Materials Matter:
'Craig Waddell'
Critical account of an artists practice for publication on ‘Artist Profile’.
Reference how they have influenced your own art making practice.
Craig Waddell was born in Sydney in 1973 and has been a practicing artist for 15 years. He graduated from the National Art School in 1999 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and completed his masters within the Faculty of Fine Arts at Thailand’s Chiang Mai University in 2004. Waddell predominantly works with oil paint but also dabbles in sculpture and drawing in a manner that correlates to his main oil painting practice, as displayed in his 2011 still life installation Heavenly Dreams at Gallery 9 and contained works such as a moment like this created with oil on linen (106 x 76 cm).
The installation Heavenly Dreams is assembled in Gallery 9 across many different walls and through various rooms that forces the works to appear random and slightly disjointed at first, however this is an informed artistic decision as the viewer can travel through the installation at their own pace and along their own self directed path – creating their own story from the titles and colorful subjects involved. A moment like this (2011) has been almost ‘sculpted’ through the use of a palette knife and thick oil paints that are slathered across the work and jut out from the linen base. The medium sized canvas gives the subjects a ‘larger than life’ feeling that serves to highlight the detailing and texture involved in the petals and leaves of the flowers that wouldn’t be as noticeable had the works been created proportional to real life. The left side of the work is noticeably darker in terms of tonality and the greenish-grey tones of the bottom left corner seamlessly blend into the stem and leaves of the plant, almost making the flower appear trapped or suspended in its movement. The composition of the work is minimalist yet effective – the stem and leaves are in the foreground, the flower takes up the middle-ground and the background is simply the horizontal lined pattern that eliminates all white negative space and shadowing.
Initially Waddell upheld a sporting and cricket background, but at the age of 23 he chose to pursue his more internal aspirations of creating raw and expressive art. A moment like this is a perfect example of his impeccable expression – the center flower emerges from a lined and detailed background but doesn’t dominate the canvas, rather it envelops it in warm peachy tones and the deep greens of the blossom. Waddell’s previously mentioned sporting experience wasn’t entirely in vein and is exhibited through a progressive sensitivity of expression through his art making practice. A statement Craig Waddell made in an interview with Art Month Sydney in 2012- ‘taking the disciplines of art, the fundamentals of drawing and sculpture and then translating them into a painting’ -supports this. A moment like this is part of a much larger installation of over 20 works linked by flower and plant themes that stemmed from his desire to celebrate the sublime alongside the imperfect – the ideals of reality that mask the more practical human nature beneath it –and he spent many months testing his compositions in sculpture and drawing before converting the ideas into oil paintings. Essentially, like in cricket, Waddell trains himself through laying out composition structure in lesser mediums before letting his performance run wild in the ‘game’ of painting. To Waddell, art making is less about the subject and more about the movement that brings the form to life in an artwork, much like the skills of cricket - ‘when I paint, that’s the performance side coming through’. A moment like this is a work that stems from a place of feeling extremely connected and in tune with one’s surroundings.
Waddell also professes to enjoy poetry and writing in his spare time, and other sports like swimming and kayaking. Despite their differences, all these outside passions eventually drain back to the ‘movement’ of his art making practice and the special awareness and keen perspective involved in their creation. His enjoyment of poetry is apparent in the titles of his works in Heavenly Dreams that progress from one to the next, as if a story of personal interest is being translated through the images. For example, the titles of five of the works create the phrase “I believe in you/I’ll do it all again for you/To me you are everything and more/When I dream at night/You are my light” a phrase Waddell composed himself as part of a larger piece of writing. Hence Waddell’s practice is linked to all of his passions and isn’t randomly collected from his experiences or appropriated from other artists.
