500 Fridays
ten years of contemporary plein air painting

The Black Dam at Dunmoochin
by Brian Hubber, Exhibition Curator

Clifton Pugh established Dunmoochin as a community of artists in the early 1950s, when he sought an alternative to what he saw as the blandness (and yes, philistinism) of the Australian suburbs. Residents of Dunmoochin had (and still have) an austere and robust life, which was part of Pughís belief (inspired by the example of Justus Jorgensen at Montsalvat) that excessive comfort led to slothfulness. Art required austerity and commitment. Since Pughís death in 1990, Dunmoochin has been managed by The Dunmoochin Foundation.

Michael Kelly is the current artist in residence at the Dunmoochin Foundation Studio. Kelly has been there for two years now, living and working in Pughís old studio. One clear winterís day in May 2002, he picked me up at the Hurstbridge Post Office and we drove the four or five kilometres to Dunmoochin ñ out along the Kinglake road, left at Cottles Bridge road, left again into Barreenong road, and on up to Dunmoochin, with the ìClifton Pughî signboard still on the gatepost.

On the Barreenong road Kelly pointed out the black dam, a depression by the side of the road, half-filled with water made black by rotting leaf litter. It had probably been made to protect the road from water running off the steepish slope. I took a casual snapshot as a memento. Surprisingly (Iím not a great photographer), I had centred the dam in the frame and had also captured the left-to-right diagonals of the sloping ground and the reflection of the horizon in the water. The clear blue of the sky reflected like a jewel nestled in the earthy colours of the eucalypt scrub. The black dam was naturally picturesque and it was obvious to see why generations of artists from William Frater on were drawn to it. Mind you, landscape artists might be attracted by the picturesque, but they will then use the scene to examine their own artistic concerns. As Fred Williams put it: ìI find a trigger in the landscape for what I want to doî.

Williams must have made numerous studies of the black dam. He was a frequent visitor to Dunmoochin in the 1960s and 1970s, and he, Pugh, Albert Tucker and John Olsen often painted en plein air in the vicinity. (Olsen gives a vivid description of painting activity at Dunmoochin in the late sixties in his Drawn from Life, published in 1997.) Williamsí Bush road with Cootamundras (tentatively dated to 1977) is clearly based on studies of the black dam, although the painting, which is reasonably large, may have been executed in the studio. Bush road with Cootamundras is simple in its geometry. The foreground of low scrubby bush ñ almost sculpted by Williamsí brushwork ñ forms a wedge with the dam at the apex. The dam itself distils the colours of the bush in a thick ochreous liquid. The road runs at the right of the wedge, with thick scrub further to the right of the road. Trees form the line along the left-hand side of the wedge. There is a strong sense of the earthís fecundity. The trees thrust into and through the sky. The yellow road ascends the hill, turns and then disappears from view. The painting vibrates with life and colour. The scene is more specific and less abstract than some of Williamsí other work. The palette is much brighter, and is evidence of Williamsí constant experimentation with colour. Bush road with Cootamundras was recently exhibited by Gould Galleries from 20 July to 31 August 2002, and was reproduced in the galleryís catalogue.

Clifton Pughís The Autumn black of the waterhole (1976) was also recently offered for sale at Sothebyís (Fine Australian Paintings, Sydney, August 25, 2002, no.125, illustrated). Pughís treatment of the subject is quite different to that of Williams. The dam takes up almost all of the fore- and middle ground, while stylized trees and foliage occupy the background. There is the hint of an horizon sloping down from the top left. A fallen sapling bisects the image horizontally. At the top is one of Pughís trademark sulphur crested cockatoos, with its discoloured and distorted reflection in the inky black dam. The autumn feel, rendered in the rotting leaf litter of the pond, in the bare stony ground, and in the sparse vegetation, contrasts with Williamsí explosive spring scene.

For several months now, I have been working on an exhibition of the work of a group of Victorian artists, who for the past ten years or so have been going out every Friday to paint en plein air. For the sake of brevity I refer to them as the Friday group. Michael Kelly is a member as are Robert Maclaurin, Mary Hammond, Philip Davey, Rick Amor and Deborah Russell. Others have also come and gone over the years, but these are the artists to be featured in the exhibition.

As Gary Catalano recounts in his recently published The Solitary Watcher, Rick Amor, Philip Davey and more occasionally Clifton Pugh, used to make studies of the black dam at various times of the day and season. This would have been in the mid-to-late 1980s when Amor was resident at Dunmoochin. (It is even possible there is a hint of the black dam in Amorís earlier work Magpies over the dam (1973), although it is doubtful that the dam was ever big enough for swimming.)

None of these studies from the 1980s is known to have survived although Catalano refers to a photograph of the dining room of Amorís Dunmoochin house, showing a plein air painting of the dam. When the Friday group began to go out painting in the early 1990s they often made pilgrimages to places that had been popular with earlier generations of artists ñ to the You Yangs, the Grampians, the Melbourne waterfront, and, of course, Dunmoochin. And so, all the artists of the Friday group have at some stage or other made studies of the little black dam. Rick Amorís Clif's dam, Dunmoochin, painted in October 1998, looks down the slope towards the dam. There is no horizon, and the green hill across a small valley forms the background. Being a bright day, the dam is coloured with a deep indigo blue, and the painting is patterned with varicoloured saplings.

Robert Maclaurin was artist in residence at Dunmoochin in 1995 and 1996 ñ on Rick Amorís recommendation. Maclaurin made several studies of the black dam, including Study of the black waterhole (1997), which has the soft inky dam in the foreground and the bare tree trunks advancing up the hill, casting long shadows behind them. The earth is also depicted in soft tones, the colour of grass yellowing in the sun. Another untitled study by Maclaurin has the black dam, merging with deepening shadows on the hill. It is clearly late afternoon with the trees lit on their western side and casting long shadows to the east. Behind, the bush deepens in colour, and the shell of an old red car sits benignly on the ridge. It is a finely composed painting, redolent with the rich colours of the Australian bush.

On a recent visit to Michael Kellyís studio, I noticed three or four paintings of the dam on the wall. The artist also kindly showed me his sketchbook, in which there are several visual notations relating to the dam ñ small sketches, the palette, notes on the time of day and the light. One oil study, entitled simply The black dam, was painted in 2000 soon after Kelly arrived at Dunmoochin. This painting is from the same viewpoint as the much earlier painting by Fred Williams (of which Kelly is aware). The dam is prominent in the foreground, taking up half the composition. The water reflects the blue of the sky against which yellow puffs of wattle are painted. The trees again provide strong vertical patterns, further emphasised by the placement of a blackened sapling that vertically bisects the scene. The road runs to the right of the dam ñ a white ribbon through the trees, it leads up towards the gate at Dunmoochin and disappears into the bush beyond.

A number of Australian views consistently catch the imaginations of successive artists ñ the Shoalhaven River, Mosman Bay and Hill End in New South Wales, Pulpit Rock and the Wannon Falls in Victoria, and, of course, the You Yangs, which were a subject for many artists long before Fred Williams invented a new visual grammar for the Australian landscape. To these we might well add the little black dam at Dunmoochin ñ the subject of studies by generations of artists over the past half-century. It seems almost inevitable that the tradition will continue to be handed down from one generation of artists to the next.

(Reprinted from Antiques and Art in Victoria December 2002-April 2003)