Bradd Westmoreland is compelled to do what he does – to apply paint, or if truth be known, to be the conduit for the paint applying itself to the canvas. Without any hint of a new-age shaman, Westmoreland aims to achieve a certain level of heightened awareness when painting. Not a trance, but a hyper-aware state where there is just him, the brush, the paint and the canvas. How or what appears is spontaneous, natural and, he would say, inevitable.
I just let the painting happen. I am actively not thinking about what I want to paint. It is as if the painting simply appears without physical hesitation, without mental questioning.
Westmoreland just trusts the paint ‘to do its thing’. It takes courage for an artist to almost relinquish control – the canvas is like a pool of water at the bottom of a very big cliff he has just jumped off with the paint as his metaphoric bungy cord. Many entries in Bradd Westmoreland’s painting diaries talk about being brave and effort.
‘Don’t be afraid of the dark’ ‘Never be shy’ ‘Just let it happen’ ‘Don’t try too hard’
Essentially, it is from the order and routine of a structured studio practice – painting, life drawing classes, work diaries – that Westmoreland has the freedom to lose himself in the process of making images. For him it is not about what to paint, but almost what not to paint.
Westmoreland is an ally of anti-style. ‘I’m not so keen on finding or settling on a way of working, or a look. I’m not interested in answers. It’s not even a question of better or worse, just about the possibilities.’
The tension between extremes is also of particular interest to Westmoreland. His diaries list ‘diversities’ and contrasts:
day/night light/dark
simple/complex slow/fast
fresh/stale off/on
The difference between form (what we see and know) and the formless (what is not known).
Yet it is obvious that despite the state of ‘unknowing’ in which Westmoreland creates his work that there is much knowledge and understanding of the principles of painting, of the formal qualities of his work. Space. Form. Colour. Line. He needs a certain clarity in a picture to make it work. A pictorial logic but ‘not an actual logical picture based on any type of reality outside the painting itself’.
Westmoreland studied at the Victorian College of the Arts and graduated in 1995, though his training in art theory had begun at a much younger age. He started to attend evening art classes held weekly at McClelland Art Gallery when he was only 13 years old. Alongside earnest ‘Sunday painters’ Westmoreland learnt the principles of tonal work in raw umber applied straight from the tube, painting still-life arrangements of objects from the gallery’s collection as set up by the teacher.
Westmoreland’s appreciation of art history has been further enhanced by recent extended trips to Europe, especially Spain and Morocco, where he was able to immerse himself in the art of the great museums. The body of work in this exhibition is loosely inspired by his travels, but the imagery and subjects have been drawn up through the subconscious and then their essence distilled by Westmoreland’s purely intuitive process. It doesn’t matter whether it is a landscape or a figure in the work, it is still the act of painting that is the main concern. Any narrative is a consequence rather than a consideration in Westmoreland’s work. The paintings are distinctly non-random despite the spontaneity.
