19th October 2011
What Is It? (TONAL REALIST PAINTING EXPLAINED)

As a teacher and exponent of tonal oil painting a question that I am constantly asked it ‘What is tonal painting?’
The term is a difficult one to define but I will attempt to in an understandable manner.
No matter what I write it will always draw an argument but all that I can say is that this is the way that I was taught to paint and it forms the basis of my painting and teaching work.

It is a fact that all realist oil painters use tonal values as a key factor in their work.

In reality there are three dimensions, height, width and depth.

A realist oil painter, painting from life is faced with representing these three dimensions on a two dimensional surface using only tones shapes and colours.
The representation of height and width on a canvas is quite easy. Depth is another matter.
Over the years I have heard of many methods employed by painters to represent depth or the third dimension and they invariably involve some form of contrivance such as the variation of focus. I find this to be most unsatisfactory and in fact a move away from reality rather than towards it.
If one needs proof of this one needs only to look at the work of some of the great still life painters such as Henri Fantin Latour (www.henri-fantin-latour.org) or even Caravaggio.
Max Meldrum posited that the major component used by the painter to represent depth is tone.
I have written elsewhere about the subject of contrivance in realist painting and will probably do so again.

I like to say that tone is the third dimension.

When Meldrum returned from his first sojourn in France he appears to have been profoundly affected by the paintings of the likes of Rembrandt and Velasquez. After having studied at the Gallery School in Melbourne with its emphasis on drawing and the use of drawing in the preparation of a painting I think he realized that this method was cumbersome and unnecessary.
He saw in the works of these painters what he considered to be a better way of painting and set about developing a method of articulating it to others.

If we consider what drawing is we may gain a better understanding of tonal painting. Most people regard drawing basically as the use of outlines to create an image.
The craft of drawing is a wonderful skill to develop as evidenced by the drawings of such artists as Leonardo da Vinci and John Singer Sargent and whilst they represent a form of reality, in truth outlines do not exist. One will notice that in Sargents drawings he also uses tone to great advantage. Meldrum is supposed to have said that there are no lines in nature and for the realist painter this should be obvious.

If we suppose this to be true then the oil painter working from life has only a set of planes to observe and repeat on his canvas and they need to relate correctly to each other in tone, form or shape and colour.
Of these three elements the least important is colour, hence if we produce a painting in which the elements of tone and form relate correctly it will be perfectly readable like a monochrome film or photograph.

As I see it the degree of importance between tone and form in a picture is a close run thing but for Meldrum form was easy. After all he had won the drawing prize at the Gallery School in his first year as a student but his discovery of the key importance of tonal relativity was to govern the rest of his painting and teaching life.
This shows to me that the practice of drawing is important to the painter to help develop the skills in measuring and relating shapes but one must bear in mind that line drawing has no place in tonal realist painting.

Working on his developing theories Meldrum formulated a method of mixing puddles of paint on the palette and measuring accurately by use of the eye, the relative differences of tone that he saw within the subject.

Hence the term tonal painting

As Alan Martin always said “Oil painting is easy. All you have to do is mix up the right tone, in the right colour, put it on in the right place and control the edges.”


Don James




As I approach the age of 70 I find that I appear to be one of the only painters who wholeheartedly embraces the teachings of Max Meldrum, that crusty aggressive promoter of the methods he developed in the late 19th, early 20th century in Australia and France. This concerns me in a couple of ways. Not just the ‘everybody is crazy except me and thee and I am concerned about thee’ problem, but also that I truly believe that a really effective way of teaching the art of realist oil painting may be lost or merely consigned to the pages of books, becoming a mere curiosity to be discussed by historians and theorists.

Generations come and go with worrying speed and I belong to the last which had direct contact with those who learned at the feet of the master.
During his lifetime Meldrum was already a curiosity within the art world, and two decades before he died he was considered old fashioned. Of course his political and social views, which he was not afraid to publicly espouse, were radical in his day and he alienated many in the community with his support of the likes of Egon Kitsch, a Czechoslovakian communist who was subject to an exclusion order by the Australian Government in 1934. The order was finally lifted after a court challenge and it was found that Scots Gaelic was not a suitable European language for a dictation test.

