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Del Kathryn Barton

b. 1972, Sydney, Australia, lives and works in Sydney

Issues/interests:

females and how they are perceived in various contexts and guises, loss of innocence, personal imaginative worlds

Frame:

subjective — Barton’s paintings are emotionally charged, full of mystery and imaginative interpretation, activating the audience’s emotions

Form: Conceptual framework:

painting artist–artwork–audience Barton appears to be connecting with her own imaginative world and emotions rather than the real world. Barton’s paintings are visually exciting, thus attracting the attention of the viewer, but the meaning is ambiguous. She says: ‘For me to interpret them limits the potential nuances of the work for the audience’.

VO CA BU LA RY ambiguity: collaborate:

light, airy, delicate

gouache:

opaque water-based paint, similar to poster paint

provocative: Surrealism:

ARTWISE CONTEMPORARY 2

to work with others rather than alone; cooperating as a team

ethereal: narrative:

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open to different meanings, causing uncertainty

a story that is being told aiming to stir up, arouse or annoy international art style from the early 1920s influenced by dreams or the subconscious In The last girl, a girl plays with her pets yet these are no ordinary pets, the young deer providing a sense of mystery or a fairytale quality. The girl appears self-assured, cheeky and far from sweet innocence. The decorative, detailed quality of the bird, the large liquid blue eyes of the deer and the delicate pastel, floral pattern of the dress are offset by the unnerving stare of unevenly coloured, watery eyes, pouting scarlet lips, flushed cheeks and unusual treatment of fine scrawled black lines on the skin. The mood is hard to pinpoint — lyrical, peaceful or is it insolent, with undertones of witchcraft or sensuality? Whatever our interpretation, we are drawn to this visually striking work. The rich array of painted surfaces, textures and patterns display Barton’s fine skills and technical expertise in a range of media, including the sensitive washes of watercolour, the flat, even surfaces of gouache and controlled fine ink line. She has an intuitive sense of balance, adding a gentle rhythm to what could have been a static centralised figure. Note the tilt of the bow on the head, which is counterbalanced by the lift of the grey bows on the sleeves. Likewise, the eye is led from the strong purple/blue of the bird down to the ribbon on the girl’s wrist.

The mood is one of mystery, an emotional longing or nostalgia. Yet beneath the exquisite beauty lies a sense of brooding, fear or melancholy, a narrative based on the girl’s inner world.

The elaborately textured, sensitive surfaces and vivid colours of Please . . . don’t . . . stop almost camouflage the emotionally charged, intense images, but not for long. The starkness of the white, flat flesh with its subtle grey shadows on the girls on either end is in startling contrast to the central girl. There is an illustrative, narrative quality, a deliberate anti-realistic, three-dimensional, illusionistic quality that makes them seem to belong to another world. They are psychologically intriguing but also a little scary. Are they nymphs or predators? One can’t help but think of under-age beauty pageants and the resultant loss of innocence (note the sash across the left hand figure). It is certainly provocative.

AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS: Del Kathryn Barton

4.1 The last girl 2006 Acrylic, gouache, watercolour and pen on polyester canvas 120 × 86 cm Courtesy of the artist and Kaliman Gallery

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This is a large work, which is unusual in a style of such intense beautiful decoration of the shallow space. It is definitely high art in its visual pleasure and underlying connotations, appealing to the viewer’s aesthetic sense as well as the intellectual, even though there are obvious references to fashion and popular culture. We also see links to the traditions of Surrealism, particularly the use of symbolic relationships. 4.2 Please . . . don’t . . . stop 2006 Acrylic, gouache, watercolour and pen on polyester canvas 240 × 180 cm Courtesy of the artist and Kaliman Gallery

