William Delafield Cook.A Survey

WILLIAM DELAFIELD COOK. A SURVEY William Delafeld Cook. A Survey is the frst survey exhibition of this signifcant Australian artist in over two decades. Since the late 1970s Delafeld Cook has worked almost exclusively with the Australian landscape - remarkably, from his studio in London. His paintings are characterised by a deadpan photo realism, yet they transcend the real altogether to speak of phenomena beyond our perception. Taken as a whole, his paintings elevate our understanding and appreciation of the Australian landscape to a new level. This timely survey unites works from over a thirty year period, to provide a compelling document on the work of one of Australia’s most acclaimed and accomplished artists. WILLIAM DELAFIELD COOK. A SURVEY I have always felt that it wasn’t enough career. With his investigation into the WILLIAM to simply lope along experiencing recurring subjects of timelessness and life, and that moments of importance place achieving a new level of DELAFIELD COOK should be acknowledged, examined, refnement, Delafeld Cook has secured.1 reached the crescendo of a lifetime A SURVEY dedicated to the search for the In a practice that now spans over ffty inexplicable dynamisms that silently Simon Gregg years, William Delafeld Cook has inhabit our natural world. produced an immense body of work Curator that speaks not merely of its time, but Delafeld Cook’s vision of the transcends time altogether. His Australian landscape has intensifed Gippsland Art dedication to the Australian as his distance and time spent from landscape has led to a new Australia has increased. The emphasis Gallery understanding of the land, in which he places on the Australian we encounter the essence of place experience cannot be overplayed. His through an intensely vivid evocation work is informed by, he says, ‘the of surface and substance. amount of time I have spent in Australia, the importance I place on OPPOSITE William Delafeld Cook was born in being Australian, and the attraction I Hillside near Euroa, 1989 Melbourne in 1936 and relocated to have to the country and its Acrylic on canvas, 203 x 305cm London in 1958, and for the last thirty landscape’.2 However, what had been ANZ collection years has divided his life between intended as a short trip to London London and Sydney. In the early in 1958 turned into a second home [1] William Delafeld Cook, email to the stages of the twenty-frst century for the artist. Today Delafeld Cook author, 17 January 2011 Delafeld Cook is producing some spends part of every year in Australia, [2] ibid of the most signifcant work of his undertaking long journeys into the 2 landscape where, as he admits, ‘the character of the Australian “My feeling … is contrast with Europe is enormous, landscape. He afords us neither a especially on frst arrival. It is a big topographically accurate view, nor that distance hit, every time’.3 Delafeld Cook’s a landscape transformed through practice trades on this distance; emotion or energy, but the pure idea intensifes the while preoccupied exclusively with of land fltered through memory, in the Australian landscape, his work which all voices and activities are experience of is produced entirely in London. He silenced, and the spirit of the earth the place” writes: can peacefully emerge. My feeling about the process of In employing the real in his pursuit of removing oneself at intervals from the unreal, Delafeld Cook uncovers direct contact with the source of one’s something quietly surreal in his subject matter is that distancing paintings. His practice is based on intensifes the experience of the place, empirical visual experience, but he makes it in recollection more vivid. expresses a sensation of disquiet that By squirreling it away, then retrieving has nothing to do with what we see. it at a later date, you can recover it, While often very cluttered, there is repossess it, see what it is that should a sense of calm order in his pictures, OPPOSITE happen to it.4 which undergo a process of gradual Hillside, 1986 reduction until only the skeletal Acrylic on canvas, 116.8 x 213.5cm A continued fascination for Australia, structure of the land remains. The University of Melbourne Art Collection while being at once physically His vast, panoramic canvases revel removed from it, has allowed in a strange intensity whose source [3] ibid Delafeld Cook to distil the essential cannot be identifed; indeed, it is in [4] ibid painting what he sees with such 5 precision that Delafeld Cook reveals reinvent yourself every day. There’s “My interest what we cannot see. no-one telling you what to do’.6 is in the The paintings betray the distance Delafeld Cook’s canvases are from their subject, by invoking carefully attuned for maximum efect. strangeness of memory