Idealizing the Painter

By Mildred Wilson.

 

Which is really to say... from all possible roles available to me this life time, being a painter is the one that matches my most human experience in this construct of the demiurge. The one life that appears to have access to most things interesting to me: colour, beauty, form, spirituality, communication, intellect, concept, expression, observation, abstraction, light, nature, darkness, essence, sensuality, centre, alignment, aesthetics, feelings, emotions (highs & lows), passion, boldness, etc. All simultaneously spiritual abstractions which a rich life is made of, no doubt.

 

And of course the idealization of the painter comes about from aspiring, not quite yet embracing the life of the painter, but well on my way. Luke Sciberras is turning out to be a source of inspiration in the last few minutes, reason why (again) I felt compelled to write about it. He seems to have embraced his call early on and I very much love and resonate with his take and appreciation of the world. The point of it is to [semi] illustrate a true call to the arts, and the painter breathing and living it all throughout his life experience. I find a lot of pleasure from it and it's truly a point of admiration towards anyone doing it this day and age; anybody genuinely living through their senses that which they love and feel strong about.

 

 

Source: Ink on paper, Instagram @luke_sciberras

 

 

 

 

 

"How has Sciberras come so far, befriended so many influential people, so soon? How does he live such a seemingly charmed life when most young artists struggle without a teacher's stipend?

 

"And most of all, why has Olsen repeatedly invited him on private painting trips by plane to some of the most remote landscapes on the continent? (Their latest artistic odyssey took them over Lake Eyre, perhaps Olsen's final source of inspiration: a location on the map that is both part real, part ephemeral.)

 

—''John has really taught me an enormous amount about landscape painting,'' Sciberras says. ''Not only how to look at the landscape and how to paint it but how to join the two - how a landscape painter feels in the landscape. The experience of being out there really is life-giving and I like to share that with John.''

 

"Several paintings in his new exhibition, Highways and Other Recipes, feature plucked hens or geese. Sciberras relishes that stage between death and dish, he says: when a bird or animal is no longer alive but still has the shine of existence in its eye or on its pelt.

 

—''I actually catch and grow a lot of the food I cook,'' he continues. ''I shoot, fish. I've even run over a few things I have wanted to eat.

 

—''I love to cook,'' Sciberras says. ''That's one of the reasons John and I are such friends. We like to cook the same sorts of food - old rustic Spanish, Italian and French. And we have a passion for the batterie de cuisine, the actual pots and pans.

 

—''Rabbits, roos. What is the difference between killing an animal with a car or with a gun?''

 

A fragment from "The Passing the Art baton", a 2012 article. 

 

 

 

"Painting is like a religious experience for me. It's like cooking, sex and gardening all rolled into one; it combines mind, body, soul and heart." — Luke Sciberras, W.A. Article.

 

 

Michael Nock interviewed Elisabeth Cummings and Luke Sciberras about their passion and inspiration found in Hong Kong as well as creativity and experience in producing this series of paintings.

 

 

"In the autumn of 2012, Luke Sciberras felt he was coming down with the flu. His joints hurt and he put himself to bed hoping to sleep it off. But in the middle of the night he woke with the strangest sensation.

 

—“I realised that all the aches in my joints had gone and all the pain had become concentrated in my heart,” he says.
“It was weird because I’d never recovered from flu so quickly and I’d never felt anything like that sharp, twisting, cramping pain in my chest before.”

 

"Alarmed, he managed to get out of bed and calmly tell his teenage daughter Stella that he was not feeling well and was going next door for help. There was no question of calling an ambulance because he lives in half-forgotten Hill End, an old gold rush town at least an hour from the nearest big hospital."

 

 

 

A Mecca for artists

 

"Hill End is a sacred site of modern Australian art. Three generations of Australian artists have been drawn to the flimsy remains of this town in central western NSW that historians say once resounded with 10,000 voices and hosted eight churches, an opium den and an oyster bar. The Royal Hotel in the main street stands as the only survivor of the 28 hotels that thrived during the boom. Sciberras can be found there most afternoons, in the company of locals and an artist or two.

 

"When the gold ran out in the late 1800s, the town emptied and began falling away. Then, one winter in the late 1940s, artists Russell Drysdale and Donald Friend arrived and were captivated by the district and the town’s quiet desolation. With that visit Hill End’s renewal began. Drysdale’s famous 1948 painting, The Cricketers, is set there, giving the town kudos in collector as well as artistic circles.

