Naomi Bishop

  How did you arrive at becoming an artist? What were your early influences and what shaped your initial interest in an art practice?

I’d always enjoyed drawing as a child, but I think I was about 13 when I started thinking I’d like to become an artist. I remember painting and making lino prints in art at high school – and I felt this was a way I could really express myself, a practise to become completely absorbed in. I stayed in the art room at lunchtimes, I made art at home. I loved drawing, I found painting difficult and elusive. As a teenager my favourite artists were Caspar David Friedrich and Edvard Munch – although their techniques are very different, what is common in both of their work is a sense of nature taking control, the loneliness of the landscape, and I don’t mean loneliness in a negative way.

Perhaps it’s more about a solitary experience of a huge, expansive landscape and the feeling of individual insignificance in that space, alone in nature, dwarfed by the space but also really connected to it.

I think both of their works have a sense of drama and the romantic, mystery, reverence, and the fragility of life. As a child I also played piano, and my favourite composers were from the German romantic period around the time Friedrich was painting. Munch’s work is more expressive, visceral, I like his acidic colours and exaggerated, ghostly forms. I grew up in the Dandenong Ranges, a beautiful, forested area about an hour’s drive from Melbourne.

The atmospheres I observed in the works of Friedrich and Munch made sense to me – grand landscapes, huge expanses, giant trees and dark forests, small buildings reclaimed by nature, inky black skies and bright, bright stars. I loved walking at night.

What or whom are role models or major influences in your practice?

Artists -Daniel Richter- Duueh – this painting of ghostly figures falling through the night at the Pompidou Centre, its both dark and heavy and incredibly colourful, beautiful to look at but also frieghtening, we wonder why these people are falling and what they’re experiencing. Hilma Af Klint – there was a retrospective of her work at The Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2006 – I think it was the first time I’d seen her work and I found it so powerful, beautiful, mysterious, esoteric and hopeful. I remember reading somewhere that her work was like ‘a message to the future’ Marielle Neudecker’s vitrines of forests ruined by acid rain after the Chernobyl disaster, her recreation of Friedrich’s icy shipwreck, recreating nature into museum pieces, carefully recreated and preserved for us in case we can’t see or remember it anymore.   Friedrich - Cemetery in the Snow, Hunter in The Forest, Graves of Soldiers. Humans dwarfed by nature, nature as both beautiful and terrifying, nature eventually reclaiming humankind.

Places – the forests around the Dandenong Ranges, Neolithic sites in Britain and Ireland, forests and lakes in Finland, Scottish highlands.

Music -Goldfrapp, Bjork – magical otherworldly, nostalgic, futuristic, connections to places – lyrics about landscape and layers and layers of sounds. For me they conjure images of places.

Pompidou. Duueh (2003) Oil on cotton, 300 x 200 cm bought , 2004 - Centre Pompidou.~

You completed your MFA at Chelsea College of Art in 2003 – and prior to that you also studied in Melbourne.  Have you identified any differences between Melbourne and London?

I remember when studying in Melbourne, having the feeling of always having to justify my work, of having to put an idea or an essay with the work to make it “enough”. At the time I felt like there was a lot of work around that was either very conceptual, about identity politics or hyperreal painting – obviously my work didn’t fit into those categories.

I have a clear memory of one of my first tutorials at Chelsea in London discussing ideas of what I was thinking about making with my tutor. He said to me ‘Well just do what you want’ It was such a liberating moment. I felt free to make the kind of work I wanted to, in the way I wanted, about subjects I was interested in, strange places, celestial phenomena, ghosts, astronomy.

I liked the way London seemed to trust art intrinsically, it didn’t have to justify itself . It didn’t have to be crafted in a particular way, address a certain theoretical criteria, academic idea or fit into a particular scene.

Art can be any colour, size, any material, anywhere. It is part of everyday life. Art can be anything it wants to be.  

The Search for Lost Time 2019-2020 45 x 60cm Oil and acrylic and pigment on wood panel Photo credit Andrew Curtis ~

Your work has recurrent themes of magic and enchantment. It reminds me of the work of photographer Tim Walker (who recently had a retrospective at the V&A) that although very different also had the sense of creating and recreating a magical world.  It also reminds me of the work of Kate Bush and Florence and the Machine.  

