Recent Paintings - Early September to Early November 2016

This series of paintings made since the beginning of September is sympathetic to the notion of shifting focus to the time of my younger self, to significant personal memories and world events. In particular, the space race, the moon landing, the Olympic Games in Melbourne and the first time I heard about the bombing of Hiroshima. Space, time and a sense of place.  The word 'place' (plateria) suggests situation or locale, however, it originally meant an open space or square and in my project reality is remediated as square space.

My project began with the purchase of a set of Vintage colored Cuisenare wooden rods of varying lengths, which I used to create a design. Whilst doing this I recalled using Cuisenaire rods as a child to build houses, unaware they were intended as a mathetical aid.

As a teenager I worked for a short while as an assistant designer at the Victoria Carpet Company in Danenong. My duties included mixing paint to accurately depict the color of wool swatches chosen by the designer to reflect the flowers and leaves in his design. Using this paint and squared off brush bristles, I painted each small square, which represented one tuff of wool in the overall carpet design onto graph paper which would then be given to those making sample Axminster carpet squares.

More recently I noticed areas of pixilation that occured on screen whilst I was watching television, disrupting usual viewing and challenging my perception about the nature of visual images in digital culture which, like the human body, may be reduced to noughts and ones, or DNA. The macro altered to the micro. The solid, material rods, refigured and remediated into a flat painted area.

In some of these paintings I utilized the grids I'd already painted onto stretched canvas. Most are 30 x 30cm, except One Small Step, which is 30 x 40cm and Oil Refinery, which is 40 x 50cm. I may or may not add to this collection.

Oil Refinery

Launch

Buoy

One Small Step

The first time I heard of Hiroshima (marks on a Japanese monument)

1960's Axminster carpet

PROXIMITY & DISTANCE - JULIE CLARKE IMAGES AT BOHEME CAFE

In 2015 I purchased a set of original 1950s colored Cuisenaire rods in a wooden box, similar to those I used as a child to make small buildings. Even though George Cuisenaire developed the rods as a mathematical aid, I used them last year to construct a couple of designs on a flat surface. These designs inspired me to bring forth small aspects of photographs I'd taken of the city, Docklands, St. Kilda and Richmond. I reduced these units to their basic structural form with an emphasis on the rectangular in the Cuisenaire rods. I am interested in the proximity and distance of urban structures, as well as their fixity and fluidity. Below are some exampes of the eleven paintings I'm currently showing at Boheme Cafe in Richmond. They were completed at the beginning of this year prior to me doing the pixel paintings.

High Rise in the fog
Acrylic paint on canvas 40.5 x 30.5cm
Julie Clarke (2016) $300

Pylon
Acrylic paint on canvas 30.5 x 30.5cm
Julie Clarke (2016) $300

Sunrise
Acrylic paint on canvas 40.5 x 30.5cm
Julie Clarke (2016) $275

Twin Towers Bolte Bridge
Acrylic paint on canvas 40.5 x 30.5cm
Julie Clarke (2016) $275

Under the bridge
Acrylic paint on canvas 61 x 40cm
Julie Clarke (2016) $550