BILL YOUNG Landscape and Comfort Paintings - … · food. Taken as a totality, the series provides...

BILL YOUNGLandscape and Comfort Paintings

Two Good Years, 2009, oil on canvas

Education Resource

Education Program

BILL YOUNG Landscape and Comfort Paintings

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Artist Info 3

Curators Essay 4-5

Discussion, Research and Art MakingPrimary 6-8Secondary 9-12

Santa Lucia 13 Suggested Gallery Additions and Improvements 14

The content of this kit has been aimed at VELS Levels 3-6 in the Discipline Based Learning Domain of The Arts. Exploring this exhibition would also be useful in VCE Art areas of study; Art and meaning, Art making and

personal meaning and Interpreting art. Also in VCE Studio Art; Developing art ideas, Materials and techniques, Ideas and styles in artworks and

Professional art practices and styles. Activities could also be adapted for VELS Levels 1 and 2. Task suggestions may be altered to suit individual

curriculum needs.

Outline

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Artist Info

‘Art makes a difference on a personal level. An awakening to art for the student whatever their age can broaden possibilities and enrich their life. If a student can be given their own personal keys whether it is through an understanding of technique and methods or a reviltalisation of ideas, then this awakening can begin.’

Young, 1977

William Young was born in Ireland 1949, moving to Australia the following year. He completed Fine Art and Education courses in 1970 and 1976 in South Australia.

Young has taught in Secondary, Tertiary and TAFE institutions both in South Australia and Victoria and is currently teaching at East Gippsland TAFE Fulham Campus in Sale.

His works have been exhibited in both solo and group shows, public and commercial galleries throughout Gippsland, Melbourne and interstate.

Solo shows include Flinders Lane Gallery, Cowwarr Art Space, Switchback Gallery, Latrobe Regional Gallery and Gippsland Art Gallery.

Young’s art can be found in collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Art gallery of South Australia, Cowwarr Art Space and Latrobe Regional Gallery.

Gippsland Art Gallery presents Landscape and Comfort Paintings, a collection of works from 2008 and 2009.

The Green Years I, 2008, oil on canvas

Links

www.cowwarr.com/CowwarrArtSpaceHome/Artists - www.ngv.vic.gov.au/collection/pub

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In Landscape and Comfort Paintings Morwell art-ist Bill Young takes us on an intimate tour through his reflective world view. While drawn from per-sonal experiences the paintings possess a charm and charisma that makes them fascinating for us all. We are privileged with an insight into his creative vision, but also into the inspirations and motivations of his practice.Within the present body of work are three dis-tinct groups: ‘idea’ or conceptual paintings; land-scape paintings; and ‘comfort’ paintings.

The ‘idea’ paintings are representative of broader social themes, dealt with in Young’s characteristic humour and sincerity. Two Good Years and Two Bad Years are companion pieces that the artist regards as ‘wish fulfilment’. Each painting depicts imagined situations in which ‘people on the land or who work the land would find themselves in due to the environment’. The grim portrayal of drought and fire in Two Bad Years (emphasised by the twisted insulated wire making up the word ‘Hell’) is cheerfully offset by the rolling green hills in Two Good Years, where the artist projects to a future with ample rain and balmy summers, or to a golden past saturated with a nostalgic glow.A Short History of the Twentieth Century reflects

on a chaotic century already consigned to the history books, distinguished at either end by catastrophic events, while Making it Home reveals the landscape spied though an opening in a car rear window, cleared by the wiper blade. There is a sense of looking back but also of the excitement of ‘that first vision’. These paintings play with conventional approaches to history and landscape painting, and encourage us to think beyond the two dimensional surface plane.

Bill Young’s landscape paintings bring a visceral and physical quality to the genre. His approach is not predetermined, but based on intuition and in-stinct. ‘Whatever thinking I do is in the mechanics of painting’, Young explains. His compositions are not planned out, and he prefers to approach each work as a ‘joyous act of discovery’. Young likens painting to the physical journey through the land-scape. This working method results in paintings that are fresh and lively, and born of a palpable delight in the sensuality of paint. These swirling, voluptuous hills and valleys correspond more with the artist’s mood than with any actual land mass. ‘Drawing from the landscape is tedious’, Young admits. ‘I love to animate the landscape’.

Landscapes and Comforts

Curators Essay

The Drunken Forest, 2008, oil on canvas

The intoxicating saturation of life of these paint-ings owes as much to colour as form. Popular colours are Cereleum Blue and Cadmium Yellow, with blacks substituted with purples and dark greens. Young rarely employs tints, but prefers to use pure colour to make the painting as vivid as possible. Describing his landscapes he says, ‘I want to give them a hallucinogenic feel’. His approach to composition is similarly affected. Amidst large swathes of open land Young will populate his canvases with sections of complex detail. ‘When you’re looking at the landscape you see broad areas, but something catches the atten-tion’, he explains. ‘You zero in. I want my paintings to capture this – these small pockets of detail’.