 

"In the years since, the likes of John Olsen, Margaret Olley, Jeffrey Smart, Brett Whiteley, John Firth-Smith and Garry Shead have all made their way to Hill End. Sciberras is in that tradition. According to John McDonald, art critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, he’s become the nucleus around which much of the town’s artistic life revolves. Describing him as hospitable, sociable, a good cook and an enthusiast for other artists, McDonald says Sciberras is “the star attraction” among a group of painters, writers, sculptors, printmakers, potters and photographers who make their way to the town..."

 

— A fragment from the Financial Review 2016 article.

 

 

 

 

Paintings became 'of', not 'about' a place

 

"He began to think more carefully about how he spent his time. “My creative output had to mean something to me in a changing way. I had to learn something from everything I did.” It changed his focus from making paintings “of” a place to making them “about” a place.

 

— “My travels now not only take me out to places but into places, where I can learn the natural and human history intimately and then respond in my way,” he says.

 

“Art that takes itself seriously is an expression of the artist’s placement in or before the subject and is in some way a self-portrait. This may sound egotistical but too bad. I’m not painting the world through anyone’s eyes but mine, and from my heart.”

 

"It was not just his paintings that changed. “This turned me a corner physically and emotionally. It was as though, on a molecular level, my body was being governed by a heart that somehow had recreated itself.”

 

— A fragment from the Financial Review 2016 article.

 

 

 

 

More than a 'mere physical pump'

 

“Before, I would rush to a place and paint the landscape, scooping it up in superficial view. Now I settle in and internalise something of the place, of its layered history – and there’s a scale, a strength and an energy that wasn’t there before.”

 

He continues: “I believe that the heart holds body memory and is a kind of prism through which the soul is reflected, and my work is now more of an expression of my deeper understanding of an environment, a landscape, an animal.”

 

— A fragment from the Financial Review 2016 article.

 

 

Follow the artists’ journey to Belle Ile, inspired by the landscape and memory of expatriate Australian painter John Peter Russell (1858-1930). Produced by Catherine Hunter for the 2018 MAG&M exhibition.

 

 

"If you’ve ever met Luke Sciberras you’ll know he’s larger than life. Full of joie de vivre and good humour, he attacks life with gusto from his fabulous garden to his renowned cooking skills so it’s no surprise that this life force is also manifested through his art.

 

"He’s known chiefly for his landscape paintings which are created with layers of glorious colour and a variety of marks. His drawings and plein air works have an immediacy which take us into his experience – whether it’s a boab tree a bird or a portrait. His art is always interpreted from life or from drawings made en plein air and brought back into the studio.

 

"But paradoxically what is most important to him as a landscape painter is in fact people. Those who are the custodians or owners of the landscape are just as important to him as the landscape itself and he needs to connect with them in order to create his work.

 

"He’s painted landscapes around the world from Europe to China but it’s in Australia that he’s spent most of his painting life – interpreting the landscapes of far northern Queensland to Bruny Island in Tasmania, from the Kimberley coast in Western Australia to the central desert areas where he’s created his art with the indigenous people of those lands.

 

"He’s had 40 solo shows, his work has been hung in the Art Gallery of NSW, is contained in the collections of many regional galleries, in corporate and major private collections and his upcoming show of paintings from Western Australia’s Kimberley coast opens at King Street Gallery on William in Sydney in March 2019.

 

"I spoke with Luke in historic Hill End about 4 hours from Sydney where he has his studio in the midst of a wonderful artists’ community.

 

"To hear the interview press ‘play’ beneath the feature photo above."

— Maria Stoljar, Talking With Painters.

 

 

Luke Sciberras: Side of the Sky Documentary, 2022. Commissioned by Bathurst Regional Art Gallery and Campbelltown Arts Centre for the exhibition 'Luke Sciberras: Side of the Sky'.

 

 

Sciberras remembers something Johnson’s father, the artist Michael Johnson, said of landscape: “We hate views!”.

 

Sciberras explains:

“That’s what cameras are for and as Martin Sharp said, the artist’s job is to make the invisible, visible. These two sayings are very much a summation of how I feel about painting as my eye hones.

 

“It’s about looking into the landscape, not just at it, and turning a place inside out to find its essence, just as the gold miners did here in the Victorian era.”

— Luke Sciberras.