A lifelong atheist, a creed that he is said to have ‘embraced with a Calvinistic zeal, Meldrum characterized himself as a 4th generation free thinker although many thought that his conservative ideas about art were somewhat restrictive.

Politics is a difficult subject to discuss, but in the area of art and painting in particular, I believe that Meldrum was seriously misunderstood. His magnum opus, “The Science of Appearances” appears to be dry an humourless and is certainly written in language which seems unfamiliar to us today, it is not a book to casually read but a handbook filled with the most valuable advice for the serious student of oil painting. My first readings of a copy, borrowed from the local library, ultimately concentrated on the lesson notes, small statements or quotes on many of the pages which to me, even today, are the essence of the book. The balance of the book is like a manual for the painter, to be used as a reference resource from time to time.

Mention of these lesson notes brings me to Alan Martin, my most direct connection to Max Meldrum. Alan started as a student of painting with Meldrum in 1938 at the age of fifteen, and remained with him for the next 15 years. According to Alan, on meeting his teacher for the first time and expressing his desire to be a painter, Meldrum told him that needed to have a job to support him in his studies and early years, and arranged for Alan to work with John Heath a Melbourne dentist, as a dental mechanic. This position not only enabled him to attend classes but also gave him the skills for one of his enduring sidelines, that of mould making and casting. Some of the moulds made by Alan and copies of others are still in use in the making of plaster casts for the use of artists and students. Alan also told me that he had written down comments made by Meldrum during the classes and that these became to basis of the lesson notes in “The Science of Appearances”. He studied design at the Working Men’s College, now RMIT University, and later with Sir William Dargie at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. I guess that it was here that he met Shirley Bourne, who was William Dargie’s student and ultimately his studio assistant, and they remained friends until Alan’s untimely death at the age of 65 years. Both of these painters were my teachers, Shirley from 1972 to 1980 and Alan in the early 1980’s.
I cannot remember being enamoured of art as a child but quite early I developed an interest in the way that things looked. This interest led me to choose Architecture as a course of study and I attended RMIT in 1962. My dislike and inabilities in the areas of mathematics and physics, coupled with my discovery of painting via graphic arts subjects, put paid to a career in architecture. My favourite class was with a sometimes ‘well refreshed’ lecturer named Ron Centre. This entailed some drawing from life and the use of mixed media and Ron turned me on to the Cubist Movement, especially the work of Georges Braque. For the next decade I dabbled at home, read books and in 1972 I wound up in Shirley Bourne’s oil painting classes at the Victorian Artists’ Society. This was my first experience of so called ‘tonal’ painting and after a few initial doubts, I was hooked.
At this time, 1972, there were few of Meldrum’s generation around although I did not meet many of them. William ‘Jock’ Frater was one as he was still the president of the Vic Arts at the time and was often to be seen with his shock of white hair stalking the galleries. Although he had been an exhibiting member of the Belmont Group which formed around Meldrum, he had moved on to embrace Post Modernism and the likes of Cezanne and Van Gogh. By this stage he could not be said to be an admirer of Meldrum. Also around this time a group of young painters had formed under the guidance of Alan Martin. They called themselves The Seven Painters and one, Angela Abbott, had been a student with me at Shirley Bourne’s classes.
Shirley spoke often of Alan Martin with great affection. They had painted each other for the Archibald Prize and Shirley shared with Alan’s wife Lesly, a passion for puzzles and brainteasers.
Although they were good friends, Alan and Shirley had many different ideas about art and definitely about politics. I think much of it came from their relationship to Meldrum, as whilst Alan worshipped him, to mention the ‘M’ word in Shirley’s hearing was to incur the wrath.
Alan of course had direct contact with Meldrum over many years, first as a student and then as a friend. Alan showed a deep antagonism towards Sir William Dargie, Shirley’s mentor even though they came from the same stable, so to speak. Dargie was first and foremost a successful painter of the rich and famous of Australia as well as painting Queen Elizabeth the 2nd and Prince Philip. He studied under Archibald Colquhoun who in turn was a student of Meldrum. Shirley was also a very successful portrait painter painting many local dignitaries as well as in the U.K. Alan, on the other hand, although painting a number of great portraits both commissioned and otherwise, is probably best known for his landscapes and still life work, as well as his teaching.
To me both were a great and good influence on me, as a painter and a person.
Shirley was ever the perfectionist. ‘A painting is only as good as its worst part Dearie’. After a scrub in, one could not approach the canvas until all of the necessary tones were mixed and checked.
Alan, whilst stressing the need for tonal accuracy took a far more relaxed approach, and of course there was always the sainted Lesly in the background boiling the kettle, cutting up the fruitcake and organizing this and the next run of classes.
Shirley never demonstrated to her students, in fact she rarely would touch a student’s canvas except to ‘lose’ a few edges with her thumb, but Alan would take up the brush at the drop of a hat whether to paint a demonstration landscape or to show the individual student a particular technique.
Whilst I can say nothing against Shirley’s methods, I think that witnessing her painting of a demonstration portrait of my wife in 1976 crystallized much of what she had taught me in the previous 4 years.