ARTWISE CONTEMPORARY 2

Innocence, sensuality, anxiety and shock are a strange mix in the painting I have come to tell you that I have freed myself, you too can do the same. The two figures seem quite at ease in a mystical, but somewhat threatening wonderland. An opulent, myriad carpet of decorative patterns, simulated fabric, plant forms, playful bunny rabbits of childhood obsessions and threatening snakes surround the figures. While one figure’s body language and adornment reflects an awareness of glossy magazine fashion, the other has undergone a science-fiction mutation, sprouting three sets of breasts and rabbit ears. The figures seem to be interacting with the animals in some sort of teasing game, as a rabbit climbs in the girl’s hair, eyes peep between legs and the snake’s tongue is extended. The figures are wafer-thin, ethereal and challenging. The figures are a strange mixture of assuredness, provocation, feistiness and fragility. This is a complex painting both in technique and layers of meaning.

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4.3 I have come to tell you that I have freed myself, you too can do the same 2005–06 Synthetic polymer paint, gouache, watercolour and ink on polyester canvas 183 × 302 cm Courtesy of the artist and Kaliman Gallery

Del Kathryn Barton studied her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, from 1990 to 1993. She was a finalist in the Sulmann Prize (1995) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Blake Prize for Religious Art (1995), the Helen Lemprière Travelling Art Scholarship (1996), the Travelling Blake Prize (1996), the Fishers Ghost Prize (1997), the Dobell Drawing Prize (2007) and the Archibald Prize (2007). In 2004, Barton was the inaugural artist selected for the RIPE program, an Art & Australia/ANZ Private Bank Contemporary Art Award. She has been a teacher of drawing at the College of Fine Arts and was named one of the most collectable artists in 2007 by the Australian Art Collector magazine. In 2008, Del Kathryn Barton was the winner of the Archibald Prize.

AR T MA K I NG P R A CT IC E

Del Kathryn Barton depicts essentially female figures — at times they are more like creatures — who have undergone strange manipulations, such as sprouting fur or extra body parts, half fairies, half popular culture ‘bad girls’. But they are recognisably those of the imagination of Del Kathryn Barton, existing in their own unique world and time. Barton admits that as a child she ‘did believe in unicorns and fairies’ and has ‘a desire to reconnect to that space’. Being a parent has allowed her, through her children’s eyes, to appreciate again that sense of innocence. One work contains a dinosaur, a direct link to her four year old’s interest, while A is for . . . (beauty before beauty) is a painting of her daughter at around 18 weeks of age, a time when beauty is natural before it becomes beauty with a capital B, with all its complexities. Many of her works deal with concepts of beauty. The distinctive, large, soulful, beautifully rendered eyes have delicate line work and a superb blending of watercolour, creating a liquid quality suggesting sadness or a propensity to tears. Although they allude to Japanese manga (comics), naïve art, child illustrations and have a certain cuteness, they are unique in their penetrating gaze, making the viewer consider other deeper levels of meaning. The graphic figures are graceful, generally catwalk-model thin, yet the large heads and undeveloped curves suggest a young teen rather than a woman. Barton is interested in the shallowness of fashion, the idea of the pose, the way an individual’s personality is negated by the styling process and the fantasy realm of makeup (in Barton’s paintings it is often running, suggesting an unravelling rather than perfection). Barton also includes fashion accessories, such as kneehigh boots, bows, scarfs, neck-chokers and lingerie, at times suggesting erotic fantasies rather than feminine ideals of beauty. Fashion concerns are also evident in such works where she depicts a live crocodile rather than a crocodile-skin handbag or shoes, or comments on wearing fur. She has also collaborated with the fashion industry, designing material for the fashion label Romance Was Born for their Spring/Summer 07/08 collection called ‘Weird Science’. Barton’s recent soft sculptural works are an extension of her interest in fashion and in historical women’s craft activities, such as quilting and embroidery. These sculptures, such as Bird 2007, demonstrate her enjoyment with this medium, both in the way fabric can be manipulated and also as a surface to embellish (as with rows of buttons), a direct link to her detailed painted surfaces. The ambiguity of Barton’s figures (the slight blurring of gender as well as age, as childhood braids conflict with bold makeup) and the

AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS: Del Kathryn Barton

B IO G R AP HY

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suggestive sensuality create an allure for the audience, a sense of expectation as well as apprehension. With her titles she is ‘interested in creating a potential reading of the work’ but at the same time creating ‘a level of ambiguity that I think the work has as well’. Another distinctive feature is the way Barton depicts the contour of the body with delicate if somewhat tenuous line, defining an area on the negative white body or creating tension as a network of faint lines. These can suggest shadow areas and anatomical definition, particularly on hands and facial features. The fullness of the lips and eyes contrast with the flatness of the body. The exquisite textural patterning adds to the visual confusion yet also reinforces the artist’s unique approach to the painted surface. The first stage in Del Kathryn Barton’s painting process, after priming and sanding down the canvas surface, is to draw directly onto the canvas with an architectural pen, an intense moment as these lines cannot be altered. Her lines create an elusive quality and a hint of anguish. She uses no preliminary drawings, although she may have at her feet some reference images — say of the position of a hand — so that it is instinctual and immediate, drawing on her energy. One must remember that her first exhibitions were drawings and she has recently returned to this medium. Del Kathryn Barton explains this stage as ‘the vulnerability and anxiety of the mark making which you can only know intuitively’. Next in the process is organising her composition and slowly building up her surface areas, often in an almost obsessive way, with minute detail. This is the time-consuming element, with one painting taking up to six months to produce. This is in part due to her process but also to the large scale in which she works, which contributes to the sense of involvement the viewer experiences.

ARTWISE CONTEMPORARY 2

A R T I S T ’ S S T AT E M E N T S

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Reference 4.1

[Barton’s use of detailed surfaces is] … something about surface subterfuge, that the anxiety sits beneath the surface — how we lie with the surfaces of our bodies . . . which in turn relates to the children who are less able to do this I think . . . all my work connects to aspects of the self, of myself that I am most uncomfortable with. Art Collector, Issue 35, January–March 2006, p. 90

Reference 4.2

I look at a lot of fashion to see the contrary ways society is celebrating and defining female beauty. Art Collector, Issue 39, January–March 2007, p. 99

Reference 4.3

A lot of my work is self referential . . . layers of self and what can emerge over time . . . it doesn’t all have to fit together . . . you just have to be moved . . . [The animals] encapsulate an emotional quality . . . the animals do have cultural symbolism, such as a bambi is considered the custodian of innocence . . . [C]reating a context to view the world differently — by what feels real to me . . . Quotes from an artist talk at Focus Fest, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2007

CRITICAL REVIEWS Reference 4.4

[Barton’s] obsessively detailed figures of contorted animals and patterned faces possess a dreamlike quality. She captures a sensuous desire and a sense of pending violence . . . Natalie King, catalogue for the exhibition Octopus 4: More Real Than Life, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art

Reference 4.5

Sweet, sassy and very sexy, the girls in Del Kathryn Barton’s paintings play with their pets in a way that is as other-worldly as it is earthy. They pout, they sneer, they leer. You can’t ignore them. But you don’t know how to handle them. Some have the haughty, regal expressions of grand dames who have been outraged by an obscure social insult. In others, the vixen arrogance seems about to break like a wave into a petulant infantile cry. A few stare past you from a somnambulant vacuum, their heavy-lidded almond eyes askew or clouded over . . . Edward Colless, ‘Heavy petting’, in Art Collector, Issue 38, December 2006, pp. 126, 129

Reference 4.6

[The female portraits’] cherub features recall the cutesy, feminine graphic style of cartoon Strawberry Shortcake. But, curiously, the age of Barton’s girls is hard to pick, particularly since the catwalk has reclaimed prissy attire such as stripy socks, pinafores and puffy sleeves. For example, Girl #13 reveals a sassy young cowgirl in a green fringed shirt, her Pippy Longstocking plaits curling beneath a white hat. She seems suspended between youthful naivety and cuttingedge cool. Adding another twist to portraiture, the Sydney artist makes plants and animals key players in her paintings. Her girls are frequently canoodling with animals and clutching native Australian flowers. These flora and fauna look as though they’ve been sampled straight from the pages of a botanist’s journal. However, the scale of the imagery has been warped, giving the scenes a surreal Alice in Wonderland quality.

