Watch Paint Dry : My painting of the 'Classic and Wooden Boat Show'

'Classic and Wooden Boat Show' 
2010 oil on canvas 31 x 61cm 
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I started painting this 'en plein air' at the 'Classic and Wooden Boat Show' at the Australian National Maritime Museum' on Saturday 16th October despite the having to huddle up to a garbage bin to shelter from the gusts of wind. 

It was more of a demonstration to help direct notice to the exhibition of marine art inside the Museum by the members of ASMA (the Australian Society of Marine Artists) than a serious attempt to produce a work of art in public. 

By Sunday, however, the weather had settled down enough to actually get some paint on the canvas instead of myself and passers-by.  

I had to add details like some of the flags at home, and spruce it up a bit by removing hairs and lumps of grit that had stuck to the wet paint.

I didn't have much choice of subject matter, due to the gusts of wind that threatened to send my easel cartwheeling up and down the wharf.

 As I couldn't find a position to be able to paint one of the boats in all its glory, I decided to paint the atmosphere of the festival itself. This was challenging as the canvas became dotted with little unrelated vignettes as people who I had started to paint moved around.

The result was that I ended up painting mini portraits of some of the stall holders, as they moved around a bit less.

Detail of 'Classic and Wooden Boat Show' 2010 
oil on canvas 31 x 61cm 'The Boat Builders ('Denman Marine')'
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These are 'Denman Marine'a trio of boat builders from Tasmania. 

 

Detail of 'Classic and Wooden Boat Show' 2010
oil on canvas 31 x 61cm 
'The Musicians' 
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A trio of jazz musicians in lairy fluoro suits were milling around.

Detail of 'Classic and Wooden Boat Show' 2010 
oil painting on canvas 31 x 61cm 
'Hydralign Feathering Propellers'
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A customer inspecting one of the 'Hydralign Feathering Propellers' on display.

Detail of 'Classic and Wooden Boat Show' 2010
oil on canvas 31 x 61cm 
'Seatow'
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The team from 'Seatow' demonstrated rope tricks to impress the customers.

Related posts in this blog:

• Marine Art Exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)
• Artist in residence at Maritime Museum (janebennettartist.blogspot.com)

The Navigator and the King

These 2 paintings will be exhibited in the Laperouse Museum until January 2011.

They were inspired by meditation on the unpredictable nature of history, exploration and the fate of nations.

They are memento mori paintings in the tradition of 17th and 18th century still life 'vanitas' paintings.

The portrait of the gallant yet doomed La Perouse receiving his commission from his equally ill-fated monarch is doubly ironic.

The antipodean voyage of La Perouse was personally planned by the king together with the explorer. The loss of La Perouse and his expedition caused Louis XVI both personal grief and political humiliation.

'La Perouse - the navigator and the King'
2010 oil on canvas 46 x 46cm
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Louis XVI sought to reinvigorate the stagnating French economy through trade and had invested a great deal of the government finances into improving the French Navy.

This was both a personal and a political goal.

His private study was filled with nautical charts and the burnished brass of mathematical instruments, telescopes, sextants and the locks which the King himself designed and made.

Louis XVI desperately wanted to regain the colonial power and prestige lost by his grandfather in the Seven Year’s War. Most of the debt burdening his government was from French involvement in the revolt of the American colonies against Britain.

A radical program of naval reconstruction was undertaken by first Turgot, then Sartine and finally de Castries. These brilliant, though fiscally irresponsible men attempted to transform the French navy into the equal of the British fleet, but heroic projects such as the transformation of Cherbourg harbour came at a ruinous price.

La Perouse - 'The Art of Navigation'
2010 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
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It was a real 'Sliding Doors' moment.

If Governor Philip and all his ships had been lost at sea and instead La Perouse had made a triumphant return to France after adding the continent of Australia to France’s extensive colonial empire, what could have been the outcome?

Would Australia have been settled by French colonists or become a battleground between the French and British Empires as Canada had been?

If La Perouse’s expedition had ended in a blaze of glory, would the good publicity have sufficiently enhanced the reputation of the monarchy to withstand the economic and social pressures that resulted in the anarchy of the Revolution?

Now that the exhibition in the LaPerouse Museum has finished, I'm going to enter "The Art of Navigation" in the Camden Art Prize.

It's far too strange to win, it'll just confuse the judges.

But I feel like being brave.

And it will certainly stand out in the crowd.

Update : It was runner-up!

See my blog post "Keep your eyes on the prize and your finger off the trigger!"

Related posts

My New Still life Paintings of Antique Navigation Instruments

The Art of Navigation

The Art of Navigation

The Navigators : Captain Cook and La Perouse

These paintings were created to celebrate the life and achievements of the famous navigators Captain James Cook and the Comte de la Perouse, in exhibitions held by the Australian Society of Marine Artists.

The paintings inspired by Captain James Cook were exhibited at the Kurnell Museum from June 2009 in “Where cultures meet’ Exhibition at the Visitor’s Centre, Captain Cook Landing Site, Kurnell.

The paintings inspired by La Perouse are exhibited in"Windows on History - Aspects of the Story of La Perouse" at the La Perouse Museum.