During my early painting years I received great assistance and advice from many painters. Within the circles that I have inhabited most people are very generous. An instance of this was my first meeting with Alan Martin.
This occurred after Shirley, from whom I was learning at night, suggested that I try landscape painting and so I ventured out and found Wingrove Park at Eltham. As it turned out this was an old haunt of Meldrum’s and many of his iconic ‘Gum Tree’ paintings were painted there. This particular day I arrived, unpacked my gear and walked into the park. I had noticed a group of women gathered in the centre of the park and I decided to keep to myself and turned towards the creek when I woman called to me from a picnic table and I approached her. She was the fabled Lesly Martin, Alan’s wife and she was tending a gas heated urn and laying out her famous fruit cake for the student’s morning tea. She had noticed that I was carrying an easel and when she found that I was a student of Shirley’s told me to go and watch Alan as he was painting a demonstration. I tentatively wandered across the park and stood on the outside of a circle of admiring women watching this surprisingly small man with a bushy black beard as he painted an talked explaining about tonal values and relationships.
He seemed to finish the picture in no time at all and, on seeing me asked if I wished to join them for the day, which I did and enjoyed both the teaching which Alan generously provided and the morning and afternoon tea. A confirmed fan of both Lesly and Alan I ultimately joined his portrait workshops at both Montsalvat and his Park Road studio for several years.
My memories of the years studying with both Shirley and Alan are mostly happy ones and certainly these years were most productive. I still carry with me the memory of their mostly gentle but always generous ministrations and attempt to convey these feelings to my own students.

I have a vivid recollection of a very early sojourn into landscape painting at Kangaroo Ground. Being somewhat inexperienced I attempted to find a spot away from prying eyes and I drove into the driveway of the local Country Fire Authority station along the road to St Andrews and selected what I thought to be an interesting subject. Having set up my easel and canvas and prepared my palette I was about to put brush to canvas when a small red van swung into the drive behind me. Out jumped a woman with flaming red hair and I recognized her as a member of the Seven Painters group that I mentioned previously. Knowing her brilliant work I was rather pleased that I had not placed any marks down at that point that I would be ashamed of and without introduction she asked what I was about to paint. With some confidence I pointed down the valley at the windmill and dam with the homestead close by and further up the hill the stand of gum trees and the track and main road. I also liked the
mountains in the distance and the wonderful clouds in the sky.
She stood and looked for a moment and said, ‘Too complicated for me’, turned on her heel and left.
It was a mark of my inexperience that I stayed and tried to paint the same subject and failed dismally but I immediately recognized what Alan Martin was saying when in the first lesson he outlined ‘the kiss principle’ or ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’.

A funeral can concentrate the mind wonderfully.