Young’s landscapes do not relate to a specific geographical location, but in their greenness and roundness they firmly recall Gippsland. Part of their appeal for the artist is the sense of passage into an unknown space: ‘I want to go on a journey without worrying where I’m going. Landscape is a completely free and open thing. It’s an adventure – you don’t know where you’re going. You really can’t plan landscapes’.

Young’s utopian visions of pastoral delight are complemented by a small cache of larger paint-ings, that are consumed with darkness and oblivion. Waiting by the Mallord Waters, the largest work, is steeped in a stygian blackness that threatens to consume the lone figure at the picture’s centre. ‘I wanted to go down to a kind of dark place’, says the artist. By removing all natu-ral light and illuminating the scene with artificial light only, he gives the painting a ‘dead-end sense’. Here, we see him play with scale, distance and height, as well as extending the narrative element by introducing the figure who is seemingly await-ing someone, or some thing.

Such distortions are extended further in Bad Thoughts, whose title references the psychologi-cal head space of the February 2009 Churchill bushfire arsonist. The matches at the work’s base have been used to set fire to the bush, shown as a painting within a painting. The multiple layers

of painted table cloth against a flat surface are the result of Young ‘playing with this idea of what we’re looking at’. The disruption of visual logic disorients the viewer, suggesting that cause and effect are not as clear cut as they may first appear.

Requiem assembles a heap of mostly unrecognis-able detritus, overlaid with a bouquet of flowers. Amongst the objects we may discern various forms: keys, mobile phone, glasses, paintbrush. Here the artist composes his own eulogy, com-prised of the material of his everyday life. It is a moving tribute to the clutter that surrounds us, useless once the spirit has departed.

The theme of death returns in Young’s ‘comfort’ paintings, a series of seven contemporary works that update the Northern European tradition of vanitas painting. We see the underlying motivations of the artist, from a fear of mortality (Fate) to his love of gambling (Chance). We also see aspects such as love, desire and, of course, food. Taken as a totality, the series provides a thorough account of Young’s life. Each painting is based on Francesco del Cossa’s Santa Lucia (1436-78), a pre-Renaissance painting. The reference to this work, with a woman with slightly tilted head, one hand folded toward her body and the other extending out, stems from Young ‘always having liked that gesture’. He cleverly manipulates the pose in each work, where the woman is seen to variously hold thread, playing cards, paint brushes and vanity mirror. Del Cossa’s fresco, having haunted Young ‘for years’ becomes the inadvertent basis for the passions in his life.

There is much to like about Bill Young’s paintings, and there are many levels on which they move us. Throughout, there is a desire to find peace in the world, and a harmony between life and art. Produced largely for his own ‘comfort’, Young’s enduring appeal lies in familiarity that his works afford us all.

Simon GreggAugust 2009

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Discussion, Research and Art Making

PRIMARY

‘Drawing from the landscape is tedious. I love to animate the landscape.’

Young, 2009

Making it home, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas

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Primary - Arts Exploring and Responding

Idea

In Young’s Two Good Years and Two Bad Years, what were some of the ‘good’ things and what were some of the ‘bad’ things?If you were to make two similar artworks, what would be part of the good years and part of the bad years?

What is the painting Making it home of?What does it remind you of?Imagine you are in this car. Where could you be driving to? What are you looking at? Is this the front windscreen or the rear?Write a creative story about this car trip.

Landscapes

What is a Landscape? How would you describe it?What other styles of art can you think of?

Young likes to animate the landscape.What is an animation?Describe how Young animates his landscapes.

Research another Australian landscape artist. (Sidney Nolan, Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Arthur Boyd etc.)What parts of Australia were they painting?Can you find similarities between the two artists?Young was influenced by the Gippsland landscape - can you tell?

Comfort

Make a list of all the things Young included in his ‘Comfort’ paintings.What did these images represent?

Look for the painting that Young’s comfort artworks are based on.Santa Lucia by Francesco del Cossa. (See page 15)Find out when it was made, what it is made from and where it is.Compare it to Young’s paintings.What can you see is the same? Write a list.Make a list of differences as well.

What is your favourite artwork?Find out more about it. Prepare a talk about the artist for your class.

What is the Renaissance? What was happening in the world at this time?

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Primary - ArtsCreating and Making

Idea

Create your own view for Making it home.

How do you feel about bush fires?Create an artwork which expresses these feelings.

Landscapes

Young likes to change the landscape. He drives around the countryside and paints from memory.Paint your own animated landscape. Use bold colours and swirling brush strokes.

