Blood, rust and canvas … fiercely infusing nature into art
The artwork of friends Sophie Cape and Ann Thomson – each now showing at Mitchell Fine Art in Brisbane – is borne from one’s direct experience and the other’s long-held memories.
When you say an artist puts blood, sweat and tears into their art, it’s mostly meant metaphorically. But in Sophie Cape’s case it is more literal.
There is, for example, blood on the surfaces of some of her paintings and it is, she tells me, her own blood. Considering the intensity of her practice I’m thinking sweat and tears are probably there too, co-mingling on the surfaces of her works.
Her first exhibition at Mitchell Fine Art in Brisbane is called Inferno and she’s hanging alongside another show by veteran artist Ann Thomson, who is now in her 90s. Thomson’s show is called Evolving.
The pair are friends, so it’s a natural concurrence and the work is different but also related in diverse ways. Both work in abstraction although, as Cape has said, there’s more to her than that.
“Yes, deeply, on the surface I imagine they appear as abstract landscapes,” she says. “But they are very personal, intimate, cathartic self-portraits every single one of them. The process I have developed is a way of coping with everything.”
Cape studied at the National Art School in Sydney after retiring from professional sport – downhill skiing and cycling. Injuries finished off her sporting career and then art saved her. At first she was representational in her approach, then she realised she could cut loose.
“What I learned at art school is that it is all about that thing of letting go of the unconscious,” she says. That allowed her to explore emotions and other themes in an entirely different manner.
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In his director’s foreword to the catalogue for this show, Mike Mitchell says Cape’s work “occupies a compelling position within contemporary Australian painting, extending the tradition of gestural abstraction and landscape while interrogating the relationship between body, psyche and environment”.
“Central to Cape’s practice is the act of painting as an event of extreme physicality in its construction,” he writes. And in its location.
Painting en plein air in far flung places right across the continent, Cape becomes one with the environment and infuses that environment into her artworks. There is ochre, dirt, dust and remnants of mining, including copper dust, in one work.
“In remote locations Cape incorporates natural forces and found materials in the production of her paintings,” says Mitchell.
To say that she bleeds for her art is no exaggeration, considering that the blood that appears on some surfaces is, as I mentioned earlier, her own.
Sounds extreme? Intense? Well, yes. Spending some time with the artist looking over this exhibition, that intensity is evident. Fierce is a word that is over-used now, but it certainly describes her.
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Cape assigns works with mostly poetic names: A Dance of Creatures; Life Wanders Her Wounded Yet Enduring Landscape; Earth Sings to Her Night Sky; They Breathe a Dawning Mist; Murder, Though It Have No Tongue (which sounds a tad Shakespearean), and so it goes.
The earthy tones, the intensity of her gestural marks, fusing of pigment, clay, rust, soil and other materials makes the surfaces like little moonscapes. What the hell do they all mean?
Well, as Mitchell points out: “The works resists any singular narrative or explanation. Instead, they invite viewers into a discourse where meaning is generated through scale, tactility and sensory immersion.”
Nearby, Ann Thomson’s work is an amalgamation of abstraction and figuration.
Thomson’s Dreams Gather, a 2013 work, is a more abstract work while works such as Houseboat and Jetty are more representational.
Brisbane-born Thomon’s career spans more than six decades and, as Mitchell points out, “presented together, Inferno and Evolving create a compelling dialogue between two generations of Australian painters”.
“Thomson’s paintings emerge from decades of experience, memory and intuitive exploration while Cape’s work is rooted in a direct and often elemental encounter with the natural environment,” he says.
Two intriguing shows from two very different artists, who just happen to be pals. Nice.
Sophie Cape’s Inferno and Ann Thomson’s Evolving are on show at Mitchell Fine Art, Fortitude Valley, until November 14.
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