Embodied presence in contemporary landscape painting: a pathway to connection, attentiveness, care and inter-relation with nature

Abstract

Australian National University

College of Arts and Social Sciences, Research School of Humanities and the Arts

School of Art and Design, Visual Arts Graduate Program,

Doctor of Philosophy

Anne-Marie Jean

Thesis topic: Embodied presence in contemporary landscape painting: a pathway to connection, attentiveness, care and inter-relation with nature

Abstract

Painting has its own peculiar capacities to invite embodied connection to nature. Evolving from Western landscape painting conventions, my practice-led research explores combinations of pictorial and formal language in multi-sensory nature-based painting. In articulating human interactions with nature through painting, the research responds to a contemporary imperative to take pro-environmental action. Through material investigations in nature, the studio and the gallery, my research developed interactions of pictorial and formal painting language articulated through movement, and vertical and horizontal orientations. In disrupting conventions of landscape painting which distance the audience from nature, and developing fresh configurations of sensory stimulating language, I have created new manifestations of painting that foster a culture of embodied consciousness and connection.

This thesis demonstrates how particular combinations of painterly language can articulate a complex range of inter-relations, and shows how an artist's embodied experience with nature-environments and with child rearing, can generate innovation within one's painting practice. Development of studio and site-based methodologies and conceptual ideas were significantly enhanced through the study of paintings by artists such as Kylie Banyard, Elisabeth Cummings, Andreas Eriksson, Ms N. Marawili, Kate Tucker and Jahnne Pasco-White. The exegesis reflects on and was conceptualised through phenomenology studies, interdisciplinary art history, art theory, including formalism, expanded painting and landscape theory, anthropology and social theory. Theorists and writers of influence in this study include Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jorella Andrews, Rachael Ziady DeLue, Robin Kelsey, Rebecca Solnit, Christopher Tilley and Mark Titmarsh.

A personal motivation in conducting the research was to address in my own practice the complex problems of working on contested land and being an artist of colonial/settler heritage. I acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples on whose land most of my site, studio and office-based research has taken place, and honour their elders past, present and emerging.