Dreaming Walter Dreaming Canberra
Dreaming Walter Dreaming Canberra' / triptych 100x240cm / acrylic and enamel paint/ on canvas
Dreaming Walter Dreaming Canberra, is a triptych landscape painting, on three stretched canvases, secrured to one subframe.
The painting depicts an imagined historic and panoramic view of Canberra, originally based on the artist's sketches drawn from life, on the slopes of Red Hill. The painting's view-point is intentionally multifarious as it takes the viewer's gaze both downward and across the South Canberra plains. The vista extends over the once un-dammed Molonglo River and stretches further back and wider to prominent landmarks (eastward to the right) including what is known as Mt Ainslie, Mt Pleasant then northward in the centre Mt Majura and heads more westward to Black Mountain on the far left.
The painting's support structure, comprises three main panels, secured as one piece to form the single triptych. Additionally, twenty-seven smaller internal, panel shapes, delineated by using masking-tape techniques, are distrubted over the whole picture. The smaller masking-taped 'panels' have varying degrees of strict edge-definitions. This causes a suggested, fracturing illusion of the pictur'e mis-en-scene. These offer multi-point perspectives and evoke visually interupped notions of transiting time and space with a staggered blend of actual, historical and interpreted landscape.
This triptych was indirectly inspired by the two American architects who'd entered and won the international competition during1910-11, to design Canberra as the future Australian National Capital. Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony, were professional and life-partners from Chicago. They submitted their major plans, drawings and later exceptionally crafted illustrated artworks supporting their winning entry. The Griffin /Mahony Canberra plans have left a unique and enduring legacy.
Dreaming Walter Dreaming Canberra portrays Skewes' amalagmated, imagined view of the real and natural landscape before the city or any construction had taken place. It represents the 'pure' landscape - a naturalistic albeit dreamt up pre-colonial landscape. Skewes imagines that Walter Burley Griffin, with his refined landscape-architect skills and astute visual perception could somehow envision the land as it once was, 'natural and unspoilt'. A kind of empty canvas, before he and Marion Mahony began, sketching, drawing, drafting and finally designing their magnificent landscape-architecture vision for Canberra, that would fit into the natural landscape and fulfill the requirements of a Nation Capital.
Dreaming Walter dreaming Canberra, is at once a kind of meditation and a dream about the architects visual creativity and of their unique alchemy to see-through and across three dimensional space, from afar and then to render accurate, inspiring two dimensional architectural construction plans.
Skewes says “ I find it amazing that landscape architects could put together such a informed and poetic vision for Canberra, all the way from Chicago c.1910. They did this using the maps, hand instruments, rudimentary elevation maps of the day, a plaster model and a few old black and white photographs. The role of human being's internal visualisation and dreaming is a magical and wondrous element all visual artists, architects, designers engineers etc employ"
Dreaming Walter Dreaming Canberra importantly is also, a sister artwork, to another multi-panelled painting made by Skewes, in 2004-6, titled Then Today Tomorrow link here
Then Today, Tomorrow 2004 / Jeffree Skewes / acrylic paint / incised plaster on canvas, on board / 295 x 80cm
In Then Today Tomorrow, Skewes was inspired by Marion Mahony's 1911, visionary painting View from Summit of Mount Ainslie. (image below) Her painting was a one piece panoramic painting in one of her series of fourteen exquisitely rendered artwork/plans and drawings, submitted from Chicago, for their award winning entry in the 1911/12 International. Federal Capital City Design Competition.
View from Summit of Mount Ainslie / Marion Mahony 1911 / Ink & photo and lithographic dyes on silk
Marion's View from the Summit of Mt Ainslie' 1911, depicts the vista and now famous, real-life lookout from Mt Ainslie, (know today as 'Marion's View') It gazes downward, form Mt Ainslie and southward over the Griffin/Mahony envisioned lake, city, parliament house, housing and office projects, Canberra hills and the far away Brindabella ranges. It also includes a small vista of Red Hill, in its left of centre section. Red Hill would later be the site, Skewes viewed from and set his Dreaming Water Dreaming Canberra painting, depeicting his pre-coloial panoramic verso view toward Mt Ainslie etc.
In 2004-6, Skewes reconstructed and equally proportioned the painting he titled Then Today Tomorrow (also know as Site Specific), inspired by the 1911 Mahony original vision. He researched and drew from onsite his own version of the view. Skewes would later paint his own contemporary interpretations of the same view, utilising scarfitto etched drawing techniques into wet plaster to represent and contrast Marion's 1911 painting on silk. He then included alternating and rectangular panels, depicting vistas of a 'now modern Canberra', stitched into the original artwork to create a kind of before, then and after vision.
Then Today Tomorrow, won a public art award and later purchased for a private art collection
Dreaming Walter dreaming Canberra, is on display and for sale 24/7 during May to June 9 2924, in the M16 Artspace foyer. Gallery hours are 12 - 5pm / Wed - Sun.
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A free Public artist tak / discussion and Q n A will be hosted by the artist on Saturday June 8 at 2.30pm in front of the artwork. / M16 Artspace / 21 Blaxland Street Griffith ACT
ALL Welcome
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