Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Eastern sense, has many different ways, and is considered 'beautiful' only if the spirit has moved the brush!3 In the same interview, historian Clayton Bredt explained: There are semantic characters buried under the final versions. He used to do inscriptions. The elements of Fairweather's calligraphic marks are directly based on the standard brush strokes which make a vocabulary of 50 or 60 characters. Incidentally, the texture of the plastic paints Fairweather used is not unlike the Chinese ink when ground and gummy.14 The relationship between painting and Chinese writing, through both history and aesthetics, appealed to Fairweather. He felt it was 'fate' that had led him to study the Chinese language in the first place and, while living in China, he tried to absorb as much about Chinese custom and culture as he could, shrinking away from the Europeans whose appearance and habits he began to find coarse and distasteful. At one point Fairweather had been taken to visit a master calligrapher in a remote village. He later remarked: It was an experience to watch him ... as he poured a little water on a slight hollow in a stone, then took up his brush and began, with long, deliberate and delicate movements, to create the most beautiful, austere work I had ever seen. It is something I shall never forget!5 Some of the techniques that Fairweather used also seem to have been derived from calligraphy. Aprocess called kan pi or dry brush, in which the brush is only partially soaked with ink, and another known as fei po, where the brush is dragged so quickly it leaves irregular white streaks within the strokes, were calligraphic methods common to his work!6 Master calligraphers are able to impart such strength to a stroke that the ink penetrates the paper on which it is written, instead of sitting on the surface. If one thinks of Fairweather's intense application of paint, this is really what happens. In applying multiple layers, he almost created a new perspective — one that is quite unrelated to quattrocento vanishing points or sixteenth-century coulisses but very much related to a calligraphic field of depth. Page of handwritten calligraphy from Ian Fairweather's journals. Courtesy private collection, Bribie Island Calligraphy is thought to reveal the personality and integrity of the artist. As each stroke builds a character, and each character builds on to the next, so the artist's character is formed and unfolded. During the Tang period (618-907 AD), for instance, only those of noble disposition could practise calligraphy They were guardians of morality and frequently lived reclusive and almost monastic lives. They professed to have no patience with the restraints of the social order and the vulgar mediocrities of bourgeois existence. They therefore took themselves out of the mundane world to lead a life of calm contemplation and abstract meditation!7 In a similar way Fairweather despised the middle-class lifestyle of his peers, though he seems not to have been contemptuous of people themselves. He eschewed materialism, even when he was old and frail and living without running water or electricity, despite earning enough from his art to afford these things. The authorities treated him as a famous local treasure, issuing postcards about his camp and doing their best to improve his living conditions!8But Fairweather kept himself well clear of society, never going to Sydney for any of his openings at the Macquarie Galleries and preferring to avoid most people — 'Keep Out' read the sign at the entrance to his makeshift compound. He encouraged only a few to visit him at Bribie Island; one such visit, with Margaret Olley and Pamela Bell, is affectionately recorded in MO, PB and the ti-tree 1965 (QAG). Fairweather created his private realm behind a thick screen of trees and scrub. The photographs of his humpy, taken by the privileged fewwho were allowed access and by persistent local reporters who could not resist the off-beat story, reveal a life viewed through a confusion of forms: ti-trees, odd shapes, lines and mess, scrappy calligraphic posters. The visual commotion of Fairweather's everyday existence, along with the austerity and asceticism of his practice, irresistibly resembled the accreted surfaces of his paintings — this was the way he lived in and represented the world. 274 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965