Eggs and Equanimity

I miss the lovely rich smell of oil paint. Egg tempera was in common use in Italy in the fourteenth century and for good reason it was called ‘la pittura al putrido’. Fortunately the smell vaporises as the surface dries, leaving gloriously luminous fields of pure colour. The short-lived smell is a small price to pay for a medium that puts the viewer closer to pure pigment while providing one of the most durable of all painted surfaces

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About 12 years ago Simon developed a chemical sensitivity to oil and acrylic paint. Fortunately his artistic production also includes drawing, sculpture, performance, installation and poetry. In his last major solo exhibition in 1995, Dhamma Works, at the Lawrence Wilson Gallery he deliberatively focused on sculpture to limit his exposure to the debilitating fumes. It has taken years of experimenting to find a means to return to paint without prompting the headaches and other symptoms.

As time passed and Simon became more involved in Vipassana meditation his art practice has changed enormously from a young, radical, energetic practice addressing the subjective angst of living in a consumer-focused society. Slowly, as the meditation practice began providing the artist with a different way to approach living, we see the introduction of Dhammic concepts and principles into his artwork as evidenced by the Dhamma Works exhibition. Some of these works were 3 dimensional interpretations of concepts such as ‘anicca’ – impermanence or ’sankharas’ – the conditioning of the mind.

Large panels of oil pastels were his first foray back into anything like painting. Thankfully he had the good sense never to exhibit them. They lack the spontaneity and looseness that characterises the rest of his oeuvre. Lessons learned about the medium from those large experimental works have been put to good use with the treen series which makes the most of the pastels’ shimmery, opalescent qualities, their capacity to blend, smudge and be both opaque and translucent. The portable size of the treen and their varied shapes and curved surfaces allow him to respond intuitively to the sculptured forms. The use of the treen echoes his earlier works and their direct comments on a culture predicated on shopping. Recycling these handmade sculptured objects, purchased at swap-meets, into artworks, he honours their makers and the households they’ve come from.

Many of the treen works were made in moments of complete contentment, often listening to beautiful Indian Ragas as the sun sets. Simon has had to work hard to arrive at moments of tranquillity. His valuing of an equanimous mind and the training provided by Vipassana to this end is allowing him to approach making art differently.

Anicca, the principle of constant change, is the pervasive theme of these artworks. It is the essence of both his meditation and art practice. Simon was determined to find a fluid medium to better-allow him to express anicca. Tempera is usually associated with meticulous styles of painting, but he kept experimenting with egg-yolk (free-range), water and pigment combinations in a search for the ideal media.

In his words:
I am after the impossible act of capturing the impermanent on canvas… My futile attempts to arrest the present moment through an unplanned strategy are documented in modulating colour. The infusion of beauty obscures the unpalatable nature of this venture.
On our return from India in 2002, the vibrant colours of India became a more obvious influence in his work. For the first time he used bright pink, gold and silver.

As Simon grew more confident with his new medium, his works started growing in scale. The physicality demanded by these large works echoes his very early large scale paintings/drawings. He tunes into the sensations in his body as he paints.
The sensitivity and spontaneity of the early work remains but the angst has gone. He works as the moment, his own body and the fluid medium presents itself.

Back in 1989, Noel Sheridan, then Director of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, warned us that Simon’s interest in Buddhism could take him away from his art. In many ways this was prophetic as the practice of purifying the mind should rightly be privileged over other activities. But with the practice of Vipassana this artist has returned to a space where the act of painting is helping him to express, understand and communicate his reality.

Gevers describes the process thus:

• Choose a colour
  Go to the picture
  It sticks
  It washes off
  Another colour comes along
  No directions until you get there
  Some body paints the picture
  Some mind moves the body
  Coloured fluid dried like blood
  Veils, sheens, opaque and blind
  Surface to depth entwined

I’m struck by the similarity in approach to that of the artist Gerhard Richter, as articulated by him in 1985:

• No ideology. No religion, no belief, no meaning, no imagination, no invention, no creativity, no hope – but painting like Nature, painting as change, becoming, emerging, being-there, thusness; without an aim, and just as right, logical, perfect and incomprehensible… (The Daily Practice of Painting, Thames and Hudson, 1995, p121)

In an interview the following year, when questioned by Benjamin Beuccleugh about what he expects from painting, Richter replied,
Just that something will emerge that is unknown to me, something which is also universal.

Enjoy.

Nikki Miller is the artist’s partner. She works as an art consultant with Art Support Pty Ltd.
For information on Vipassana Mediation as taught by S.N. Goenka see www.dhamma.org