I have great regret that I did not question my ancestors more closely about their early experiences. Having been lucky enough to have three Grandparents until I was into my twenties I had at my disposal a treasury of family history which I ignored and my ignorance has forced me to search the records online for snippets of information that were mine for the asking. Of course this is a common fault of youth, the belief that we will always be here.
The same applies to my ancestors in the world of painting. Thankfully there are still a couple of them around and I did manage to garner some history from my teachers, in particular Alan and Lesly Martin.
My association with Montsalvat Artists’ Colony has and continues to be a great resource. On Wednesday last I attended the funeral of Matcham Skipper, one of the original residents of Montsalvat. It was a wonderful celebration of his life and a confirmation for me of the correctness of the ideals framed by Justus Jorgensen all those years ago.

The following information is taken from the excellent book by Peter and John Perry, Max Meldrum and Associates, Their Art, Lives and Influences.
Jorgensen was born in 1893 in Victoria. His father was a Norwegian Sea captain and became articled as an architect in 1907. From 1915 to 1917 he studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. After hearing a public lecture by Max Meldrum he left the gallery school and joined Meldrum’s class later becoming an assistant in Meldrum’s studio.
He travelled to Europe in 1924 with A.D.Colquhuon and met Colin Colahan in Paris. He had two paintings accepted for the Paris Salon and received favourable comment from the critics.

In 1935 we find Jorgensen establishing the now famous artists’ colony Montsalvat at Eltham an outer suburb of Melbourne, putting his architectural and building skills into practice. A number of the buildings in the five hectare block are reminiscent of a French provincial village and constructed in stone and pise’-de-terre using mostly re-cycled materials.
It is here that Matcham Skipper, already a follower of Jorgensen finds his home of the next 77 years. He once told me of his early years as a painting at student in Jorgensen’s Melbourne studio. It sounded to me that his experiences were much like those of students or apprentice artists in the 16th and 17th centuries, starting as a general ‘dog’s-body’ making the tea, sweeping the studio and graduating slowly to preparation of painting surfaces and finally to the easel.
Although Matcham became an extremely competent painter this art form was not to be his first love, as he became a sculptor and silversmith inventing methods of casting along the way. One could say that he was a true artist in the best sense of the word. Imagine a very active and inquisitive 13 year old being let loose on five hectares of bush-land and helping Jorgensen and a group of artists and artisans build a village from the ground up.
The sourcing and use of recycled materials becomes a way of life.
My first encounter with Matcham was around 1983 when I visited Montsalvat to see if I could bring a group of students to paint there as a summer school.
I paid my entry fee to Lesley Sinclair and walked towards the Great Hall on a fine spring morning and as I passed Matcham’s house I spotted him and a couple of friends relaxing on the lawn. I said good morning to them and Matcham with his trademark grin asked me what I was doing.
When I told him that I was a painter and wanted to bring students to Montsalvat to paint his mood changed from on of amused aggression to genuine interest. Asking of my painting origins and other details he outlined that fact that he had learned painting from Jorgensen but that he had taken up sculpture and enjoyed the extra challenge of working in three dimensions, a theme that he constantly reiterated on his visits to the various studios that I occupied from the early 1990’s. “Oh you painters have it too bloody easy.”
He was a great resource. Even if his take on history was a little romantic that only made his dissertations more interesting.
At the time of this first meeting he was obviously in conflict with his nephew Sigmund Jorgensen who was trying as always to keep the place viable and said that he was pleased that I wasn’t somebody looking to turn the place into a circus where the artists would have to strip naked and run around with peacock feathers stuck up their backsides. Matcham was not backward in expressing his opinions forcibly.

