Insights into the creative practice

John Honeywill at Open Studio

John Honeywill at Open Studio / View full image

Still life artist and art educator, John Honeywill begins our exploration of the studio as an essential site for housing the ideas, images and objects of his creative process. A place where he can work through, leave and return to his thoughts.

At its core, Open Studio at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) is a home for the creative process. Whether you are looking at artworks selected by each guest artist, sitting down to engage in a drawing tutorial at our drawing stations, watching artist interviews, reading artist books or exploring materials and works in progress on loan from the artist’s studio, you are connecting with the skills and ideas that inform a living creative process.

This is the first in a series of blogs that explores the artists space. Pick up clues and tips about how the artist experiments, manipulates and refines materials and processes. Open Studio is open daily and includes a range of onsite programs for creative activities and broader learning.

Open Studio

Open Studio / View full image

Take part in two art station drawing activities specific to the artist’s practice.

Take part in two art station drawing activities specific to the artist’s practice. / View full image

Take part in two art station drawing activities specific to the artist’s practice.

Take part in two art station drawing activities specific to the artist’s practice. / View full image

Artworks on display as part of his Open Studio

Artworks on display as part of his Open Studio / View full image

Artworks on display as part of his Open Studio

Artworks on display as part of his Open Studio / View full image

Meet John Honeywill

John Honeywill began painting in 1974 and he currently concentrates on still life, a subject that has interested Honeywill since childhood.

Honeywill engages with the genre of still life as a tradition that holds genuine relevance to contemporary life. He invites visitors to create their own still life works through two drawing stations and through a range of workshops programmed in the Studio.

Watch | John Honeywill

The first Open Studio

As QAGOMA has been interwoven into John Honeywill life since he was a teenager, Open Studio is a great opportunity to talk to visitors about the process and act of making art , and give back to an institution that has given so much.

John Honeywill’s selection of artworks on display as part of his Open Studio project includes work from artists such as Vida Lahey who have taught students and mentored other artists, along with many who are currently working as educators such as Marian Drew.

Watch | John Honeywill

The importance of the studio

A studio is a space where you work, and at the end of the day you can leave your thoughts, ideas, and when you return the next morning, they are still there. It enables the continuity of your work.

In the centre of Open Studio at QAG sits a small Artist Space filled with objects, materials, and visual stimulus from the artist’s actual studio. John Honeywill has invested time and consideration into his selection and positioning of elements from his studio to help visitors understand his way of working.

Look closely at the images and drawings on the clip board. Consider how they relate to the unfinished work on the easel and how this relationship demonstrates how an artist is able to return to the studio to pick up where they left off.

Watch | John Honeywill

Reading List
For Open Studio, John Honeywill selected these books on the artists who inspired him. To read, research or learn more about these artists, visit the QAGOMA Research Library.

Laura Mattioli and others. Giorgio Morandi: Late Paintings. David Zwirner, New York, 2017.
Paul Hills. Brice Marden. Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2018.
Donald Woodman. Agnes Martin and Me. Lyon Artbooks, New York, 2016.
Chris Bedson. Euan Uglow: Sargy Mann. John Rule, 2017.
Michael Hawker and others. Margaret Olley – A Generous Life. QAGOMA, Brisbane, 2019

John Honeywill at Open Studio

John Honeywill at Open Studio / View full image

QAGOMA Research Library

The QAGOMA Research Library is located on Level 3 of the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). Open to the public Tuesday to Friday 10.00am to 5.00pm. visit us in person or explore the online catalogue. Access to special collections is available by appointment.

Featured image detail: John Honeywill painting at Open Studio

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    The humanness of objects