It’s interesting you mention Kate Bush, one of the very first CDs I bought as a teenager was hers. Her music is so unusual – fantastical, descriptive, mythological, complex with multi layered stories and sounds. Kate Bush's songs really do have a narrative, not in a conventional way of love songs, or things songs are usually about, but more that they are real or imagined stories of very different characters in different times, different places. I'm thinking of Army Dreamers -young men going off to war, Babushka- the story of a wife tricking her husband, Wuthering Heights of course has the most direct reference to literary work.

I think this approach is quite unconventional as she becomes the character. These characters also require different musical approaches. Her songs are multi layered - deep, dark, waiflike, mysterious. They can be quite mythological, I am thinking of the countryside, spirits, ghosts, druids, where everything is connected.

Wayfinder 2020 oil, pigment and wax on linen 82 x 97 cm Photo credit Andrew Curtis ~

Do you have a sense of narrative when you create? For example, do you characterise a work as having a particular character in a particular situation seeking resolution?

This is a very interesting question, I haven’t really thought about this before, but I think what I create there probably is a narrative but it’s more about the place. I’m interested in the memory of that place, the people that have been through that place and the knowledge or memories that are hidden there. I want to know what happened. Why it was significant, what treasures and secrets are hidden.  

Do you think there is a sense of nostalgia in your work or does it look forward?

There is certainly a sense of nostalgia in my work – I have a deep interest in history in particular Neolithic British and European history. I also love medieval history and artefacts. I like reading books on archaeology, history, alchemy, I’m interested in ideas of lost knowledge and hidden places, and the ways in which we can learn from them.   I think the way I use colour is probably more forward looking – the colours are acidic, bright, neon. The paintings are messy, they’re looking for something we can’t see yet, perhaps something in the future, or some lost knowledge from the past.  

I like the idea of time travel, and different times existing in the same place.  

Your work fires the imagination – how do you balance elements of representation with this created world?

Usually my work begins with something real, or at least a photograph of something real, it could be an object like a stone, tree, a strange sculpture or it could be a photograph I’ve taken of a place I’ve visited. I use this as a loose compositional structure and the rest arrives through a combination of my imagination, mistakes or accidents, or the atmospheres and ideas in something I’m listening to or reading at the time.  

How do you know when to stop a work?

Stopping, or finishing a work has always been a challenge for me – I’m not sure I know that I do know when to stop. I find it easier with works on paper, perhaps because my approach with these is very process based, more systematic and perhaps I have a clearer idea when the work is finished because I have completed all the processes. With painting, I find it more complicated. For me, the paintings take on a life of their own, generally I have an idea, or a reference, but not a clear picture of what the painting will look like when it’s finished – sometimes I ask myself if there is anything I else I can do to make it better, if I think the answer is no, I stop. Although it can be a complicated way to work I like that the painting evolves in its own way, the mixture of pigments, chemicals and time create something else, something unpredictable.  

Do you think there is something particularly British about this fantastical approach?

I think there is yes. There’s a strong tradition of fantastical literature, mythological stories and otherworldly places in Britain. I think in Australia somehow work is more academic or pragmatic, perhaps we don’t know or don’t understand the magick in ‘our’ landscape yet, we don’t know the stories, as non indigenous Australians, we are not connected to the mythology or the history of the Australian landscape in the way that indigenous people are. I feel very connected to sacred sites in Europe, this is my ancestral heritage, I feel compelled by and to these places.  

Communion 2020 Gouache and acrylic on paper 56 x 38.5 cm Photo Andrew Curtis

 

How did your stay in Finland affect your work?  

The first time I went to Finland was in the middle of winter, when there were only a few hours of daylight. These trips to Finland have given me an infinite source of inspiration and reference material.

Something I noticed almost immediately, was the way that people worked with the weather, with nature rather than trying to dominate it.

I remember walking along a Helsinki street with an extraordinary megalithic rock in the middle of the street, rather than destroy this beautiful and powerful rock the street was built around it, the rock remains, humans move around it. There is a kindness that seems to me to be extended to all creatures in to make winter’s endurance easier and softer. I noticed blankets and slippers in museums, birdhouses and other homes for small animals to shelter attached to the trees around people’s houses. The darkness was not depressing, it was a time to think deeply and create abundantly. The few hours of light were spent outdoors, even in subzero temperatures, gazing in wonderment at frozen crystalline trees and air that was so cold it glittered in the soft sunshine. I loved watching the sun rise at 10am, move gently across the horizon and set at 2.  

