Lyn Dieffenbach
Betty Jamieson
b.1960 Yeppoon, Queensland
b.1928 Newcastle, New South Wales
Infinite grace
The rose garden
2010
Oil on Belgian linen 88 x 123cm
Heaven’s harmony
Nellie’s garden
Multi-plate etching with embossed PVC plate 64 x 104.4cm
2006
Watercolour on dupioni silk, silk ribbon
Beneath the bloom(3)
embroidery 48.4 x 53.8cm
(1)
2009
Cream magnolia tree
Oil on Belgian linen 80 x 124.5cm
Imperfect beauty Rockhampton Art Gallery 19 March – 30 May
F
or this exhibition, the Rockhampton Art Gallery invited five contemporary women artists to explore floral themes in their chosen media of painting (Lyn Diefenbach), printmaking (Michele Kershaw), photography (Holly Grech, Brigitta Yabsley) and painted textiles (Betty Jamieson). While their aims and approaches are individual, all five artists share an intense attraction to the subject and have enjoyed the challenge of attaining a high level of technical finesse to effectively capture the beauty of flowers. They also present interesting continuations of and departures from the floral art tradition, which has been of universal interest to all cultures and peoples. Betty Jamieson paints soft-focus flora and landscape subjects on silk, which bring to mind traditional watercolours, but she then brings her imagery into the third dimension with modern embroidery techniques, using dupion silk and variegated thread to give her work a sculptured texture. Printmaker Michele Kershaw also works with textiles and other relief materials to create multi-panelled etchings and one work comprising the actual woodcut and PVC printing plates. Lyn Diefenbach’s painting style is contemporary. She is undoubtedly influenced by modern photography and has much in common with the photorealism movement of the 1970s. Her work does, however, bring to mind the rich tradition of seventeenth century Dutch still life pictures in her intense focus on capturing the form and essence of her floral subjects. In another direction we have Holly Grech, whose photographic images move past simple recording with a camera to the fabrication of complex montages or multipanelled pictures. These large-scale works have something of the impact of contemporary painting in their presentation of abstract patterns and shapes, which at times suggest a narrative and create an optical dazzle. The other photo-media artist in the exhibition, Brigitta Yabsley, also creates large-scale photographs of isolated flowers. Like Lyn Diefenbach and Holly Grech, Brigitta employs macro views to create semi-abstract compositions, which she pursues for the pure beauty of the floral subject. Lyn Diefenbach Yeppoon-based Lyn Diefenbach has been an exhibiting artist since the late1980s and an art tutor for the past thirteen years. Lyn’s floral subjects have been sought after by collectors over the past ten years, although she has always painted landscapes, figurative and portrait subjects. It could be said that Lyn had art in the blood: Lyn’s mother was a potter, her father a wood-turner, and her grandmother a painter. She recalls: I can remember saving in grade seven and painting my first oil and I remember selling my first painting at the age of thirteen. Although mainly self-taught, Lyn has had a few influential tutors. One of these was the American painter Daniel Green, a highly regarded portrait artist. Lyn describes her brief easel time with Green as a decisive moment in her career: I absolutely adored his work, it was so strong, the drawing was powerful, the images were wonderful – he was painting the way I wanted to paint. Lyn sees herself as creating ‘portraits’ of individual flowers, using all of her senses and tonal gradations to build the form. She describes the process as being almost like sculpting the flower out of a block of stone: When I am painting I am putting the image in my mind as to what it would feel like if I were blind, feeling around and using the sense of touch… I’d be chipping at it this way and that to create the illusion. Lyn describes her work as creating a version of reality. Although her work is representational, her use of a macro view and the cropping of her images creates an abstracted composition. She believes a close-up view encourages the viewer to look more carefully at the flower; to observe its intricacies, colours and lighting and to feel the emotional content she has invested in the painting: This flower is so beautiful and delicate and the way it rolls here and folds there, the senses of smell and the sound of wind in the leaves.
