Red is for Flame

Drawing, 43 x 33 cm

This sketch is one of several for my drawing “Flaming Summer”, finalist in the Paul Guest Drawing Prize 2018. Please see this artwork in the drawing section.

My drawing is part of the series “Efflorescence” (a sub series of “Leaves of Life”), inspired by traditional botanical drawings and cataloguing the flora in my environment. The flame tree flowers and the writing are rendered more expressionist than “Flaming Summer, the serial repetition is less orderly. Still, I am applying the idea from Gertrude Stein that “a rose is a rose is a rose…”

Repeating the object reveals more of its essence, reducing the distance between me—the subject, and the object. We both remain the same, yet change simultaneously—based at this point on another idea from Gertrude Stein: that repetition does not produce exactitude.

The text in this drawing is descriptive and associative. As reflections and ideas surface, I note them down in cursive handwriting, without order or direction, in my two daily languages, German and English.

The flame tree is native to the East Coast of Australia but cultivated all over the world (including, of course, Western Australia, where I live). The clouds of scarlet red in the West Australian spring is a feast for my eyes.