Roland Hemmert
Artist
Landscape speaks.
For me there is a mystery present within it and artmaking is the means by which I try to understand it.
But how do you balance the numinous along with the feel of the earth beneath one's boots and the sun on one's face, and the artistic demands of colour and design?
The studio practice is of importance to me, but things soon fall apart if I don't spend time in the bush. I'm not a traditional en plein air artist. Although many of my pastels are begun in that manner they are usually completed away from the subject.
There are practical reasons for this. Often the pastels tend to melt in my hands as do I on a hot day. But once I have recorded the basic elements required I often finish a piece even after I've returned back to the studio.
The memory and other experiences I have retained allow me then to be free to reenter into the artwork. Thus, the colours of a dust storm witnessed weeks earlier enter into another sky or the dazzling pinks of the tiniest desert wildflower are strewn over a rocky range. I like to turn things on their head.
However, with my larger studio oils I'm always attempting to impart a bigger message and so I spend a lot of time completing them. It can be a slow process although I do find myself perplexed that sometimes a smaller pastel can say just as much. It happens as it happens and over thinking things usually makes me come unstuck.
And anyway, if I were to resolve every issue within a painting then there'd be no need to do any more.
I find that to be in a constant state of bafflement in front of my easel is the best way to start an artwork and the best way to finish it too.
The Sandstone Country of The Gundungurra and Dharug Nations of The Blue Mountains is the place I call home.
podcast Interview by Wendy Tsai Roland Hemmert Spirit of Place
google: talkingartz roland hemmert spirit of place
RECENT EXHIBITIONS
July/Aug 2023 New Works from the Desert - Gallery ONE88 Katoomba
2020 Desert Tracks & Mountain Trails - Gallery ONE88 Katoomba
June 2018 The Solitude of Places - Gallery ONE88 Katoomba
2017 Six Views Group Show (reprise) - Gallery ONE88 Katoomba
2017 In Hindsight - a retrospective exhibition - Gallery One88 Katoomba
Sept - Oct 2016 Crossing Paths - Braemar Gallery The Blue Mountains
2015 Six Views Group Show in Katoomba
2012 Arboreal Group Exhibition, Macquarie Uni NSW
2011 Interior Journeys (Solo) Milk Factory Bowral NSW
Other stuff that may be interesting:
*Luminous Colour: Showcasing Aust Pastel Artists:
art book by Linda Hibbs (Indah Publications 2014.)
*2009 Writing at the End of the World.
Symposium attendee at Macquarie University.
*2011 Landscape as the Beloved.
Dinner Event at Links House. Bowral NSW
In conversation with
Prof. Deborah Bird Rose and Poets Mark Tredinnick
and Peter Boyle, and me.
