NIGHT STREET
Clarice’s fascination with the sea is evident in her paintings focusing on St Kilda Beach and the water/ocean/the light (32) (The sea has no “modesty” “or restraint”. This reflects her own and Herb’s boldness and her non-conformist streak.) (48). Father does not understand or share her sensibility for the artistic subjects (89). She draws the beach/ the water/ the bathing box (101). She is not always after accuracy in paintings (110); rather it is the mood that comes to the fore. 167. For example, her melancholy is reflected in the squalling parts of the ocean near the equator that abounds in calms, squalls and light baffling winds.
Likewise, the colour grey evokes a variety of feelings and emotions: some regard it as dismal, but Clarice believes the colour grey is “quiet sumptuously” – moody turbulence
She prefers her mobile easel because it enables her to get right up close to the landscape, which is full of “air and space” (34). She can capture the tonal differences and “nature’s impressions” as the light dances in the background.
Her approach to painting: Clarice likes to paint the “essentials” and takes a minimalist approach (45) To her, art is the “universal language of depiction”. An artist is a scientist of the visible world (101)
A city landscape: Her fascination with Princes Bridge, (51) which also features in her exhibition also reflects her view that the city has a unique beauty. The pylons do not have to be ugly (54) She believes that progress should not be regarded as the “enemy of beauty” 51. “She loved her city well, comprehensively”. “An infinite number of small and indispensable views asked to be looked at, demanded it, and proceeded to etch themselves onto her awareness”. After she hangs the painting, she is aware that the view suggested something “beyond itself”; the ‘substratum of an emotion, the air that a story might pass through.” . There is a certain beauty, with the palm trees in the foreground and the solidity of cast iron resting on bluestone bulwarks, and the steady current of traffic. The placement of the pictures at the Exhibition (65). Clarice feels a special bond with Melbourne. The paintings of her city were love poems, a consummation (151)
Paintings can be natural (69): The Meldrumites like to show nature as it is: they trust the natural to be beautiful (72); they are criticised for their “dull, mucky palette”. “but why could art not show nature, as it was, without embellishment or forced emphasis? Trust nature to be beautiful, on its own terms” (72)
The beautician: Ms Hamlin’s feet are like a work of art (69). She sees Clarice’s paintings as “atmospheric”, “haunting” (79). Some find them “too vague and formless for their tastes” (83). The photograph at Mrs Hamlin’s of Bella and Clarice; He merely haunted it in the haunting way of absence, as intimately and invisibly as a maker haunts his creation. He was its gaps and hollows, its longing and its emptiness “ (144)
The rainforest (lovemaking); William Buckley escaped from the convict settlement in Sorrento and lived with the Wathaurong people for 32 years (140)
Self reflections in the landscape: Arthur compared his marriage to a domestic garden (142)
At Naringal with Ada – the farm – the milk. Firstly like a ghost and then she is aware of being a painter (179) the Naringal paddocks; she gives them names; fields, landscape, summer landscape. The Andersons founds them drab and monotonous.
For Clarice, painting is a very personal thing as she seeks to merge, or dissolve into the landscape. She paints in the rain and abandons herself to her art; merges with the landscape; the work doing itself; what it needed to do; letting it close around her like drapes around privacy. She slid into the calm rapture of her own transformation, her self dissolving (239). She was going to paint her way into the storm; everything was splendid (238)
Return to Summary Notes for Imaginary Landscapes