In the early 1990’s I was contacted by David Moore, a painter who had belonged to the previously mentioned Seven Painters group with the view of sharing a studio in Brunswick. Regrettably I was not able to take up his offer at the time but in 1992 he rang again with the view to sharing the ‘Boat Studio’ at Montsalvat. At the time my home studio was not available to me as we were having alterations done to the house, including a new studio so I jumped at the chance to share this wonderful space which had been Justus Jorgensen’s last studio and living space before he died in 1975.
I had also attended Alan Martin’s portrait painting workshops there during the 1980’s and so was familiar with the space. I would rank the atmoshere of this studio with the studios of the Victorian Artists’ Society’s and the old National Gallery School.
Of course as with almost all painting spaces it had its shortcomings but it was a unique space with its rammed earth floor, low sloping corrugated iron roof and heavy beams. The centerpiece was a great fire place and chimney at one end which now make up part of the Barn Gallery. Justus’ four poster bed stood on one side not far from his bluestone shower, cold water only and along both long walls was a veritable treasure trove of books, ceramics and file cases full of drawings and such. Lighting was by means of bare electric light bulbs and the area was part of a large building built mainly of timber and brick. The impressive timber doors on the central section which had been built to house a wooden hulled boat, about 18 meters in length had been salvaged from Wilson Hall at Melbourne University after a disastrous fire.
What this studio lacked in comfort it more than made up with atmosphere.
I had been in impressive studios before including the marvelous rooms at the old National Gallery School in Melbourne during the early 1960’s but this room was definitely one of my favourites.

Here I must make mention of another purpose built studio, that of Alan Martin in which i worked for a number of years from the onset of Alan's last illness until I moved to Montsalvat. I taught there for a time taking his portrait class when he fell ill and finally sharing the studio with John Wakefield and Angela Abbott where we painted from the figure doing life work and portraits.
The room was very large with a soaring roof and 'sawtooth' windows facing south so the light was spectacular. There was also a 500watt lamp mounted on a flagpole for night work. The walls were lined with hessian and covered with paintings by Alan and a few Meldrums. Very inspirational. It was heated with a "pot belly' stove in which Lesly quite often burned gum leaves and wood imparting a complex scent when combined with the linseed oil, paint and gum turpentine, the latter being one of the scents that i clearly remember from the National Gallery and Victorian Artists' Society studios where I took lessons for most of the 1970's.
Alan's piano was in the upper level as well as his incredible collection of audio tapes of both jazz and classical music. He had organised these into a logical order, catalogued at to composer and performer.
To work in this studio late at night to the strains of J.S.Bach played by Andres Segovia was a great experience for me.
The major difference between the VAS and other studios mentioned was that a student was required to paint the same subject there whereas in the others each student had their own subject except during figure and portrait work. This allowed students to paint 'sight size' rather than having to proportionally measure.
If I had a wish it would be to work in Justus Jorgensen's original studio located at the rear of the Great Hall at Montsalvat. This stone building with its high ceiling and wonderful south light is my idea of heaven and I often go there and sit, soak up the atmosphere and dream.

23rd April 2011
It is Good Friday today and I am in the studio listening to some of my favourite music, nothing to complex. A bit of Neil Young, some Lynryd Skynrd and Eric Clapton after varnishing a couple of pictures that I have completed recently. Currently I am not teaching, it being a term break which gives me time to attend medical appointments and ‘do my own thing’.
Autumn is a beautiful time in Melbourne. The trees colour up and drop their leaves. The weather is usually calm and fine with mild temperatures although this year we have been having record rainfall. During this break I have spent a good deal of time at Montsalvat painting in the studio and doing some necessary maintenance on some of our easels which we purchased in 1996 after losing all of our equipment in the fire which engulfed the Barn and Justus Jorgensen’s previously mentioned Boat Studio which we were using at the time. The fire was deliberately lit after an unsuccessful attempt to set fire to the Great Hall. Everything in the studio was lost. Sixty years or more of accumulated treasures including books, paintings, Justus’s four-poster bed and accompanying drapes, still life equipment, plaster casts, easels and tables.
Next door to the studio was a massive workshop with the original overhead pulleys and shafts for a central belt-driven machinery drive system and all of the tools and benching required for the maintenance and restoration which was and is still required on a set of buildings like Montsalvat.
Then barn also housed a wooden hulled boat which had apparently been bought by Justus after the Second World War for restoration and ultimately for use as a floating studio. Although I never measured the boat the building into which it neatly fitted was, I guess around 15-20m long and when one entered the workshop the deck appeared to be around 3-4m above the ground.
It had been used as storage for excess furniture including such esoteric items as a full set of the Stations of the Cross.
Some time before the fire many of these items had been shifted into our studio as the boat was finally undergoing restoration with the view to launching it. The work was almost complete by the time of the fire and when I visited on the day after the fire to view the smouldering damage, all that was left of it were the metal tanks, the charred engine, drive shaft and the bronze propeller which had melted into some eerie abstract sculpture. The keel timber was still burning but little else was recognizable.
From the studio we managed to salvage a charred enamel jug and a couple of blackened ginger jars.
The only part of the building that was left was ironically the great fireplace and chimney which was in the studio and today forms part of the Barn Gallery.
Since that terrible day we have had to move studios three times but have been settled for the last few years in the White Cottage Studio which was for many years the home and studio of longtime Montsalvat resident Lesley Sinclair.
The house was completely restored or almost rebuilt but remains a timber cottage with lath and plaster walls. The original studio is basically intact with the addition of an extra room which was I think a sitting room when Lesley was alive. We are lucky as well to have the use of a bathroom and a kitchen
And although the working space is relatively small, it retains a real atmosphere which is inspirational to me and to the students who attend my classes.
A photo of Lesley hangs above the fireplace and the connection with the original members of the ‘Montsalvat family’ makes not only this studio but the whole property a very special place to be and to be part of.
I consider myself very fortunate to have been a part of this colony for so long and hope top remain there for many years to come.

