'Pink River' by Ben Laycock
Bio
Artwork
Website: www.benlay.blogspot.com
Walk
into Ben Laycock’s studio in Castlemaine and you will find yourself
surrounded by the natural world. On every wall and surface hang bright
canvases, some over two metres tall, of luminous waterfalls, sprawling
desserts and ancient inland rivers. “Australia has been drifting around
the ocean for fifty million years,” Ben explains, “It is now very flat,
worn away by countless floods until it resembles a vast canvas, painted
by the weather,” The sheer volume of work - oil paintings, gouaches,
prints and drawings- is testament to Ben’s sense of connection to the
land.
A superb example of Ben's mature work is Snake River (2008). A zigzag of
white-blue water weaves its way across an eroded desert. On either side
deep grooves, runoffs and ditches crackle with primordial energy. “Ben
continues. “I’m trying to show the way these natural forces shape and
reshape the land, without end.” In many of Ben’s recent paintings this
idea is explored from an aerial perspective. “I often find myself
painting from a bird’s eye view, much as aboriginal people do. It’s the
only way to see such a flat landscape.” The result is highly personal, a
spirited vision of the power of nature.
Before becoming a full time artist Ben lived a largely nomadic life,
crisscrossing the country with his partner and young family. He kept a
journal throughout this period, recording the various people and places
he visited, particularly his encounters with aboriginal people and the
desert. These travelogues formed the foundation stones of what was to
become his major preoccupation. “It took a long time to grow, this idea
of painting the power of the land.”
When asked to reflect on the origins of this feeling for landscape, Ben
recalls his childhood at Dunmoochin, the thriving artist’s colony on the
outskirts of Melbourne, established by Clifton and Marlene Pugh in 1951.
“I grew up surrounded by potters and painters in the bush. Clifton Pugh
was one of the first painters to campaign on behalf of the environment -
and one of the first to own a Toyota Landcruiser. I remember our first
big trip across the Strzelecki desert. I was thirteen years old. We
started at Tibooburra and drove to the Flinders Ranges and Lake Fromme,
following faded tyre tracks through the desert. We’d stop for lunch and
find aboriginal artefacts. Now that’s authentic! It was my first
experience of the desert and I loved it.”
When he was nineteen Ben left Dunmoochin and built a small house deep in
the forest at nearby Christmas Hills. “I wanted to go deep into nature,
deep into the wilderness, far from the madding crowd” After that he
travelled to South America for twelve months, returned to Melbourne, and
studied printmaking at the VCA. Ben continued to paint and enjoyed a
sell out show at United Artists Gallery in St Kilda. Soon after, he
received a Travel Grant to visit Nicaragua, where he was commissioned to
paint a mural of The Story of Creation According to the Bible and the
Humanitarian Achievements of the Nicaraguan Revolution on a chapel
belonging to Catholic Marxists. Ben completed the mural, returned
to Melbourne, and found that he was torn between a life of art and a
life of politics.
Thus began an extended period of soul searching for the young artist.
He took up various revolutionary causes, but avoided any organised
groups. “I’m not a joiner. I just wanted a revolution on my own. Pretty
crazy really.” To make ends meet he painted murals, printed posters, did
graffiti and neglected his painting. One day he strapped a pack on his
back and walked away from it all, embarking on a personal “Odyssey” into
the outback. He hitchhiked to the Kimberleys via the tiny aboriginal
community of Nyripi in the Western Desert, then across to Dunk Island
in Far North Queensland. The trip revitalised his passion for the
landscape and established a working pattern that has continued ever
since: “I’d do drawings on site, come back to St.Kilda to finish them
off, live on the dole, scrimp and scrape, have a show, get a fist full
of dollars and head off again.”
After years of wayward travel he finally moved to Central Victoria,
where he built a house from recycled materials in Barkers Creek. Since
then there have been fewer inland trips, and his work has become
increasingly abstract but always feeding off those trips to the desert.
“Lately I’ve become increasingly obsessed with water, with the way it
shapes and reshapes the land. Water brings things to life!" Indeed,
water appears in all but a few of Ben's most recent works. It often
spreads like a network of veins across the vast,empty plains. The result
is epic, abstract, surreal. “Water is something that speaks to the
unconscious, " he says, "it dissolves reality."
