I drive away from the coast and into the heart of the Hawkes Bay in search of an isolated driveway amongst barren, dry hills, off a tree lined country road. I am by myself, in a car unfamiliar to me, driving through places I have never been, imagining how it will be meeting Gary Waldrom at his studio in Waipawa.
As I pass a number of wooden gates and flat fields of grass, I spot objects a little out of place in the distance; globes of orange and yellow that seem to be floating by the side of road. As I draw nearer, I notice the orbs are balloons, markers leading me into the hidden driveway to Waldrom’s studio.
I am greeted at the car by Waldrom and joined shortly after by his mum and with tea in hand I am lead into the studio space. Three young girls stand before me. They are looking directly at me and as the title ‘Three Girls Watching II (2007-2009)’ describes, they are observing me as much as I am them. They stand in front of some stairs, leading to a large wooden door. I remember a photo my mother took of me at two and a half, pigtails and blue dress, standing before the door of the villa I was born in. The painting also prompts me to reminisce about childhood days with my two female cousins, the three of us playing together after school in our school tunics, and posing for photos to put into the large photo-albums our mothers kept.
I continue to look at the girls for a while, what are they thinking? Who are they? They are not telling; they are not smiling, nor sad. They have an almost adult quality to them, a knowing. I can see myself in his characters but at the same time they have a strange and unfamiliar air to them. All of Waldrom’s figures have a common look about them, elfish bodies with unique faces consisting large, confronting eyes that seem to stare. I slowly feel uneasy; I no longer feel I am looking at them, but that they are looking at me. They are strangers, in a strange place and I have entered their world.
The sensation I get from this work, as with others’ of Gary Waldrom’s is an uncanny one:
“the particular kind of fear provoked ‘when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem once more confirmed.” 1
Characters and places in Waldrom’s work are familiar yet strange. They conjure memories and I feel nostalgic towards the works but I can’t quite put my finger on why or how they make me feel so uneasy.
Waldrom’ paintings not only blur the boundaries between the familiar and the unfamiliar, but between everyday reality and the imagined world within. Although they are mindscapes in that they are greatly constructed from Waldrom’s imagination, elements of the paintings are recognisably from the real world. In ‘Girl and Ceramic Pig (2008-2009)’ a girl stands holding flowers, and an orange air balloon floats through the air, over architecture that is specific to Waldrom’s Waipawa and palm trees that are distinctly New Zealand. I instantly look at my own situation, my recent encounter of the Waipawa buildings and my experience of finding the orange balloon. That uncanny feeling hits me again, as my world is reflected in the painting before me.
There is a very real experience to be had in engaging with the paintings as physical objects. Areas have layers of thick oil paint, others thin washes, leaving remnants of what has been painted before such as in ‘Bench Seat Conversation (2008-2009)’ where shadows of where the bench once finished are left visible. Some of Waldrom’s works are expressive; he applies the paint with movement and physical gesture. Other areas of his paintings are very tightly constructed, almost looking like they have been ‘stuck’ onto the surface of the canvas. 2 On close inspection brush-marks are apparent, forms of coloured paint slowly merge into an image, painted line takes shape and ones perception changes; from the paintings physical surface to the illusion of the painting space and into the imagery that unfolds itself in the work.
Before visiting Waldrom I stopped in at the Hastings Art Gallery to view an exhibition called ‘Mind Games- Surrealism in Aotearoa’. A work of Waldrom’s from 2000 appeared in this show and although Waldrom does not fit this label entirely (nor any label for that matter), there are some similarities. The imagined world and the physical world are always prevalent when viewing a painting. One can move from the illusion of space in the work, to the painting as an object constructed with paint and canvas. Both the Surrealists and Waldrom break down the separation between the real object and the illusionary space of the work. They blur the boundary between the physical world and the psychological world through their painting process:
“these artists move freely, boldly and confidently at the borderline between the inner and outer world, a borderline that is physically and psychologically entirely real (‘surreal’) even if it has not yet been adequately defined and determined, that they undertake to register precisely what they see and experience there, and that they intervene wherever their revolutionary instincts suggest they should.”3
Waldrom describes himself as a ‘mood’ painter and although he has an idea of he wants the painting to ‘feel’ intuition plays a large role on the decisions Waldrom makes within his work. Characters and places are manifested from his imagination or from snippets of images or ideas he then assimilates into the evolving painting composition. To take a photograph of Waldrom’s work each day would be to reveal a constantly changing imagined world.