I went back in the Summer and had an equally magickal experience, this time, the sun set around midnight and was up at four am – the lakes and forests were bursting with life, verdant, abundant, fertile, misty and magical. The landscape to me was like something of a fairy tale, vivid colours in the skies, tall fir trees, wildflowers, late nights, early mornings. I found mysterious, sometimes unnerving arrangements of rocks in the dark covered forests, bones in the attic, people talked about ghosts following them around.

On our second last night in Finland, whilst sitting around a fire outdoors, we saw some play green lights beginning to move above the silhouetted trees. The lights continued to rise until we were treated to an extraordinary display of the Aurora borealis - I have been trying to capture this atmosphere, this feeling of celestial lights for many years.  

To me this was a place where magic was real, and a place where nature is revered, and our connection to, and dependence on it is acknowledged. These are both important themes in my work.  

 How do you see the role of the artist – as shaman or as artist?

I think the role of the artist is to reveal what is hidden or obscured, to show something in a different light, from a different perspective. Making art does have a ritual quality to it, and usually it is a journey that is taken alone. I think it’s a dual role, but I probably like the idea of the shaman more because it is in part what my work is about. I like the idea of making something magickal.

Your work is intimate in scale. Why and how have you chosen to work in this way and also using this medium – generally watered and initially deceptively fragile appearing?

In London, before I had my studio at Chelsea, I was working on the kitchen table of a small one bedroom flat. I had to be able to make paintings small enough to fit onto that space, and pack away at the end of the day. That was the initial, practical reason I started making small work. The more I worked on this small scale, the more I started thinking about how I could represent expanses of land and sky in these small paintings. At this time I started making paintings of night skies and home made telescopes. I noticed there were a lot of small, but dense and powerful paintings in European museums, Friedrich, Bosch, Vermeer, Dürer come to mind. I think there’s something really nice about having to walk up close to a painting, to come into its space. There’s something poetic about an image about astronomy being represented on a tiny scale. A microcosmos.   I like to use a lot of layers of colour in my work, to me, it makes the colour and the atmosphere more intense, and perhaps it’s also about a sense of impermence, a fleeting moment, a portal about to open or close, a weeping, sky that’s falling in. Nature is powerful and we are fragile.

Do you have a particular routine or ritual when you work?  

I work in my home studio in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs in a small working studio. It takes me a little while to get into the right headspace for painting, often I will read or work methodically on a drawing first. I always like to have a hot drink on hand, coffee or chai – it’s comforting and somehow helps me focus. My Marimekko mug with forest animals, bear, owl, lynx and plants – trees, mushrooms, and blueberries is an essential part of this ritual. I have a lot of pencils, highlighters, watercolour and gouache for my drawings. I love Arches paper, and I make sure I am stocked up with this. I have a drafting table, which my partner found and suggested I buy for drawing, which has made a huge difference, made the process easier and alleviated neck and shoulder pain! Ah, also a mechanical sharpener my partner bought me is a great tool for drawing. I like to paint on wood panels, they can be birch, or the compressed gessoboard (not mdf!) There’s something lovely and intimate about painting on wood, I like the movement of the paint on the smooth surface. I’m extremely particular about the paint and mediums I use, there are probably only 2 or 3 brands of paint I buy, the right colour, texture and pigment saturation are really important to me, mostly I use Michael Harding’s colours, I think he is a contemporary alchemist. I’m not as fussy with brushes I think mostly because I’m not great at cleaning them.

Stargate 2019 Oil and pigment on linen 96 x 86 cm Photo credit Tim Gresham ~

What are the first words that come to mind when you read the following;               

Transformation – Alchemy                

Fertility – Nature                

Metamorphosis –Ritual                

Renewal – Constant .

 Is there anything else you would like to add?

Other themes in my work are astronomy, witchcraft, ritual objects, medieval alchemy, the need for humans to search for meaning and look for signs and signifiers, omens in nature and the way in which landscape changes /influences people and belief systems. Perhaps things are magickal when we have lost the practical knowledge that corresponds to them, for example seasonal planting that follows astronomical cycles, medicinal herbs, animal totems that signify seasons, an abundance of particular plants, or disease.

(credit for cover -   Refuge Tonneau  2018 42 x 31 cm Oil on wood panel  Photo credit Tim Gresham )

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