By not immediately acknowledging audience response, Waddell allows himself an extended creative freedom that is void of judgment or detailed thought processes. In doing so he believes his mind becomes more open to the possibilities of colour and texture combinations that potentially improves his practice. He decides what subject he is interested in representing and just paints freely or ‘paints it out’ without worrying about outside influences. From an early age, art felt natural and welcoming to Waddell so it comes as no surprise that he claims to paint from a space of personal understanding and drive as is blatantly apparent in this installation. I highly respect his practice due to these underlying factors and seek to further understand the meaning behind his complex and multilayered installations such as Heavenly Dreams and contained works such as A moment like this.
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The installation Heavenly Dreams is assembled in Gallery 9 across many different walls and through various rooms that forces the works to appear random and slightly disjointed at first, however this is an informed artistic decision as the viewer can travel through the installation at their own pace and along their own self directed path – creating their own story from the titles and colorful subjects involved. A moment like this (2011) has been almost ‘sculpted’ through the use of a palette knife and thick oil paints that are slathered across the work and jut out from the linen base. The medium sized canvas gives the subjects a ‘larger than life’ feeling that serves to highlight the detailing and texture involved in the petals and leaves of the flowers that wouldn’t be as noticeable had the works been created proportional to real life. The left side of the work is noticeably darker in terms of tonality and the greenish-grey tones of the bottom left corner seamlessly blend into the stem and leaves of the plant, almost making the flower appear trapped or suspended in its movement. The composition of the work is minimalist yet effective – the stem and leaves are in the foreground, the flower takes up the middle-ground and the background is simply the horizontal lined pattern that eliminates all white negative space and shadowing.
Initially Waddell upheld a sporting and cricket background, but at the age of 23 he chose to pursue his more internal aspirations of creating raw and expressive art. A moment like this is a perfect example of his impeccable expression – the center flower emerges from a lined and detailed background but doesn’t dominate the canvas, rather it envelops it in warm peachy tones and the deep greens of the blossom. Waddell’s previously mentioned sporting experience wasn’t entirely in vein and is exhibited through a progressive sensitivity of expression through his art making practice. A statement Craig Waddell made in an interview with Art Month Sydney in 2012- ‘taking the disciplines of art, the fundamentals of drawing and sculpture and then translating them into a painting’ -supports this. A moment like this is part of a much larger installation of over 20 works linked by flower and plant themes that stemmed from his desire to celebrate the sublime alongside the imperfect – the ideals of reality that mask the more practical human nature beneath it –and he spent many months testing his compositions in sculpture and drawing before converting the ideas into oil paintings. Essentially, like in cricket, Waddell trains himself through laying out composition structure in lesser mediums before letting his performance run wild in the ‘game’ of painting. To Waddell, art making is less about the subject and more about the movement that brings the form to life in an artwork, much like the skills of cricket - ‘when I paint, that’s the performance side coming through’. A moment like this is a work that stems from a place of feeling extremely connected and in tune with one’s surroundings.
Waddell also professes to enjoy poetry and writing in his spare time, and other sports like swimming and kayaking. Despite their differences, all these outside passions eventually drain back to the ‘movement’ of his art making practice and the special awareness and keen perspective involved in their creation. His enjoyment of poetry is apparent in the titles of his works in Heavenly Dreams that progress from one to the next, as if a story of personal interest is being translated through the images. For example, the titles of five of the works create the phrase “I believe in you/I’ll do it all again for you/To me you are everything and more/When I dream at night/You are my light” a phrase Waddell composed himself as part of a larger piece of writing. Hence Waddell’s practice is linked to all of his passions and isn’t randomly collected from his experiences or appropriated from other artists.
By not immediately acknowledging audience response, Waddell allows himself an extended creative freedom that is void of judgment or detailed thought processes. In doing so he believes his mind becomes more open to the possibilities of colour and texture combinations that potentially improves his practice. He decides what subject he is interested in representing and just paints freely or ‘paints it out’ without worrying about outside influences. From an early age, art felt natural and welcoming to Waddell so it comes as no surprise that he claims to paint from a space of personal understanding and drive as is blatantly apparent in this installation. I highly respect his practice due to these underlying factors and seek to further understand the meaning behind his complex and multilayered installations such as Heavenly Dreams and contained works such as A moment like this.
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