Resonance Holly Grech Holly Grech is an art photographer based at Yeppoon. Her earliest floral subjects were large-scale macro views of flowers; more recently, she has created woven montages and multi-panelled works. In common with the other artists in the exhibition, Holly’s love of art started at a young age:
Shades of Giverny
Holly Grech Virtually woven – Livistona I 2005
He supported and encouraged me to pursue and explore [my] ideas through a photographic medium and bought me my first professional film camera. Holly’s first solo exhibition in Rockhampton in 2004, Effloresce, a study of flora from the Asia-Pacific, received significant community support. It included some key images of orchids evoking a veiled representation of female genitalia not unlike the floral paintings of the American artist, Georgia O-Keeffe (1887-1986). For the current exhibition, Holly has been exploring Optical art, an international abstract style of the 1960s, as the starting point for some highly stylised and optically patterned montages. These camera images have been digitally manipulated, often through mirrored repetitions. In other works, Holly has combined multiple panels of palm frond imagery to create overall geometric patterns, as if the images had been woven. These pieces reference traditional Aboriginal basket making techniques and evoke respect for Indigenous culture and a celebration of the natural environment of the east coast of Australia. To create these woven art works, Holly begins photographing in the field, which might be anywhere from a national park to an ordinary back yard. In her studio, she then uses digital photo manipulation software such as Photoshop to arrange layers and patterns: I decide what medium I will print the new piece on and trial a few test prints with my lab, I also usually spend some time researching flora, history and meaning to come up with a title. Betty Jamieson Rockhampton artist Betty Jamieson, 1 81, has been making art in some form since she was seven. Betty started making watercolour embroideries about fourteen years ago, almost all featuring floral motifs. The floral subject has always been close to Betty’s heart. She taught floral art in adult education for many years and was a judge at horticultural and other shows. It has always been my thing to add flowers to things and for many years I taught floral art for adult education… Flowers have been a big part of anything I have ever done, in drawing, in everything.” Betty has participated in many exhibitions, solo and group. Her popular 2000 exhibition at the Rockhampton Art Gallery, The Creative Watercolour Embroidery of Betty Jamieson was a milestone, which subsequently encouraged craft magazines to feature her work. Betty’s artworks, a fusion of embroidery and watercolour, start with a sketch or a quick watercolour study of the subject, sometimes adapted from images in magazines or books: I have to know what I want to do, when you have literally spent hours and hours embroidering something you can not just throw it away. I make sure the study is resolved a bit before I commit to silk which is quite expensive. The process is quite complex, developed over many years and employing skills in embroidery and needlework, taught to her by her aunts. The ability to work with flowers is something which came naturally to her along with her painting skills. Betty enjoys the softness and fluidity of working watercolours on dupion silk, which is the platform for her embroidery. She creates 2 a third dimension with embroidery techniques, such as stump work and variegated threads to create tonal effects.
2008
2005
Watercolour on dupioni silk, silk ribbon
Brigitta Yabsley
embroidery and beading 31.7 x 36.8cm
Germany, UK, Australia
Mushrooms
b.1969 Hamburg, Germany
Grevillea
2009
Watercolour on dupioni silk, silk ribbon
(Grevillea fililoba)
embroidery and beading 32.4 x 39.4cm
Inkjet print on satin paper 105.5 x 85.5cm
3 sheets, 186 x 49cm
Water lilies at Emu Park(2) 1999
Grevillea
CQUniversity Art Collection
Watercolour on dupioni silk, silk ribbon
(Grevillea vestita)
embroidery and stumpwork 36 x 39.8cm
Inkjet print on satin paper 105.5 x 85.5cm
Inkjet print on satin paper on foamcor
Pathway through the garden
Red Waratah
182.5 x 190cm
2010 Watercolour on dupioni silk, silk
(Telopea speciosissima)
ribbon embroidery and beading 39 x 42cm
Inkjet print on satin paper 105.5 x 85.5cm
Inkjet print on satin paper on foamcor
The cheeky rooster
Wirrimbirra White(4)
350.8 x 395cm
Watercolour on dupioni silk, silk ribbon
(Telopea speciosissima)
embroidery and beading 32.9 x 41.6cm
Inkjet print on satin paper 105.5 x 85.5cm
Inkjet print on satin paper on foamcor
Michele Kershaw
Hardenbergia
Digital photographic print on Fujiflex
b.1961 Colac, Victoria
Digital photographic print on Fujiflex
She later discovered photography at school, and then took it up professionally in her early twenties when she met her husband, an art photographer:
Sisters
Woodcut print 116 x 51.9
Tulips in Canberra
2010
Pastel on board 100 x 69.8
2009
53.7 x 59.2cm
2009
embroidery and beading 37.8 x 43.8cm
Pastel on board 71 x 71cm
Peaches and cream
Daisy delirium
Etching with aquatint, à la poupée
Watercolour on dupioni silk, silk ribbon
2009
b.1980 Blackwater, Queensland
I was always painting, drawing and I had a folder of designs of clothes I would draw and create.