8th May 2011

LOVE, ART, FOOD, ARCHITECTURE AND OTHER IMPORTANT THINGS.

CONTEXT-The great tonal painter and teacher Ron Crawford one said to me “ Paintings always look best hanging amongst their friends” after I had complimented him on a solo exhibition at the Victorian Artists’ Society Galleries.
What I took him to mean was that context was important in the viewing of paintings as it is in many other things in life.
In the 1970’s I remember an Archibald Prize show that I attended, the first and last, in which an awful, messy painting had won the prize and to my eye the best painting was a relatively small work by Sir William Dargie portraying a man in a grey suit. I guessed that this was a commissioned work for a business or for the sitter but of course it was from life and beautifully painted.
One may say to me, a descendant in painting terms of Sir William that of course it would be my favourite and they would be right but the painting was completely lost among the highly coloured monster paintings of various styles from photo realist to unclassifiable mess. Here Ron’s words ring true but we now have to deal with another subject and that is taste.

TASTE- in art is a subject which is often in my mind. As a painter I suppose that every time I paint a picture I am exercising my own artistic taste buds.
Some painters try to second-guess the taste of the art buying public when they paint or paint to the market. An admirable thing to do but something that I haven’t tried.
Once, Many years ago I was selling reasonably well at a country gallery both in the gallery and from commission work and the owner said to me “why don’t you paint a few rusty sheds with broken wagon wheels in shades of brown?”
This was a very popular genre at the time and I had to tell that I didn’t know how to and even if I did, I didn’t want to.
I have no Idea where this need to be artistically independent sprang from. My parents were both business people relying on the public for patronage living the maxim that the customer is always right but their influence in this matter had no effect on me.
It should be apparent from my work that I am not a rebel but I love the idea of crafting a picture using the elements that are available to me in my chosen medium and achieving a level of satisfaction. Of course I am thrilled when someone chooses to buy a painting.
I suppose that I am exercising my taste when I paint and the buyer is doing the same when they make a purchase. Occasionally a nice conjunction!

This morning I drove through one of the leafy eastern suburbs in Melbourne.
I was shocked at the amount of new houses being constructed in this well settled suburb which to my mind had mostly substantial house sitting among established gardens. A pleasant place to live no longer I am afraid.
The area that I saw was now replete with what I can only describe as monstrosities in brown brick and render with Roman columns supporting verandas over doorways that would suit a medieval castle. Of course most had mansard rooves with no eaves therefore requiring air conditioning.
Many of them are of exactly the same design and may well be being built on spec by a developer but I guess that if this is the case the developer is guessing the taste of the house buying public.
All that I can say is that apart from their obvious unsuitability for our climate, they are not to my taste and whilst some of the older houses are still in place, they are out of context.