In Philosophers Falls (2010), for example, a central cascade of
luminous, ethereal light radiates out into the rock-shelf itself,
dissolving any distinction between water, earth and air. This alchemy is
achieved with curling, fluid brushstrokes, each of which contributes to
the overall pattern of energy. This pattern unifies the painting,
showing that nothing can be excluded from the never-ending flow of life.
These days Ben’s work rarely displays overt political messages, but he
feels that any act that sides with natural world, against the many
threats that would diminish it, is a political act. “We must be grounded
in the spirit of place in order to defend it.”
In a work like Conflagration (2010), for example, the perils of rampant
development are presented with visionary power. Twisted flames and
blazing apparitions rise menacingly above a coastline of poisoned water
and rock. A solitary dog scavenges on the edge of an abandoned pipeline.
This apocalyptic image shows us what the world might look like when our
connection to nature is severed. We neglect the ecosystem at our own
peril. The alternative to this can be seen in Pink River (2010). Here a
ribbon of water splits the canvas in half, spreading left and right into
the red sand. The rich palette and spirited brushwork underscore a sense
of natural joy and harmony: this is undisturbed country, where
everything is naturally in flux. “Go out into the heart of Australia, as
far away from the city as you can,” Ben says. “Stand still for a very
long while. Let the sun bleach your skin. Let the wind scour your bones.
Eventually the clutter and trivia of quotidian existence will wash away.
And then you’ll begin to feel a resonance between your soul and the soul
of the earth.”
Ben’s work has strong affinities with the Deep Ecology movement, which
stresses the inherent value and interconnectedness of all life. This
interconnectedness must be realized personally, as Rainer Maria Rilke,
one of Ben’s favourite poets, knew well:
Earth, isn’t this
what you want:
rising up
inside us invisibly
once more?
Isn’t it your dream
to be invisible someday?
Earth! invisible!
what is it
you urgently ask for
if not transformation?
Earth, my love
I will do it.
To see Ben’s landscape painting is to see the landscape as the artist
does, from the inside. “My response to the landscape wells up from the
unconscious. I want my work to evoke an immediate, visceral response,
before thought, beyond thought” he says. The act of painting becomes an
act of transformation, allowing us to see the invisible spirit of place.
These highly personal and symbolic paintings restore our fractured
relationship to the land and make possible a greater intimacy with the
earth.
Ken South 2010
I grew up in the bush in a little place called
Cottlesbridge, just north of Melbourne. After living in St.Kilda for
many years I am now back in the bush, just outside Castlemaine.
I have spent a lot of my time roaming around Australia, painting,
drawing, looking and wondering. I have come to realise Australia is very
old, very dry and very flat. This place of ours has been worn away over
millions of years. Etched and carved and shaped by countless floods till
it resembles a vast canvas, painted by the weather.
Because of this, I find myself painting more and more from a bird’s eye
view, much as aboriginal people do. The only way to really see such a
flat landscape.
I also find myself becoming quite obsessed with rivers.
The river rushes headlong down the mountain. When it hits the plain it
starts to wander. By the time it nears the coast it is meandering in all
directions, searching blindly for an outlet to the sea. The pounding
surf has built a bulwark of sand that blocks the way. The river turns in
on its self, gathering in eddies and pools and billabongs, swamps,
marshes, wetlands, bog. The river rises, breaches the wall and rushes
out into the open sea. The tide floods in. The river and the sea dancing
around each other in arabesques and curlicues.
And of course, the greatest river of them all.
The Murray has been around since Australia left Gondwana Land about 50
million years ago. It is a very old river. In that time the river has
wandered all across the western plains, leaving a trail behind like a
snake in the sand. El Nino has ensured its life was never dull or
predictable. In drought it could become nothing more than a series of
muddy pools seething with dying fish. In a big flood it bursts its banks
and becomes a vast moving wetland, spreading for miles, teaming with
birds by the million.
Water, and the landscape it has created over millennia is my primary
fascination.
Ben Laycock 2010