Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

SYDNEY MAKES NO BLUE ABOUT ITS LOCAL COLOR ECENTLY we were told that in England blue was the per- manently favorite color for interior decoration, and that yellow was the unpopular. Blue is seldom used in Sydney in- teriors, but yellow and orange have always been very popular. These preferences must have something to do with climate ant. light, perhaps even with local geology (Syd- ney's sandstone). Certainly Kenneth Hood's pictures at the Macquarie Galleries look a bit alien here. So do the cold blue cityscapes also at the Macquarie, by Michael Shannon, another Melbourne painter. even though they are sometimes of Sydney. When Nntvar Bhav- sar's paintings were re- cently at Gallery A Sydney, the blue one looked somehow wrong, while the golds and reds looked right. These "rights" and "wrongs" shouldn't have anything to do with merits. They are simply "right" or "wrong" in terms of long-establish- ed color habits that have grown up in Syd- ney. KENNETH HOOD shows well -made paint- ings at the Macquarie. I mean they are crafts - manlike, they have rich painterly surfaces which provide modestly con- tented pleasure in their skill. His work, usually still- life or studio interiors, has always been like this. One change is to landscape &I:Oct mat- ter, tbough framed by a window. or subdivided by a grit'. (and some- times paq.ted on slight- ly 8e; .crated small panels) it remains land- scape treated as still life, landscape contain- ing the 'rind of repeti- tion of forms that still life allows, Another change is the use of wavy, curvilinear elements, from the branches of trees, and these somehow mod- ernise his standard euoist structure. One is aware that nearly all the paintings have cool temperature, which might seem nat- ural in Melbourne, Hood's hometown, but which seem chilly here in Sunshine City. JOHN FIRTH-SMITH, at Gallery A, is a Sydney painter of ab- stract landscapes. His work looks more at home here than Ken- neth Hood's. and I guess it would look alien in Melbourne. A very sumptuously colored example of his familiar verticals Is chiefly green, but it's a deep, warm green. Hie has occaaionally painted harbor abstracts in a cold blue and I think they have been failures compared itith his warm blue or purple, harbor subjects. The deep green paint- ing, mentioned above, has some sharper accents of clear color, which any observant Sydney eye would have to call cicada green and angophora Pink. Who else has ango- phoras? Nobody. They're ravishingly beautiful trees which Sydney feels very possessive about, and it doesn't surprise me at all that they get into Sydney art, openly with Brett Whiteley, more slyly with Firth - Although these Syd- ney colors and temper- atures are in Firth - Smith's paintings, and give them an air of authenticity, they're not what his work is about. They're incidentals, and any performer it, the visual arts (I'm not say- ing conceptual arts) will provide such bon- uses. His obvious concern is with edges. How t h e left and right edges of ART with Daniel Thomas a canvas can generate other verticals a n d march them across a canvas. How to hold such verticals inside the canvas instead of pro- ceeding beyond the edge, by fencing it off with a pair of laterally placed additional can- vasses. How light pas- sing across the canvas can be halted by a dark recessed slit, or flash out as it reaches a pro- jecting perspex fin. The newt..,t paintings are called "eclipses" and they show a circular curve rising from the bottom corners of he rectangular canvas. They're still genera- ted by an edge, only it's the bottom edge, not the sides, but the real action is on that bow- string line drawn on the canvas, not at the edge of the canvas. Of course, the line looks a bit like the hot edge of an eclipsed sun - disc. But it could also be reversed to become a void seen from in- side a telescope. Or the view into a vat, or a well. Firth -Smith is only 27 yet he's been exhi- biting for nearly 10 years. At one time he would win the Contem- porary Art Society's Young Contemporar- ies" prize nearly even year. His early work often had flag-shapes hinged on to the framing -edge, most of his forms peer- ed into the rectangle, were on the point of invasion or withdrawal. The edge was a dramatic threshold. This was an unusual way of making pictures at a time when cubist containment was still normal. His present work re-. mains a very consistent development of what are clearly his own per- sonal forms and pic- torial obsessions. His paint handling now has a broad, casual scrub- biness to suit his large themes. He is individual. He knows his direction. His work has the tr...,p, benefits of local Sydney qualities and of good humor (abstract farms can certainly have good humor, and they can be cranky, too). And in this exhibition he begins to look like a mature artist. "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W 7 SEP 19/