Food, one of my other passions can also be discussed in this paper both from the point of view of taste and context.
I remember having a meal at a very fashionable restaurant some years ago and on the menu was an entrée of scallops and liquorice. On first reading I felt that this dish failed my test on both counts. I thought that the two ingredients together would not taste nice and as one was a shellfish and the other a confection, probably failed the context test
How wrong I was. I stepped outside my comfort zone and had it. It was delicious and I would not hesitate in having it again.

I don’t know where context comes into love but I feel that taste certainly does.
How does one explain physical attraction? I won’t even try but this morning I read an article in the Age, one of three major daily newspapers in Melbourne
about researchers showing people works of art whilst monitoring blood flow to the brain with using an MRI scanner.
They found that seeing certain great works of art also stimulated the areas of the brain that were stimulated by seeing a loved one. Of course these areas may also be similarly affected by seeing a pet dog but the connection between attraction to a loved one and certain paintings probably goes largely to taste.
Why are we attracted to another human being? We have been told that it has a genetic component to do with preservation of the species which is logical,
but our taste in this area is quite not the same as some of our friends or family members.
I would have to say that I have never had that terrible-wonderful feeling in the pit of my stomach that means love whilst viewing a painting but I can recall a similar feeling when looking at the original of a Rembrandt Self Portrait as a Young Man painted in 1628 both at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and more particularly in Melbourne more recently when it was on loan as part of a larger show of European Masters. Like with true love, in the intervening thirty years I had remained true.



Like Old Times

Recently I was asked to contribute to a fund raising event for the Victorian Artists’ Society, an organisation that has been close to my heart for some 30 years as readers of this blog will be aware.
It is a yearly event in which I have taken part a couple of times before and takes the form of a number of portrait demonstrations over a weekend at the society’s premises in Melbourne. It is called People Painting People and takes the form of five prominent people, usually from business or the arts, each sitting for four painters on each of the two days.
Two of these sessions take place in each of the two upstairs galleries and one was staged this year, in the society’s historic studio. I was fortunate enough to be working in the studio with three of my fellow members painting a gentleman who had been the veterinary surgeon at Melbourne’s famous Flemington Racecourse where he had attended to sixteen Melbourne Cup winners.
Whilst I find doing any such demonstrations stressful to say the least, they can be made easier if the sitter is cooperative and ‘gets into the spirit’ of the occasion, as this gentleman did.
Due to some bouts of illness in the last few years I have not demonstrated for some time and it had been more than twenty years since I had worked in the studio in which I had spent the formative years of my painting life under the gentle care of Ms Shirley Bourne has not changed. It even smells like it used to with that heady mix of linseed oil, gum turpentine and oil paint. Of course this time there were many pairs of beady eyes keeping watch as it is a public event and, I am told that several hundred people attended over the two days.
What is most interesting to me about this room is that it once formed part of the original Victorian Artists’ Society building which was constructed in 1873.
The thought that the original members of the society as well as the likes of Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and Charles Conder as well as the many great artist members since had used these rooms has always filled me with awe and it was with pride that as a councillor I showed the studio to the Deputy Governor of Victoria, Lady Southey during a visit and she commented on the historical importance of the place.
I remember reading Lloyd Rees’s autobiography Peaks and Valleys some years ago and his description of what could be called the anglo-australian’s dreaming as it compares with the Australian aboriginal’s dreaming.
He hypothesised that ours was not here in this country but in Europe and more particularly Britain.
My feeling is that he was right but that places like the studio in question are going a long way to transferring our dreaming to this country.
Don James 2nd August 2011.





‘Even Richard Nixon Has Got Soul’ (Campaigner by Neil Young)

Scene: Driving from Lakes Entrance to Merimbula via the Snowy River Valley.
I start to consider what I think is wrong with much of painting today.

