It is great to see the guides adding to the blog. Today we have a very interesting contribution from artist and president, Brian Martin. Brian writes:
“I have a confession to make. I have a passion and love of rocks. This became apparent when researching a theme for this guidedbyart.com blog post. I suddenly realised that rocks in some form or another appear in many of my art endeavours. I suppose this is a given considering my main art interest is in landscape as a theme. But I must admit it was a surprise when I realised that I have this sub-conscious attraction to rocks of all shapes and sizes. Try as I must to work on more “softer” themes I am constantly drawn back by the magic and the mystery of rocks”.
For an artist, rocks present many exceptional art and compositional opportunities. We can see light and shadow, tone and texture, and colour and shape.
We can see structure and form forged by extreme heat and pressure, sedimentary layering, or underground magma activity from deep within the earth. Rocks can tell many stories and are a time stamp of earth’s history that remind us how small we are in the scheme of things.
Rocks can also evoke emotional responses which can be seen in aspects of Chinese and Australian indigenous art and in sublime landscape painting.
I recommend that you read Kim Baker’s paper on Scholar’s rock base found in Guides Resources>NGV Collection>Asian and Pacific Art>Asian Art>Chinese Art on the Cloud where Kim explains:
- To the Chinese scholars, these rocks represented a focus for meditation of religious or philosophic principles and served for contemplation prior to writing poems or painting.
- They are usually displayed in carved wood stands, and the stands themselves are often works of art in their own right, depicting mythical, stylistic or symbolic images in great detail.
- Although the Chinese scholar drew inspiration from the natural world; he did not go out into nature to paint or compose poetry, rather, he worked within the seclusion of his studio and used these ‘representations of mountains’ as inspiration for his work. The rocks are in essence nature in miniature brought inside, a concept somewhat similar in philosophy to the Japanese Bonsai tree.
Searching the NGV website, I found 335 references to rocks in the collection including traditional landscape paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, decorative arts, and sculptures.
Rocks can be infinite in scale. A drawing or painting of a rock outcrop could be either four, forty or four hundred metres high. It could be a mountain dusted with snow or a rockface on the beach or in the outback. Whatever it is, the image epitomises the sublime power of nature with the cracks, indentations, and surface textures that are a result of past eruptions and earth movements.
Note: All images are from the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.
Thank you, Brian, for sharing your thoughts on ‘rocks’. Is it cheeky to ask: ‘Did you have a pet rock back in 1975?’
This is wonderful, Brian! Many thanks indeed for your insights and research.
Thanks Brian,
It is easy to appreciate these wonderful examples – the texture, tone and colours are so varied. I would particularly love to see the Lloyd Rees ones on the walls in the near future.