    Renowned Queensland still-life painter John Honeywill is the first artist in the Gallery’s new Open Studio initiative at the Queensland Art Gallery. We spoke with the artist about the meaning objects bring to our lives, how he creates drama through juxtaposition, and his resolve to paint beautiful things. John Honeywill Brisbane-born artist John Honeywill studied at Kelvin Grove Teachers’ College for two years in the late 1960s, before moving to Bundaberg to begin teaching at the age of 19. The Flying Arts School, founded by Mervyn Moriarty in 1971, which travelled across the state, gave Honeywill the opportunity to work with many artists — including Roy Churcher, whom he describes as ‘a fabulous teacher’ — over the decade that followed. ‘I look back at that time in Bundaberg as a kind of apprenticeship’, he says. Honeywill’s early career was a period of exploration in which he tried different media and genres each year: he worked with pastels, created still lifes, and painted landscapes and seascapes while living at nearby Bargara. ‘I continued to try different things into the 1990s’, he says, ‘but there was something about the idea of still life that kept popping up’. In the mid 1990s, Honeywill ‘came to a point where I felt that I had been trying to be an artist that my head wanted me to be. But I kept returning to still life and decided to commit to that, and to try to simply be a good painter.’ A confluence of events and circumstances around this time were important to Honeywill’s development as an artist: ‘The late and wonderful Peter Beiers, when he was still at Folio Books, gave me a catalogue of [works by] English artist Euan Uglow’, he says — a book that he would look at every night for two years. ‘Peter was always keeping in mind books for people, grabbing you when you came into the GOMA Store and saying, “Hey, I’ve got a book I think you will like!” I owe him a great debt for that simple book, and many other things’. Uglow, who is best known for his nude and still-life paintings made in London from the 1960s through to the late 90s, slowly developed his practice while painting the same subjects throughout his career. ‘That example of someone who ignored trends was inspirational — they are such beautifully resolved pieces, and that little catalogue gave me the resolve to simply paint what I wanted.’ Honeywill’s commitment to still life was reinforced by a lecture given by John Berger at the Tate Modern in 2000 that was later published in Art Monthly. Berger wrote: The drama in a still life is the drama found in a juxtaposition, a placing, an encounter, within a protected space . . . The painter is forced to study the neighbourliness of the things in front of him, how they adjust and live together, how they intersect, overlap and keep separate, and how they converse. ‘Berger clearly articulates what is often deemed to be a very simple subject’, Honeywill says, ‘but he explains it so beautifully, with reference to some of my favourite artists, such as Zurbaran and Morandi. But that interplay — it’s amazing, when you play with objects, how we read them in human terms. Whether with apples or crumpled bits of paper, you can explore a feeling and a narrative through those arrangements.’ Honeywill has painted many objects over the years, ranging from the quirky (a Random House Australia box that resembles a ‘random house’, for example) to the delectable — meringues, licorice allsorts and rocky road. Watch | John Honeywill Margaret Olley ‘Hawkesbury wildflowers and pears’ c.1973 A series of works made during a residency at the Tweed River Gallery in Murwillumbah includes vessels formerly owned by artist Margaret Olley, which Honeywill says were a great privilege to paint. He admits that he often gravitates towards objects that have served some practical purpose, such as jugs, vases, bowls, cups and bottles. He adds: The thing I love about older things is that they have served us and they then have meaning to us. Not a specific sentimental meaning, but they’ve been a part of our lives. That’s why most of the things I paint come from around the house. It would never interest me to paint something precious or expensive, because it’s immediately weighted with too much baggage, and they’re not things that you use every day. The humanness of those simple objects is what draws me to them. Over time, Honeywill says, he has become bolder with his colour palette — a statement that immediately rings true in the fiery red of an enamel jug, the pop of orange in an oriental poppy, the appetising rose in a piece of Turkish delight, and the dazzling yellow of a group of lemons. He often determines that a work is finished when he has made it ‘sing’ or ‘hum’, a quality difficult to define but impossible to miss when looking at the harmony and balance of his finished paintings. ‘Colour has always interested me’, he says, ‘but after a six-week trip that [my wife] Trish and I took to Italy — where we saw the rich, vibrant colour in those stunningly beautiful Renaissance works — I came back and decided: I’m just going to enjoy painting. We can be far too serious about it, whereas I now aim for a lightness of touch. I’ve always been interested in the idea of light in a painting, but I think that, in the last five years, I’m hopefully getting closer to capturing the light and subtle colour interplay that I’m after.’ After the Gallery invited Honeywill to be the first Open Studio artist, the final shape of the project evolved through discussions with the QAGOMA Learning team, headed by Terry Deen. ‘Terry said, “The Gallery is full of really beautiful completed works — this is about showing...
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    Natalya Hughes: Making sense of images

