I recently completed a 6-week online course through the National Art School called The Visual Mind and The Imagination. It was an interesting look into the neuroscience and psychology of the imagination. As part of the course, we were to develop a project proposal. I had no idea what my project was going to be, but I had decided that whatever it was I was going to use only the materials I had around me and was not going to buy anything new. This led to me becoming very aware of the materials I had available around the home.

During this time in isolation, cooking has become a big feature of my day - both Indi and I have been cooking up a storm and loving it. We have been cooking a lot on an open fire mainly because it tastes so much better, but also being winter, it is so nice to stand around a fire. I was cleaning out the fire oven one morning when I saw how beautiful the ash was and so I decided whatever direction the project would take, ash would be the main material I would use. I had it in abundance, along with charcoal. Both of these materials have a dualistic meaning for me in 2020. From the terrifying fires this country endured over the summer, where the city rained ash and now in isolation with my family enjoying food but dealing with the psychology of isolation, containment and a global pandemic.

Below is a series of photographs taken of the ash that I was cleaning out of the oven on the day I realised I wanted to use it as a material to draw with.

I started to question the significance of ash:

• Cycle/Recycle - Burning-Destruction-Creation

• Contemplating Time & Death & Birth & Cycles

• Appreciating something to be at its most beautiful just at the point of decay - returning to ash and dust

• Valuing all stages of life & death & ageing

• A deep understanding that this is where we all end and begin and end again in different material forms

• The warmth of fire & food & family vs the terrifying fires that consume the landscape

The concept started with the material. The other materials that I had brought up to Queensland with me were 50 sheets of cold-pressed handmade paper that I had bought in France 10 years ago. I also have some Black 3.0 paint by Stuart Semple, some charcoal and a series of graphite pencils. I knew I wanted to make a drawing with only the materials I had on hand but as for what to draw - I had no idea.

During the 3rd week of the online course, we did what was called a white room visualisation where we were basically put into an alpha brain wave pattern and taken through a visualisation. We were told to walk into a vast monumental white space that was void of any decorative element. We were then asked to see our work in the space. It was so clear for me, it was like I was standing in front of the work completely finished. I saw a large self-portrait made of ash and dust and paint and graphite and charcoal and white talc powder hanging in the centre of the room. The floor of the space was covered in piles of dust and ash that you had to walk through to stand in front of the drawing. The room was white but it was also dark with just a single spotlight on the work. It was so clear to me that it felt like I was already there. I remembered the look in my eyes staring back at me. It was a very specific look. The idea of doing a self-portrait had never occurred to me until this moment. All of a sudden it made perfect sense that when doing a project using only the materials you have around the home, then it would lead to using a subject matter that you also have available during isolation - the self. It seems so logical now.

Memory fades as time passes, and so as a way of capturing what I had seen, I took the following photo as soon as I could after the Zoom class had finished. It was still so clear in my mind how the portrait would look and the way I was looking back from the drawing. I quickly took the photo on my phone in my bathroom as a way of remembering the fading details. The drawing will be loosely based on this photo as it is so similar to what I saw staring back at me in the white room. Drawing with dust and ash on black paint was a lot grittier and a less polished version of this image but the look in the eyes is something I will be trying to capture.

I then took a photo of the ash and played with layering it over the photo just to see what it would look like. It became something like a burial and then rebirth when played in the animation below.

It was funny because when I told the group in the course about what I had seen in the visualisation, I had said that I never do self-portraits. Then, I was looking at my recent work and was like…actually there are a lot of self-portraits. I guess I had never set out to do a self-portrait - they just kind of evolved out the documentation process.

The following images are from the power point presentation I put together for the course when we presented the concept and ideas we had developed.

Although I haven’t started the portrait yet, I’ve started experimenting with the materials. After a time of procrastination, I decided to just start and see what happens. I started painting a thick coat of the Black 3.0 and then pouring ash over the top and then rubbing it back and adding paint and more ash as an image would appear and disappear and reappear in amongst the familiar desert landscape appearing and disappearing and reappearing.

I am enjoying experimenting with this new material and I know that the self-portrait will evolve soon enough. The experiment shown in the above series of images was accidentally left out in the rain so it became a mud pool which I am now drying out and plan on drawing over the top of once it is completely dry. I am curious as to how the familiar desert landscape reappears regardless of what I intend on making.

I have also been playing around with a small project documenting the colours I see during my morning run. I just use my phone and nothing too serious. The other day I made the small little videos below. They haven’t been edited and are very unsteady but the colours were what I was interested in documenting. The interesting part of this video series is that the colours are only this way because of the back burning that is currently happening the national parks here as a preventative measure against wildfires in the summer. Once again smoke and ash infiltrate the work. I am thinking I am going to make a small book of morning colour.

The first video is called Blinking Giraffes because in the distance you can see the large cranes that are at the docklands of the Brisbane River. I remember thinking as a kid that they were giant Giraffes walking along the horizon. Because of the smoke haze, you can faintly see the periodic blinking of light from the giraffes.

I also finished the graphite drawing when I was still in Sydney. For some reason my cat became obsessed with walking all over it and sleeping on it so it now has little cat foot prints added to the background. I am not sure why she kept doing it but the little footprints are very much a part of the drawing now.