plate 79.3 x 119cm
2000
embroidery and stumpwork 41 x 49cm
2009
2010
Woodcut, screenprint and embossed PVC
Watercolour on dupioni silk, silk ribbon
Pastel on board 101 x 70.5cm
2010
Generations woven
Ecclesiology
2005
2010
Fabrication of an artisan
2010
123 x 123cm
Jamais vu
2005
2005
2002
2010
2002
(Hardenbergia violacea)
2004
Inkjet print on satin paper 105.5 x 85.5cm
2010
Lino etching with embossed PVC plate 90 x 62cm
Michele Kershaw Michele Kershaw teaches printmaking and maintains a studio in Yeppoon. Michele’s passion for printmaking spans over ten years. She discovered the medium while studying for a Diploma of Visual Art, after earlier exploring drawing, sculpture and jewellery making. In printmaking, Michele discovered that she could achieve fine linear detailing and subtle tonal effects with delicate layers of textures such as lace, leaves and wood grains. Michele’s early works explored feminine themes incorporating many influences from a background in textiles. Her first etching, entitled Flowery fetish, presented a gown with cascading flowers. More recently, the natural environment has featured in her art: The flora of our local area and forms of our landscape are interpreted within these works. Collage and paper manipulation in the form of piercing and embossing have been other features and quite often prints are pieced together using multi-plates. Michele prints from plates of metal, linoleum, wood – and more recently – plastics, offering a dynamic mix of materials for printing: My print-making is continuing to evolve with the constant introduction of new materials and techniques. Michele starts with an idea which evolves as she works: It is never the same as what I start out with. She describes one of the artworks in the exhibition, Jamais vu, one of a series of works (also including Déjà vu and Presque vu): The artwork has a mountain theme running through it because we live on the side of the mountain. The artwork pictures a girl walking up through the mountain in to the bush. Called Jamais vu because the bush is behind her and she has not ventured in to it.
A defining moment in her development as a photographer came with a commission from the London newspaper The Independent on Sunday: I was working as an assistant to [prolific fashion photographer] Barry Lategan. His approach to photography and his respect for photography just blew me away, and that was a significant moment where I thought – this is such a beautiful medium. He was the ultimate master in my view, on how to use the medium, this photography and art.” For this exhibition, Brigitta has presented photographs on one theme, native Australian flora. Brigitta was introduced some years ago to the world of Australian flora by her husband who was interested in the subject. More familiar with a European floral world of tulips, roses and pansies, Brigitta was immediately taken by the alien beauty of Australian flowers. Noticing, however, Australian florists indifference (at the time) to Australian flowers, Brigitta resolved to document and showcase their beauty: I find the Australian flowers fascinating and unique, you don’t find them anywhere else. I just want to show my appreciation and I wanted to show that they were worth looking at. Working at a macroscopic level, Brigitta likes to explore flowers in detail. Using a mobile studio made up of a homemade light box and soft box, she employs a mediumformat camera and uses lenses with extension tubes to allow close focussing. This set-up allows a shallow depth of field and the use of simple lighting isolates and details her subject. I will never tire of exploring the floral subject. I am curious I suppose. [I like to] present things in a way people may have not looked at them. Thomas Degotardi Curator, Art in Bloom Technical Officer | Rockhampton Art Gallery
Jamais vu literally means ‘never seen’ and describes the sense of unfamiliarity in the face of very familiar things or situations, an apt title for an artist who likes to keep a sense of the unexpected alive in her working processes. Brigitta Yabsley Rockhampton-based and German-born photographer, Brigitta Yabsley is a studio photographer with a passion for her floral subject. Brigitta’s attraction to photography began when she was fifteen years old: I attended a workshop back in Hamburg with a friend who suggest I come along and try it out. [My photography] started with me taking black and white photographs and developing them by myself in the lab. I immediately fell in love with the process and I feel that there is an element of magic involved in it all – and of course if you really get down to it, it is science. The darkroom process is important to me, always has been. From then on I knew I wanted to be a photographer. Brigitta susequently enrolled at the London College of Printing where she found the freedom to explore photography.
Art In Bloom 4
was published by Arts and Cultural Services – a unit of Rockhampton Regional Council
© Rockhampton Regional Council 2010. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. Rockhampton Art Gallery Phone (07) 4936 8248 Fax (07) 4921 1738 E-mail gallery@rrc.qld.gov.au
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