    An eclectic mix of interests and influences fuels QAGOMA’s second Open Studio artist, whose practice foregrounds the decorative arts while exploring the representation of the female body. Bronwyn Mitchell spoke with Natalya Hughes about her early love of fabric, the paintings of Willem de Kooning and the role of curiosity in the initial stages of an artwork. Watch | Meet Natalya Hughes Open Studio at the Queensland Art Gallery is a home for the creative process. Whether you are looking at artworks selected by each guest artist, sitting down to engage in a drawing tutorial at our drawing stations, watching artist interviews, reading artist books or exploring materials and works in progress on loan from the artist’s studio, you are connecting with the skills and ideas that inform a living creative process. This is a continuation in a series of blogs and videos that explores the artists space. Pick up clues and tips about how the artist experiments, manipulates and refines materials and processes. Natalya Hughes In the leafy suburb of Tarragindi in Brisbane’s inner south, Natalya Hughes’s studio is filled with large-scale paintings in progress, vintage fabrics and an enviable bookshelf of art and design tomes. Works of feminist scholarship sit alongside a treasure trove of decorative arts books, including volumes on Japonisme, William Morris and pattern libraries of Italian ceramic tiles. Natalya Hughes ‘Woman III’ 2018–19 ‘Historically, decorative art has had quite a negative association in fine art — something that’s feminised as cheap and debased’, says Hughes. ‘But for me it’s a very important part of a language by which I address certain things.’ An interest in decorative form and materials, and in the body, are consistent themes in her practice. Her love of pattern and decoration stems from childhood; encouraged by her mother, she was an avid collector of fabric remnants. ‘As a kid I renovated and decorated the doll house and made new bedspreads for the furniture. Or I was constantly sewing for Barbie.’ Hughes grew up in the small New South Wales town of Macksville, between Coffs Harbour and Kempsey, before moving to Brisbane to study visual art at QUT. Eight years later, she relocated to Sydney to start a PhD and also spent some time in Melbourne. She returned to Brisbane in December 2018 to teach visual art at the Queensland College of Art. As an academic, Hughes’s artistic practice is part of a broader research career. Many of her paintings begin in response to existing art historical images. She is drawn to the decorative aesthetic — of ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock prints), the costume designs of Léon Bakst and the drawings of latenineteenth- century English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, for example — and decoration has become the vehicle by which she moves between the abstract and the figurative. More recent works are influenced by the abstract expressionist paintings of Willem de Kooning and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, but here Hughes says she was primarily interested in ‘the representation of women’s bodies as a site of experimentation’. Willem de Kooning ‘Woman V’ 1952–53 Natalya Hughes ‘Woman V’ 2018–19 ‘I was never enthralled by that thick, expressionist painting style in the same way that other people seem to be; I’ve always been a very flat, neat painter’, she says. ‘I was drawn to [de Kooning and Kirchner] not because they have a decorative aesthetic . . . [but] because I wondered what would happen if I brought that aesthetic to [the same subject]. Those artists would be loath to have me do that, I’m sure’, she adds. ‘“Decorative” was probably flung around as an insult in de Kooning’s time.’ Across her practice, Hughes is interested in the language by which she negotiates a particular, less celebrated, feminine body — one that is difficult, marginalised or in some way grotesque. She brings her own unique and decorative language to her ‘Woman’ series, which echoes de Kooning’s landmark series of the same name, and she is both intrigued and bothered by the way de Kooning sometimes spoke about the women in his paintings. ‘Lots of people are apologetic for him, but he’d say things like “I like to put it at the centre”. What is it?’ she asks. I was teaching photography in Sydney, and students consistently presented truncated images of women, usually naked, no arms, no head, black and white, high contrast, sort of Edward Weston-ish. And I’d say, ‘Well, what’s it about?’ ‘The female form’, they would respond, and I’d say, ‘Which female?’ Hughes would continue to interrogate her students’ decision to use specific female bodies (generally young, athletic and white) with which to explore form. ‘I think it comes from certain modernist practices and I find it incredibly problematic. I wanted to respond to that in my work by exploring some of these questions. What is this female form you keep talking about? And actual human women, where do they fit?’ It is obvious that Hughes is driven by questions, and her works are thoughtful and considered attempts at answering them. Many of her previous works grew out of what she describes as a sticking point. ‘I don’t feel inspiration is the thing that prompts me’, she says. Rather, I get curious about something and think, I really must sort that out. So then I read about it, and there’s a lot of iteration and development of an idea before I start the work. I want to understand something, and I do that by taking it apart and trying to re-articulate it. That’s just how I make sense of images. Hughes admits to being obsessive with a certain level of detail and precision in her paintings. The works she is least happy with are those in which she decided to pare back the decorative elements — ‘There’s nothing like a deadline to make me stop!’ — but if paintings come back to the studio after an exhibition, she...
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