and recollection rather than In a work such as Hillside near Euroa direct observation. Throughout his (1989), mood is modulated to infer a the world, as it career, Delafeld Cook has painted place that is at once familiar and single objects and places that are frighteningly alien, while never is” embodied by an intangible, almost resorting to invention. ‘My interest is undetectable presence. ‘My paintings in the strangeness of the world, as it are not about me – they’re about the is’, he says.7 Delafeld Cook might ‘thing’’, he says of this quality. ‘It’s the be described as a landscape scientist; world being reinterpreted. Charged he calculates colour, mass, OPPOSITE 5 A Waterfall (Strath Creek), 1980 up. Renewed’. Delafeld Cook composition and tone to arrive at a Acrylic on canvas, 198.2 x 156.2cm sometimes pursues the trails left by unique formula of disquiet. Here, Art Gallery of New South Wales earlier artists, such as Eugene von nothing is left to chance. Every Guérard (both artists painted the particle of paint is deeply considered [5] William Delafeld Cook, in Strath Creek waterfall, in 1862 and with the result that the overall work conversation with the author, 1980 respectively). But when it comes resonates like a fnely calibrated 6 December 2010 to painting he is decidedly studio- orchestra. Despite their outward [6] William Delafeld Cook, in based. His practice dictates that he sterility, his paintings are rich in spirit conversation with the author, 11 March 2010 spends long hours at the easel, and the tangible substance of life. [7] William Delafeld Cook, quoted in sometimes working for years on a Delafeld Cook outlined the agenda Deborah Hart, William Delafeld Cook, single work. ‘Being a painter is a for his art in 1975, writing that he Craftsman House, Sydney, 1998, p.65 lonely business’, he says. ‘You have to sought: 6 …to isolate fragments of reality and to expanse. The collision of the two “The subjects present them reduced to their essence, produces a condition that could seeking an image which will endure only manifest in Australia. Without are … a means and which will carry with it some of the need to call upon cliché he the strangeness and intensity which fathoms an Australian Sublime that of conveying I myself have felt when experiencing is majestic and boundless. It infers them in nature. The subjects are not in a religiosity that makes one believe a view of themselves important and are selected in Creation again; that nature was simply as a means of conveying or designed according to a plan, and the physical expressing a view of the physical that there is a divine order amidst the world which transcends the obvious, chaos. This is one of Delafeld Cook’s world which the particular and leads towards the great achievements; in his classical metaphysical.8 compositions, rich in balance and transcends the symmetry, he unleashes a profound Increasingly, however, we see that sense of the biblical within the obvious” subject and site have taken on greater secular, and of the supernatural meaning for Delafeld Cook, as his within the natural. There is a sense practice has matured from his early that the forces of the cosmos have OPPOSITE A Quarry near Euroa, 1990 abstract subjects. His later choice of aligned in paintings such as Kiah River Acrylic on canvas, 162 x 294.5cm landscape as a subject was infused near Eden (1977), which was the frst Art Gallery of New South Wales with longing for a place that was major landscape painting produced as timeless and elemental as his by the artist. Even at this early stage, [8] William Delafeld Cook in a letter painting. we detect a brittle stillness in the air, to Dr Bernd Krimmel, Darmstadt, permeated by an electric tension, as if Germany, 7 April 1975, reproduced in Delafeld Cook’s art is one of infnities: everything, at this moment, has ibid, p.88 of infnite detail and of infnite frozen in a unique harmony that the 9 slightest disturbance could rupture. – and distilling the absolutely His works speak at once of magnitude unknowable essence of the perfectly and quietude, and describe small, familiar’. barely detectable sensations amplifed to the level of grand history Looking at a chesterfeld couch, or a painting. He quotes liberally from haystack … is akin to seeing them for the past – from classical painting the frst time, with all their qualities and classical architecture through intensifed in a way that the mere to Romantics such as Friedrich and application of paint with a fne sable Surrealists such as De Chirico. brush or a graphite pencil can’t explain.9 While anchored forever in the empirical, Delafeld Cook’s works Delafeld Cook evokes photo realism, transcend the descriptive to ofer but his works are not photo realist.

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