Reference 4.7

Del Kathryn Barton’s suite of obsessively detailed portraits responds to the basic human impulse to look at faces and imagine the character behind them. What do these childlike girls reveal with their overblown faces and conceal with their innocent stare? Adorned and embellished with flourishes, tiny dots and patterns, these images display a compulsive beauty in their infinite detail. With technical dexterity, Barton’s labour of markings in pencil, acrylic and gouache derive from a foundation in drawing. In doing so, she skilfully integrates disparate working methods with infinitesimal precision. Carefully crafted strokes consume the picture plane as do the sitters who gaze beguilingly. Here subjectivity and representation are taken to dizzy extremes and disconcerting intensity. Barton’s unique sense of line and form deploy female faces as a repository of human thoughts, fantasies and emotions. Natalie King, ‘Compulsive beauty’, catalogue review for Karen Woodbury Gallery, August 2005

AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS: Del Kathryn Barton

Dominique Angeloro, ‘All things nice’, review of Girl exhibition, in Sydney Morning Herald, Metro, 19–25 November 2004, p. 26

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MAK I NG ART Create an artwork involving the figure with an emphasis on delicate, decorative surfaces that you research from your own home or your imagination. You may consider drawing your figure, scanning it into the computer and using digital means to create areas of pattern. Your pattern may cover areas of the body like a tattoo. Also consider creating a soft sculpture. Research the work of Gustav Klimt and Ah Xian to inspire you.

SHO R T RE S P ON S E QU E S T IO N

ESS AY T OP IC S

After examining the critical reviews on page 23, access more examples of Del Kathryn Barton’s images at the Karen Woodbury Gallery (log in to www.jacplus.com.au and locate the weblinks for this chapter). Choose an image and write your own personal response to one of her paintings.

eBook plus Weblink: Karen Woodbury Gallery

Artmaking practice 1. Examine the treatment of the figure and mention any similarities in the works of Del Kathryn Barton, Egon Schiele and Louise Bourgeois. Subjective frame 2. Del Kathryn Barton delves into an imaginary world, enticing the viewer to become involved with his or her own personal feelings. Discuss her work and that of two other ‘imaginative, emotive’ artists. Conceptual framework (artist–world) Evaluate the work of at least two artists, including Del Kathryn Barton, who investigate the realm of human and non-human exchanges/interactions. (Suggestions: Lisa Roet (page 73), Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo.)

SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE Describe your response to the artwork She appeared as a lover might 2005.

Student straight away interprets the work, suggests meaning and refers to techniques used.

ARTWISE CONTEMPORARY 2

analysis, not just a description

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emotive language used to convey response and opinion

Margaret Chan, Year 11 student

This artwork of Barton’s is slightly different to her other artworks. It explores sexuality through the vibrant colours and vivid patterns. Looking close up, there is a lot of detail applied in all areas of the artwork. Influences of Egon Schiele are evident in this painting as it is very erotic and has an ambiguous figure. The features of the figure are unusual — massive ears, very dark eyes and no hair. The line work on the figure’s head creates an illusion suggesting hair. The eyes seem to be looking directly at the audience — connecting with them as the lips are bright red and very seductive. The cat on the left seems very mysterious due to the dark colours on the facial area. The colour red is very consistent throughout this artwork as it is the colour of love, lust, desire and sexuality — all evident in the position of the figure and the title of the artwork. The way the hand is fiddling with the string also demonstrates seduction. The whiteness of the lower hands and arms contrasting with the vibrant background communicates the remaining innocence the character has.