There are many ways Young uses to put paint on the canvas - even bubble wrap!Find some unusual materials to paint with.

Draw a landscape with hidden features like Young’s Now I am in India.

Create a landscape with cut paper or fabric.

Evaluate which method for creating a landscape worked best for you. (Paint, draw, collage etc.)Describe each material you used and what you liked and didn’t like about using them.

Comfort

Think of some things that you like or think about a lot.Try to invent different ways of showing them so that it is a bit tricky for the viewer to identify them.Paint a series of paintings that show each of these things.Get your class to look at your paintings and guess what it is that you like.

Recreate your favourite artwork. Include something in the work about yourself.

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Discussion, Research and Art Making

Secondary

‘The Renaissance has always fascinated me.’

Young, 2009

Oh!, Fortuna, 2008, oil on canvas

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Secondary - ArtExploring and Responding

Idea

Why are these works called ‘idea’ paintings?

What concerns you?What about concerns you have in your local area?Are they similar to what Young has commented on?How would you categorise both yours and Young’s issues? (Social, Political, Environmental, Personal, etc.)How has Young used art to inform viewers?How has the commentary of issues been depicted in the past?

Young likes to play with what the viewer is looking at as with Bad thoughts, the tablecloth acts as the surface for the painting.Compare this use of space with that of surrealist painter Rene Magritte.What similarities and differences can you find?

Landscapes

Describe Young’s use of paint and brush stroke in the Landscapes.How many different techniques can you find?How do these differ to his Comfort paintings?

Analyse the use of colour in Young’s work.How would you describe it?What does it remind you of?Does the colour used evoke particular emotions in regards to the subject you are viewing?

Young liked to animate the landscape.Compare modern animation with the animation of his landscapes

Comfort

Research Francesco del Cossa’s Santa Lucia, 1436 - 78. (See Page 15)Compare the original to Young’s work.What do think it could be that Young found comforting in this painting?Or was it the inclusion of himself which brought about comfort?

What are the common elements of Renaissance paintings?How was the human figure depicted?What links can you see with Young’s work?Find out more about other Renaissance artists.

What does the term ‘vanitas’ mean?Why has it been used in relation to Young’s work?

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Further Investigation

What themes do you identify in the exhibition?What indicators did you use in Young’s paintings to justify these decisions?

In earlier years, Young identified his influences as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Look at Young’s work Suggested Gallery Additions and Improvements from 1980 on page 16. Do you see similarities between this earlier work and that of Pollock and de Kooning?Or maybe another artist?Can you identify how these artists have helped to shape Young’s later paintings?

Young’s work is also influenced by the qualities of paint and its manipulation. Analyse one of his works in regards to its medium. Explore the techniques used in the application of paint and evaluate its success in relation to it’s intention. Would another medium have worked as well or better?

Bill Young uses initiative to create his works, valuing not only the end product but the process. Art works may change direction during the process depending upon Young’s ‘feelings’ towards it.Does this change your view of the art works? How important is planning to you?Does this art making process differ from your own? Do you trust your intuition when creating a work?

Comfort time (love me tender), 2009, oil on canvas

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Secondary - ArtCreating and Making

Idea

What is the nature of Young’s ‘Idea Paintings’?Create your own.

What are your own responses to fire and arson?Refine these into a visual message.

Lygon St is a representation of the area using symbols.Think of a street or location in your area to depict in a similar way.What symbols could you use?

Landscapes

Young would drive through the landscape and paint from memory.Go for a walk through your school or a nearby park.Paint a landscape from your memory of that walk.

Keep a visual diary of sketches and notes from trips throughout the landscape (e.g. On the school bus, a walk, a drive).Collate these to create your own interpretation of a landscape.

Paint your own animated landscape, focus on the use of bold colours, paint and brush strokes.

Young used many techniques in his painting.Experiment with some of these - visible and non visible brush strokes, rubbing back and sgraffito, printing with bubble wrap and pointillism, solid and mixed colours.

Evaluate the effectiveness of each of the above techniques in relation to a personal artwork.Have you discovered something new?

Comfort

Recreate you favourite artwork, one that is very familiar to you.Identify an element to repeat across a series of works, and add something personal to make it your own.

Find images or objects which bring you comfort, like a childhood toy, favourite book or CD and set up as a still life.Create your ‘comfort’ painting using these objects.

Paint a self portrait using the Renaissance as inspiration.

Santa LuciaFrancesco del Cossa1436 - 78Tempera on panel

Suggested Gallery Additions and ImprovementsWilliam Young1980Collage and acrylic paint on composition board

BILL YOUNG Landscape and Comfort Paintings - … · food. Taken as a totality, the series provides...

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