In some case Waldrom uses found images to inspire or guide his ideas. He also revisits his own compositions, changing and re-evaluating aspects of the work. In the work ‘Blind Girl Dance (2008-2009)’ the motivation of other images can be found explicitly. The figures dancing in an arm linked circle has a direct connection to Matisses’s 1909 painting ‘Dance’ but also to one of Waldrom’s earlier works, ‘All Your Dancers and Twisters’ from 1995. For sometime Waldrom thought of reprising the work, “not because it is no longer extant, but I felt sure I could revamp the idea completely”. 4 Within Waldrom’s paintings, the initial images are taken into an entirely new situation where they become part of his alternate reality.
When given a first glimpse of Waldrom’s paintings in progress, a woman stands naked in the water, hands behind her back, pushing her pelvis forward, looking out at me with a sneer on her face. She looks as if she could be bathing in these dark murky waters. Now standing in front of the work ‘Swamp Wader (2008-2009)’, I recognise the same girl, she looks different though, now she is fully clothed, holding a fishing net, wading through the water. The sky has changed and the reeds are more recognisable. The moon looks different. The work looks different. The character in the world has lived a life through the painting and now stands transformed and evolved.
“Surrealists are widely described as painters of a constantly mutating dream-works.” 5 Waldrom’s works develop as he paints. He lets the works reveal themselves through the painting process in instinctual manner. Like dreaming, the works evolve in their own way, Waldrom letting his unconscious guide him along:
“at the outset it may be objected that dream-work is an unconscious process involving internal mental operations while artistic labour is a conscious mental process controlling manual manipulation of physical materials and implements. These differences exist but the unconscious also plays a role in art-work and… there are parallels between the unconscious operations of dream-work and the physical transformations typical of artistic production.” 6
This is not to say that Waldrom is unaware of painting conventions. Although he has no academic training, Waldrom speaks clearly about the formal aspects of how his painting operates. In notes on his painting ‘Reversal Rehearsal (Demo for a Lost Cause) (2008-2009)’, Waldrom uses compositional devices to guide the viewer through the work. He has purposefully shown the figure from the back view “using this ‘repeat pose’ aspects in a composition as a unifying /continuity device. The same applies to the magenta-coloured walk-ramp extending right across both panels, which is intended to double as an anchor for the composition as well.” 7 What it does however open up, is the idea that the unconscious or inner-world has as much part in creating a painting as the physical action:
“One of the most crucial revolutionary devices of surrealism was passionately to have attacked this myth (of divine creation) on well-considered grounds and thus to have dispatched it once and for all. It did so by insisting emphatically upon the purely passive role of the ‘author’ as far as the mechanism of poetic inspiration was concerned, by unmasking the notion of ‘active control’ through reason, morality and aesthetic deliberation as inimical to inspiration. As a viewer like anyone else, the ‘author’ can witness the emergence of the work can follow the unfolding phases of its development with indifference or passion. Just as a poet listens to the automatic processes of thought and jots down their results, so too the painter projects what his optical imagination suggests directly to him on paper or canvas.” 8
As I now stand before these works, I am left to interpret these paintings. I wonder what they mean. I wonder what these works reveal about Waldrom as a person, are they as much of his unconscious mind as his active mind? Waldrom gives me no help- the paintings have unravelled themselves before him as well. I’m looking into Waldrom’s dreamscape or mindscape. Each part of the work seems laden with meaning, both obvious and hidden. Not only does the work reveal things about Waldrom, I also know there is a story within the illusionary imagery and like a dream I’m left to interpret it:
“Already a parallel suggests itself between Freud’s view that dreams have double meanings (latent and manifest) and the way images function (signifiers and signifieds) and symbols work (literal and metaphorical levels of meaning). The correlation between art-work and dream-work is made quite explicit in Freud’s frequent references to the means of representation in works of art as examples of how dreams are formed. Furthermore, the task of the psychoanalysis in interpreting dreams appears to match that of the viewer or reader seeking to grasp the meaning of a work of art, a meaning which, like that of a dream, often stubbornly resists decoding.” 9
Like the empty Punch and Judy stage in ‘From Here to There (2006-2009)’, it seems there is a story waiting to be revealed. In fact when looking at Waldrom’s work I feel like I am in front of a stage, where the characters are the players. I look for clues as to what drama is unfolding. What secrets are there in this work to reveal? As my eye moves from one element of the painting to the next, I wonder what has happened or is soon to occur in the scene Waldrom has placed before me. An abandoned car situated in the long grass, below a wispy cloud (or possibly even smoke?) prompts me to think of gangsters and the suited character (with his shifty sideways glance) adds to the underbelly feeling of unease in the work.