Last night my wife and I watched an excellent ABC documentary entitled Mrs Carey’s Concert, about a spectacular musical concert presented by the Methodist Ladies’ College in Sydney at the magnificent Sydney Opera House.
I am old enough to remember clearly the controversy during the construction of this great building and the early departure of its architect the Dane Jan Utzon. It was always going to be a difficult build as most of the ideas were still in Utzon’s head rather than on paper at the commencement and the client was a very conservative state government more used to the building of public toilets and office blocks at the time, it being the early 1960’s.
We had gone to Sydney by ship in 1966 and it had docked at Circular Quay and provided us with an uninterrupted view of the work in progress. The great component parts of the shell structures that form the roof were being hauled into place and even then it was obvious that this was to be one of the world’s great buildings.
It was an experimental building and many of the processes were being worked out as it took shape but finally it became to much and the
conservative government and the inspired architect parted ways with Utzon never to return.
Whether the building would have been better if this had not happened exercises the minds of architects to this day but I have often thought that without Utzon to guide the rest of the work, mainly on the interior that the Opera House may lack some quality. The interior has had to be heavily modified in the intervening years to improve its acoustics. But without its creator maybe its soul has been diminished.
Which brings me to painting, a subject about which I know more than I do about architecture.
I spend a great deal of time looking at what hangs on the walls of galleries, public buildings, private homes and at the moment holiday apartments because we are travelling. As I sit typing this in an apartment in Merimbula on the Sapphire Coast of New South Wales I have two views of the sea.
One straight ahead over the oyster beds towards the Pacific Ocean albeit with a series of rather ordinary apartments facing the other side of the bay but if I turn my head to the left I have a view of crashing emerald waves on to reddish golden rocky cliffs. It is all happening, the crashing waves, the light from the setting, or is it rising sun on the rocks and trees, the eddying pools in the foreground and the high horizon line, I guess 1/3rd down from the top edge of a rather cheap commercial frame. The work has been signed of course in the bottom left hand corner in what annoyingly looks like Naples Yellow.
You can guess which view I prefer.
Many painters have a passion for painting, an admirable quality to be sure. Many jazz or rock musicians have a passion for their music but they express that passion by making a lot of noise i.e. passion equals loud. In my short and uneventful life as a musician I met a number of drummers who were of this ilk.
Lovely guys who were passionate enough to cart their drum kits to the gig but once set up played so loud and so long that the other musicians, a guitarist, a bassist and myself on piano could not get a look in.
In the area of music that interests me most, jazz and blues, much is made of the quality of soul. Think of Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Muddy Waters and even Jimmi Hendrix. Their music runs the gamut of loud and soft, fast and slow even warm and cool. It provides variety and interest for the listener.
They do, to a degree the same as the great classical composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Handel and even Mahler did. That is, draw you into their musical world by providing the above qualities as well as an air of mystery which leaves you wanting more.
Mrs Carey, in her efforts to get the best out of her charges for the Opera House concert talked of the emotional connection between the player and the music to be played which had to be conveyed in turn to the audience and she succeeded. The playing of the pieces by Ravel, Vaughan-Williams and Bruck in particular showed a passion and maturity beyond the years of these young players and the soul of the music was evident, hence the opening quotation.

To my mind painting should be like this. Not blatant, in your face, all explained.
The great painters to me are Rembrandt, Velasquez, Singer Sargent as well as the likes of Clarice Beckett or Archibald Colquhuon and John Farmer of our own tonal school. My teacher Shirley Bourne had the same quality and I think it comes from having not only a passion for painting but also an almost undefinable connection with the subject. Not just a desire to produce a picture but a deep love of nature and how light falls on and illuminates things so as to present the painter with an exciting set of shapes to place on the canvas.

22nd September 22
I have just finished a painting from a point overlooking Bar Beach and as I was painting I clearly heard Alan Martin saying in his inimitable fashion whilst demonstrating at Wilson’s Promontory,

“…remember that a landscape is only a set of horizontal shapes with a few vertical disturbances.”
I have been following that advice for many years now and it rarely lets me down. It sums up perfectly for me the simplicity of the so-called tonal method developed by Max Meldrum whereby one can represent nature in all its glory with a simple set of shapes that interests and sometimes excites the viewer.
Not for me the laboured overworked canvasses that I so often see. Great painting should obey the ‘kiss principle’. For those who don’t know,
Keep It Simple Stupid.

19th September 2011