An exhibition of paintings in response to the work of 19th century painter Fanny Brunton from her sketchbook in the Hocken Collections.
Fanny And Me: Exhibition Catalogue Essay by Janine Cook
“Fanny &Me” is a tale of kindred spirits. Liz Abbott first encountered Fanny Brunton (1834 – c.1900) in the depths of the Hocken collection three years ago, when she discovered her tiny sketchbook nestled in tissue within a small box. It is true that little parcels uncovered from library backrooms automatically evoke an air of mystery, but Liz was stunned. As she leafed through the delicate pages she saw her own stomping ground, and elements of her own painted landscapes meticulously recorded in watercolour and pencil by a woman who had lived in the same area over a century earlier. Fanny had painted fifty topographic landscapes within the sketchbook between 1869 and 1885. These included scenes of Waikouaiti, Moeraki, Dunedin, Bluff, Lake Wakatipu, Riverton, Kakanui and Timaru,and nine sketches of Australia made on trips to Sydney and Queensland in 1885. Intrigued by the parallels in their art practice, Liz commenced a process of research that was to develop into a healthy and enriching obsession. The discovery that Fanny had only exhibited her work once with the Otago Art Society in 1883 spurred plans for this show, a celebration of Fanny’s work, Liz’s own work, and their artistic connection.
Liz’s work in this exhibition is inspired by her own journeys and still moments of observation on holidays and within daily life, echoing Fanny’s process of sketching within moments of freedom from domestic concerns. Some of Liz’s works directly reference scenes of places from Fanny’s sketchbook that Liz has visited and then responded to in her own way. One obvious example is Katiki Lighthouse, corresponding closely, in terms of style and composition, to Fanny’s sketch of the same place. A less literal and more emotive response is made in Looking North from Doctor’s Point. This was partly inspired by the lines of somnolent rocks and enveloping landscape of Fanny’s Kakanui Beach,1878, which Liz has reinterpreted and inserted in the lower right of her canvas. Fanny’s picturesque sunlit view with watery reflections and a single Campion-esque figure in her sketchbook is answered by Liz with a sublime and liminal gothic fugue.
As an artist, Fanny Brunton was typical of other women of her era, sketching with watercolours in a portable sketchbook. In contrast, as a modern-day professional artist, Liz utilises bold oils on large canvases and consciously explores devices from historical landscape genres. Liz references Fanny’s sketchbook and celebrates the act of drawing through her use of the medium, both in her preparatory and finished sketches on paper and through the intentional unfinished look to her canvases, with finger smudges and scribbled textured lines of oil sticks applied over her paint. Whilst as a contemporary woman artist Liz may be bolder than Fanny in her artistic practice, she recognises in Fanny’s work, with its close observation and attention to detail, the same passion for art-making.
A number of further parallels exist within the works of these two artists. Liz has frequently produced landscapes that span two canvases in the past, which she has described as “conversational”. In this exhibition, Liz’s paired works,with their rounded edges, evoke the doubled pages of Fanny’s sketchbook watercolours and highlight the diaristic intent of each woman’s work. Liz has also noted a spontaneity to Fanny’s working method that is analogous to her own, as the sketchbook scenes resist an ordered and linear chronology. Liz’s works in this exhibition are therefore similarly linked with one another through mood and with the randomness of personal journaling.
Both artists were drawn to the practicality of portable miniature media. Liz’s small snapshot-like compositions framed in black boxes, are reminiscent of photographic slides, and are the approximate height of Fanny’s miniature postcard-like works. Unconventionally, Liz applies pink as a foundation colour to her canvases and discovered that Fanny also frequently used a pink wash as a base. Liz’s two works, My Place and Coast Road, expose her working method and highlight this commonality in the artists’ colour preferences. The incorporation of the home as an element of the landscape in these works echoes Fanny’s tendency to frame the view with domestic structures near her. Both artists employ such transitional objects which imply a sense of being in the place rather than looking from a distance, a sensation that is heightened in the viewing of Liz’s large canvases. Lastly, Liz and Fanny are,and were,both careful observers of the changing impact of human settlement, noting houses, land-clearing and planting as well as random or slightly incongruous objects of everyday life. Fanny’s now historic observations encourage a philosophical detachment to the comings and goings of settlement, an attitude that was already evident in Liz’s previous work. In this exhibition, Liz’s works, like Fanny’s, do not seek to make overt political comment but are commentaries on the coexistence of nature and human life.
This pragmatic acknowledgement of technology and nature and of the dualistic spaces of our lives is overt in Michie’s Crossing, in which Liz’s vision both soaks in the landscape, noting the new subdivision following the lines of the bay, and immortalises her old Peugeot. Her rear vision mirror captures a realist view of the present-day crossing and is a retrospective nod to Fanny’s era of transportation and to the inclusion of rail lines in her sketches. The mirror’s shape is reminiscent of the double-page framing of Fanny’s sketchbook and thus alludes to the quiet presence of Liz’s imaginary road trip buddy.
The above work, and Fanny and Liz’s works viewed in unison, invite philosophical contemplation. Life, our small time on this planet, we are reminded, is simultaneously big and small, dark and light, linear as a highway and circular as history. Whatever view is taken, our passions are what anchor us, and in Liz and Fanny’s case, this is, and was, their art. Thus, presented in this exhibition are the journeys of two women who sought to, (utilising Liz’s own words),master the craft of “blending art into life as seamlessly as a circular stitch.” Go girls…”
