You specialize in both painting and ceramics.  Discuss the combination of the two and how it works for you?

The two practices provide different challenges and a different sense of accomplishment. With painting, I grapple with transcribing the essence of place via shape and space. Nature motivates my colour palette, but it doesn’t restrict how I play with colour.

Off the Basin Track, Spring

My paintings inspire my ceramics the design and decorative qualities are straight forward and are often a simplification from a completed painting. Yet timing is paramount with construction and joining the hand rolled slabs.

Getting my hands into clay is more tactile and certainly messier, requiring a lot more preparation prior to making, especially if I’m reconstituting clay and making my own paper clay.

Salvation Creek. Boat. Front

The sgraffito process with ceramics is much like the carving process I use when I engrave into the oil paint on board. With the latter I’m removing the paint to either reveal the white of the primed surface or the actual timber of the board. Whereas with the former, I’m scratching into the underglaze paint to reveal the white of the clay beneath. Both processes accentuate the process of drawing which I love.

Sunlight Dancing, Front

How has your study of landscape architecture influenced your art?

The field trips to various national parks around Sydney opened my eyes to the fragility and interconnection of all associated with the land, from the geology, aspect, topography flora and fauna. It sensitised me as to why plants grow where they do, or why they don’t.

Bursting Banksia

Studying botany and horticulture helped me to not only see the bigger picture but the intricacies of patterns and textures.  Landscape Architecture really helped me fall in love with native plants.

In the Garden of the Promised Land

How have you adapted a way of carving into your paint, to gain your personal effect?

The carving process is quite spontaneous. I don’t plan it like I do the painting process, nor the construction of a ceramic vase. However, I generally look to where I want to create more light in the picture. Sometimes I refer to the botanical construction of the plant, and at other times my hand guides the process creating patterns of various surface textures that just come to me intuitively.

Golden Light at the Swim hole the Never Never

When did Cezanne’s art become such an influence and why?

Cezanne was probably the greatest precursor to abstraction. It wasn’t until I visited his incredible studio in 2001, still set-up as he left it today, and Mont Saint Victoire in the Provence where he travelled by foot to paint, that I could see what he was talking about in seeing geometry in nature.

Winter Woodland

“Everything in nature is similar to sphere, cone, or cylinder”. When you spend enough time just looking at the formation of the land, plants, the water even the sky, interlocking patterns reveal that everything is connected.

Why is the Australian native environment always seen in your art?

I have always loved visiting National Parks and seeing how nature perfectly landscapes its own garden. Although, possibly my initial studies in horticulture made me fall in love with native plants as they are so symbiotic. A weed was seen almost as an enemy. Yet really a weed is just a plant that grows out of place and out of control. Like various cultures, we have a lot of introduced species and as I’m growing older, I have grown to appreciate all plants in different contexts, particularly now living on the mid-north coast where sub-tropical plants thrive alongside cool temperate rainforests.

North West Vista from the Waratah Track

Discuss the irregularity in the shape of your pots?

I’m usually inspired by the organic shape of rocks or the lie of the land that I have painted when I make a pot. At other times it’s an expression of a shape that just comes to me subconsciously. I draw it first on a piece of newspaper and this becomes the pattern to make the slab vase.

Why do you use monochrome in most of your pots but occasionally pastels?

King’s Canyon, Front

I used to love making lino prints when I was younger. I like the contrast & simplicity of black and white, positive, and negative space. It allows some areas to be intricately carved and other spaces to breath. When I have used coloured underglazes, I have just felt like a change, although it can make the subject more complex. The latter possibly appear more pastel-like as I don’t glaze the exterior wanting a mat finish. If glazed, it would be more vibrant and glossier detracting from the earthiness.

Refection is widely used in your art.  Comment on this.

Immersion the Never, Never

Reflections fascinate me. Not only are they mirrors but they are windows into another world, another landscape, one that is perhaps on the surface, more abstract, but also freer. I have fun with reflections.

What are some of the marked differences between Ku-Rug-Gai Chase National Park and Bellingen Shire?

It’s a completely different colour palette due to aspect and geology. Ku-ring-gai is coastal and the plants have adapted to the salt breezes of Pittwater and the warmth of the Sydney sandstone. There is a lot more heath, woodland, and escarpment.

Spring in the garden of Ku-Ring-Gai

The Bellingen Shire extends from Dorrigo Mountain on the Great Dividing Range, (rich in volcanic soil, with towering ancient trees like the Antarctica Beach) with great waterfalls and a river system that spill out to the sea at Urunga and Mylestom.

Bellingen Shire, Big Sundown- the Never, Never

The colour in your art is ‘Australian’ can you explain the colours that need to be included and why?

From my perspective, the eucalypt greens and vibrant blue of our sky are distinctly Australian. I use 3 different types of yellow (warm & cool – Indian, Golden & Lemon) and two types of blue (ultra-marine & phthalo) to mix my greens. Our sky is never a straight blue from a tube and needs mixing. Yet we also have a lot of earthy colours reflective of our various soils and rocks. Burnt sienna is a must for this and helps to create the green of the eucalypt.

Flora is often zoomed in on.  Your give us a bee’s eye view, discuss.

I love to play with the macro and micro. When you investigate a flower, there is a whole landscape within. The inside of flowers reveals amazing patterns and geometry. This fascinates me as something so tiny can lead the eye on a journey.

Shadow Play of Banksia Serrata & Kangaroo Paw

Discuss the use of shapes in your work.

Composition is the most important component to a painting, which comprises the placement of shapes. I often use a camera as a view finder to assist in finding interesting shapes. Trunks and branches of trees help to define shapes. Shapes are built up as blocks of colour. I look for the largest shapes first and then break these areas down into smaller shapes.

How often do you revisit a particular place for inspiration?

It depends how much a place inspires me. I return frequently to the Never Never as I have found so much subject matter in this landscape. Yet I’m always keeping my eyes open for new inspiration.

Crystal Waters- the Never Never

When do you work on still life work?

I return to still life when I discover something blooming that I want to take home with me, and I just have to paint it.

Colour is important in your work.  Discuss the use of natural colours and manufactured colour.

Shadow Play of Telopea

Difficult question. I see purple and lilac in shadows and there are so many variations of grey from yellow-grey, blue-grey, and on and on. Tertiary colours are more complex and yet more natural. The primary and secondary colours are basic, pure, more manufactured yet you need both to make a tertiary. Colour helps to express a feeling which need not be true to what one observes. It also helps to elicit atmosphere whether real or surreal.

How important is the use of the ‘right’ frame to finalize your work, to you?

The right frame is critical as it can make or break the artwork. It’s important that it works harmoniously and therefore needs to pick up on the tones within the work.

What would an average work day be for you?

I’m fortunate that there is no average day. Though generally it starts with feeding & tending to our animals. We have four cats, four goats and 5 chickens. Then coffee, followed by yoga or a walk if I don’t get too distracted from clearing emails. Then it’s straight into the studio. I usually have a couple of paintings on the go. One needing completion and one ready to be carved. I try to put Wednesdays aside for ceramics and work with other artists in a shared studio, but I don’t always make it if I have deadlines for exhibitions.

Refuge Bay

Contact:

Coco Elder

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Deborah Blakeley, Melbourne, Australia

Interview by Deborah Blakeley, October 2024

Images on these pages are all rights reserved by Coco Elder