I think about Waldrom, painting alone in his studio, amongst these Hawkes Bay hills, and how in a way he is like the man in front of the Punch and Judy show, inviting me to experience the situation. The more time I spend looking at the work, the greater the possibilities. I feel the need to decipher, to know what is going on, what it all means, and I am left with unanswered questions. The work retains its secrets- the characters look only to me for answers.
Another painting is displayed ‘Girl and Horse I (Second Series) (2008-2009)’ and through hazy orange, post-apocalyptic skies I sense a light I am all too familiar with, the light of mid-afternoon New Zealand sun. The light in the work shines upon the face of a stone building. I am instantly transported back to a time I spent in Oamaru at art school, living close to the ‘old town’ a restored area by the sea where old buildings remain. I know this place Waldrom presents before me; I can almost walk around the side of the building and know what will be there.
Again a girl stands in the foreground of the work, her head tilted slightly left and her eyes closed as if day dreaming. In front of her a very still orb is placed, (a ball?) and beside her stands a large white horse. I wonder if it is a figment of the girl’s imagination (don’t most young girls dream of ponies, and older ones dream of knights on white horses?). I begin to realise that these paintings are just as much about my world as they are Waldrom’s. All of a sudden I see myself in the girl with the ball, dreaming of that white horse; maybe my knight is just around the corner.
I begin to see a Waldrom painting in my own experience of this journey to his studio; a girl, in new and unfamiliar surroundings (however the New Zealand landscape and light is unmistakably familiar), guided by balloons 10 , standing, looking out into an alternate reality; Waldrom’s world.
As the afternoon wears on I move from one painting to the next, exploring Waldrom’s constructed worlds, their stories, landscapes, painterly qualities and my own feelings about myself and my experiences of this alternate reality which is strangely close to home.
Before saying my final goodbyes to travel back to the big smoke of Auckland, I revisit “Three Girls Watching II (2007-2009)” and find something intriguing. The work has changed. Light that earlier seemed to signify early morning, now appears as an afternoon haze. The girls look at me in a different way; it has been a long day for all of us, they are in front of a closed door, wishing me well. As we stand face-to-face they look at me as if they know what I’m thinking and what I’ve been through here in Waldrom’s studio. I wonder what they’ll get up to when I leave? Will they wait until I see them again? I feel a little melancholy knowing that the works will remain locked away in solitude until the day that they travel away from the studio but I am already looking forward to experiencing their ever-changing presence when they arrive again in my world.
Vanessa Eve Cook, 2009
1. Lydenberg p. 1073
2. Area’s of Waldrom’s paintings have been worked and re-worked, meaning that areas of the work look more built up than others.
3. Harrison & Wood p. 493
4. Waldrom
5. Harrison & Wood p. 492
6. Walker p. 109
7. Waldrom
8. Harrison & Wood p. 492
9. Walker p. 109
10. Waldrom
References:
Harrison, Charles. And Paul Wood (Eds). ‘Max Ernst (1891-1976) ‘What is Surrealism?’. Art in theory, 1900-2000 : an anthology of changing ideas. Blackwell Publishers: Malden, MA, 2003 pp 491 – 493
Harrison, Charles. And Paul Wood (Eds). ‘Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) from ‘On Dreams’’. Art in theory, 1900-2000 : an anthology of changing ideas. Blackwell Publishers: Malden, MA, 2003 pp 21- 28
Lydenberg, Robin ‘Freuds Uncanny Narratives’. PLMA Modern Language Association. vol. 112, No. 5, Oct., 1997 pp1072-1086
Waldrom, Gary. ‘New Paintings’. Artists Notes on Works. 2009
Walker, John A. ‘Dream-Work and Art-Work’. Leonardo. Vol. 16, No. 2, 1983 pp 109 – 114.
Written as a catalogue essay for Gary Waldrom's 'New Works', 2009. Please see exhibition details @ Milford Galleries Website www.milfordgalleries.co.nz
