i have had the privilege of seeing dawn and dusk bite through daylight hours
ARRYN SNOWBALL
12 May - 30 May , 2021
677 i have had the privilege of seeing dawn and dusk bite through daylight hours trolling beneath the crowd i prefer using three lines – one short and shallow, the second deeper, and the third deepest and longest their number increases deeply incurved straight-edged and willingly much smaller this fashion is leaving the water, chilled upon capture, and left beneath damp sacking the great jaws open to form a diamond-shaped box Nathan Shepherdon 2017
For the last few years I’ve painted in response to a body of poems by Nathan Shepherdson. Nathan wrote the seventy-seven Slack Water poems in 2017, using Grant’s Guide to Fishes as material and ground. Nathan draws on Ern Grant’s marvellous language, to build a strange universe with its own peculiar physics, where the relationship between fish and fisherman, sky and horizon, surface and body, are inverted, fragmented and re-imagined. Grant’s epic Guide has over eight hundred pages, each page about a different fish. The title of each poem is a page number, and each poem is made from words found in the text on that fish. The poems are powerful, abstract, visceral, and the ocean swells within them. In late 2017, I started by painting text from the poems, playing with the rhythm of words and allowing the patterns of letters to evolve into abstract painting. I started working with colour for the first time in many years. Working from the Slack Water poems gave me a different access to the Pacific than what a more literal approach might have done. I sunk into them. Shepherdson’s poetic images tangled with my memories of fishing on the coast as a kid, of time spent out on the reef, on beaches, headlands, tidal flats, at mouth of estuaries. I do not paint a determined image, but rather follow an open process, out of which the image emerges. I make the paint from raw pigments, egg, linseed oil and resins. The paintings in this exhibition all began with a loose grid. The net-like structure frames the colour and gives movement through repetition and variation. Each session I work across the whole canvas, each time hoping that the painting will emerge. I paint simply, layering line over colour, colour over line, colour over colour. At some point, the painting becomes its own thing, able to hold itself up, something more than lines and colour. When it starts to breathe, I stop. The finished paintings are rarely what I expect. It’s an open process, and can change at any point. If I get stuck, I look for more clues in the poems. I think of these paintings as traps for light and colour, as nets of rhythm and movement, as vessels to hold the poet’s metaphors and the meanings that might be found in them. I imagine these paintings as atmospheres at different times of day, as fragments of sky and horizon. I imagine reflections from above and below the water. I imagine the pull of the wind and the tide, the glare across the shallows and the glint in the depths. I pretend that I’m pulling the surface of the water up unto the wall, to make a window across hemispheres. I pretend these are the windows of a fish chapel to offer prayers for the suffering reef and coast. I pretend these windows are also mirrors that reflect the ocean within. This process has been my fishing while here in Berlin, my contact with the Pacific coast, with home. I titled of the exhibition from one of Nathan’s poems, i have had the privilege of seeing dawn and dusk bite through daylight hours. It’s one of my favourite lines. I like to imagine dawn and dusk as the teeth of night, biting through the day. I too, am grateful for all the sharp dawns and savage sunsets I’ve seen.
Arryn Snowball 2021
Steadily expanding editions of time 2021 tempera and oil on linen, 190 x 190cm $10,000
In another red body 2021 tempera and oil on linen, 190 x 190 cm $10,000
Tetraodontoxin 2021 tempera and oil on linen, 190 x 190cm $10,000
Mirrors lie on their sides 2021 tempera and oil on linen, 190 x 190cm $10,000
Night caught numbers 2021 tempera and oil on linen, 190 x 190cm $10,000
Rare Sun #1
Rare Sun #2
Rare Sun #3
Rare Sun #4
Rare Sun #5
Rare Sun #11
Rare Sun #12
Rare Sun #13
Rare Sun #14
Rare Sun #15
Rare Sun #21
Rare Sun #22
Rare Sun #23
Rare Sun #24
Rare Sun #25
Rare Sun, 2021 watercolour mounted on board, 24 x 17cm $330 each
Rare Sun #6
Rare Sun #7
Rare Sun #8
Rare Sun #9
Rare Sun #10
Rare Sun #16
Rare Sun #17
Rare Sun #18
Rare Sun #19
Rare Sun #20
Rare Sun #26
Rare Sun #27
Rare Sun #28
Rare Sun #29
Rare Sun #30
Surface Rhythm #1 2021 tempera and crayon on linen, 60 x 50cm
Surface Rhythm #2 2021 tempera and crayon on linen, 60 x 50cm
$2,200
$2,200
Surface Rhythm #3 2021 tempera and crayon on linen, 60 x 50cm
Surface Rhythm #4 2021 tempera and crayon on linen, 60 x 50cm
$2,200
$2,200
Gallery Director Jan Manton Gallery Manager Taylor Hall 54 Vernon Terrace, Teneriffe QLD 4005 info@janmantonart.com janmantonart.com 0419 657 768
Credits Artwork: Arryn Snowball Poetry: Nathan Shepherson Text: Arryn Snowball Photography: Ana Nsue & Arryn Snowball Image (Page 2): Studio photograph, with Grant’s Guide to fishes and various works, 2021 Image (Page 11): Artist’s studio, Arryn with Stephen Russell, 2021