I had to do extensive research to create these paintings.

Instead of painting historical re-enactments of the events and the ships, I decided to focus on their mastery of the art of navigation.

The Lunar Distance Method

'The Lunar Distance Method' 
2009 oil painting on canvas 20 x 25cm
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Before John Harrison’s Chronometer No. 4, which Cook successfully tested on the “Resolution” during his 2nd great voyage of exploration, the best way to find longitude was the lunar distance method.

The reflecting quadrant (also called an octant because its curved scale formed the eighth part of a circle) helped sailors find both latitude and longitude, and was invented in 1731 simultaneously but independently by John Hadley in England and by Thomas Godfrey In America.

Previously, astrolabes had been used to find longitude and local time by estimating the height of the sun or a star above the horizon.

The reflecting quadrant allowed direct measurement of the elevations of 2 celestial bodies such as the moon and the sun during daylight or between the moon and the stars at night, as well as the distances between them. When the horizon disappeared in fog or darkness, or the ship pitched and rolled, the readings weren't affected as the quadrant provided an artificial horizon.

The quadrant was improved by adding a telescope and a wider measuring arc, becoming an even more accurate instrument known as the sextant.

The navigator measured the lunar distances from the deck, then consulted tables listing the angular distances between the moon and the sun or stars for particular times of the day as they would be observed from London or Paris.

The angular distances are the degrees of arc - the size of the angle made by two lines of sight from the eye of the observer to the 2 chosen objects. Then the navigator compared the time of his observation with the time that particular position had been predicted for his home port. If the observation was at 1am local time when the tables predicted the same configuration over London at 4am, the ship’s time was 3 hours earlier, so this meant the ship was currently sailing at longitude 45 degrees west of London.

Diagram of lunar method  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The lunar method required considerable mathematical skill.

As well as measuring the altitudes of various celestial bodies and the angular distances between them, the navigator would have to factor in how near these objects were to the horizon as the steep refraction of light would put their apparent positions considerably higher than their actual ones.

There was also the problem of lunar parallax, as the tables were formulated for an observer at the Earth’s centre, and the deck of a ship is of course many feet above sea-level (Hopefully!)

Some days the moon is too close to the sun to make lunar distance measurements, and other days the distance between moon and sun is too great so that during these times the navigator would have to plot the moon against the stars, often with lesser accuracy. 

Navigation Instruments

'The art of Navigation' 2009
oil painting on canvas 25 x 20cm
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The instruments of navigation : sextant, compass, telescope, hourglass, nautical charts and gentleman’s pocket spheres are fragile and exquisitely wrought relics of the heroic age of exploration. They now look quaint but the life or death of hundreds of men once depended on the captain’s skill and  judgement in using them. The mythological emblems on the celestial sphere are a reminder that not long before, navigation was an esoteric mystery, more an art than a science. I hadn’t realized how much things like accurate timekeeping and  knowing exactly where you are at sea, we now take for granted.

It is so difficult in our age of “Google Earth” and mass communications to appreciate the isolation and danger of such a journey.

The hourglass and the skull are ‘memento mori’ emblems, common to still life "vanitas" painting of the 17th and 18th centuries. "Vanitas" paintings are warnings against pride and indicate the transitory nature of life, power and fame.

My paintings were inspired by reading :

“Citizens” by Simon Schama

“LONGITUDE" by Dava Sobel

“SEA OF DANGERS ” by Geoffrey Blainey

Related posts

2012 Classic & Wooden Boat Show,Australian National Maritime Museum

 
Artist in Residence Sydney Heritage Fleet Part 2 :'Lady Hopetoun'

My New Still life Paintings of Antique Navigation Instruments  
     
Out of Time  

The Navigator and the King

Keep your eyes on the prize & your fingers off the trigger

Eveleigh- Industrial Heritage Artist at Work

Eveleigh Rail Yards Community Consultation Open Day

Saturday 30 October 2010

'Ned Kelly at Eveleigh' an Eveleigh still life
oil painting on canvas 91 x 61 cm
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 This was an invitation to share the passion for this important part of Sydney’s industrial heritage and be part of an exciting opportunity to shape the Eveleigh Rail Yards Interpretation Plan.

Rail Songs and Films
Creative Soundscapes in an old workshop
Heritage Artist at Work
Venue: Innovation Plaza, Australian Technology Park, Locomotive St, Eveleigh 10:00 am-3:30 pm 30 October 2010

You can also download the RWA Eveleigh Interpretation Plan Consultation Invite and pass it on to people who might be interested.
(I was the "Heritage Artist at Work", and also exhibited paintings of various parts of the Eveleigh Rail Yards )

'Blacksmith ,Wrought Artworks'

Bay 1/2 Australian Technology Park,

Eveleigh Railway Workshops

2010 oil on canvas 122 x 152 cm
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See my Eveleigh paintings in this blog

Related posts

Irons in the fire
Watching the forge fires fade
Macdonaldtown - A Station without a suburb
Eveleigh- Industrial Heritage Artist at Work
The village smithy (sydney-eye.blogspot.com)
Time for Safety 
The slow return from the fire 
The fire within 
En plein air with street cred (sydney-eye.blogspot.com)