The Nymphéas: Re- Traced, Re-Membered; As Lived Encounter

The Nymphéas: re- traced, re-membered; as lived encounter

Wendy Stokes

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Fine Arts

UNSW Art and Design

August 2015

ABSTRACT

Claude Monet's (1840-1926) Nymphéas (1914-26), are a construct of complex interrelationships between immersion in image and site, memory and shifting geographies. They provide a platform for opening interpretations of immersive Australian landscape experiences pivoting around private territories and 'lived' sensory readings of site. While much scholarship has been directed toward Monet and the Modernist surface as Abstraction; this research returns to a fundamental, a critical friction that the images are of landscape.

Both image and landscape become sites which are dismantled through drawing and painting as process, in order to be re - membered within a formalist and psychological construct. This is achieved by re opening the ground using the surface as a site for notations of my lived experiences in landscape. Through such perceptive and immersive experiences my research becomes a location for deceleration; a 'slowing down' and facilitate ways of knowing a landscape.

My research aims to fracture Claude Monet's legacy into a renewed context framed around ritual practices and immersive lived encounters of landscape.

TABLE of CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Terminology and Definitions

Introduction

Chapter 1 Rationale: Critical and Cultural locations; Mixed Geographies

Chapter 2 Methodology

PART I LIVED ENCOUNTER: THE PARIS RESEARCH

Chapter 3 My Experience as Viewer and Maker at Musee de l' Orangerie

Chapter 4 In Context: Monet's Studies and Sketchbooks in the Musee Marmottan Monet

Chapter 5 The Nymphéas as Studio Response

i. Toward the unified field ii. Two propositions: space and light, closing and opening

Chapter 6 Monet and Contradictions Toward the Modernist Surface

PART 2 MY PLEIN AIR EXPERIENCE: AUSTRALIA

Chapter 7 Bringing the Modernist Findings to Landscape

i. Knowing through process ii. Critical friction, hybrid slippage, rhythms of nature iii. Engagement with landscape, residues of action

PART 3 JOURNEY AND RETURN, FRANCE X 2: FLUID GEOGRAPHIES

Chapter 8 The Nymphéas as Landscape, the Giverny Site

Chapter 9 Reflection; Mutable Boundaries

Chapter 10 Re-viewing Monet in Context, Current Practice

Conclusion

Appendix

A. Photographic documentation as fieldwork research i. The Monet garden site, Giverny, France and my coastal walking site, Australia ii. Étretat and my Australian site iii. Orangerie; associated notes and sketches iv. Monet's sketchbooks and the Giverny site; my drawings retracing Monet's sketchbooks as process

B. Historical research connected to fieldwork i. Étretat: coastal immersion and reflection ii. Monet, 'lived' experience and blue iii. Japanese Print Collection documentation

C. Historical research; viewpoints i. A link between Monet and Cézanne ii. Griselda Pollock and female practitioners iii. Reviewing location

References

List of Figures/Images

List and Images of Exhibition installation-Tamworth Regional Gallery 2015

Terminology and Definitions

The French titling, The Nymphéas is adhered to as credited in Musee de l' Orangerie. I have maintained such, specifically to withdraw immediate metaphorical associations to waterlilies as flower and subject of my research.

Landscape and Abstraction are broad terms which underpin this research. Both terms present multiple meanings throughout the text, relevant to the context in which the argument is placed; whether part of historical or contemporary dialogue.

Landscape is referred in the context of revolving around roles of experience; whether observed or subjective, rather than a genre. It is defined within mutually dependent experiences between seeing, feeling and making; interpreting the 'lived' experience of a site; as an environment of personal significance; while considering the possibilities provided by landscape as a site which is observed as a component of nature, an organic shifting entity (Andrews, 1999).

Abstraction, commencing in the context of Monet's time, 1890, is defined through painting, as a 'flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order' leading toward its autonomy (Alarco 2010, p.12). This definition becomes modified through the critical parameters of Modernist painting, emphasising the flattening of space by reducing perspective, through space and colour. In Late Modernist painting, Greenberg defined Abstraction as one confining 'itself exclusively to what is given in visual experience, that of establishment of the surface of the painting as the location of meaning and make[s] no reference to anything given in any other order of experience' (Wilson 2002, p 24). In current terms through Nickas, Abstraction can be eclectic and thought of as the 'filter through which the recognizable passes and is transformed' (Nickas 2010, p.11).

Re- membered refers to re - assembling and reconfiguring the elements of imagery and sensory information; and also the findings which have been dismantled according to the research process. This is to be interpreted separately from remembering as an act from recalling from the past.

For in text terminology of sites and images; Musee de l' Orangerie, Paris is abbreviated: the Orangerie; The Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris is abbreviated:

the Marmottan and Fondation Claude Monet, Giverny: Giverny site or Monet's garden.

The sketchbooks shift between those of Monet and my own and are referred to accordingly throughout the text.

All Monet images within the main body of the text have been viewed personally. When referring to Claude Monet's Nymphéas images viewed in the Orangerie and the Marmottan the in text citation is abbreviated to title only, but is referred to in full within the image credit.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge Peter Sharp, my supervisor and Sandra McMahon, former Director, Tamworth Regional Gallery, Tamworth for supporting both my research and application for the Cite Internationale des Arts UNSW Studio in Paris, 2014. I would also like to thank Sandra and Director, Dr Leigh Summers, Coffs Harbour City Gallery, for supporting exhibitions of my research.

I gratefully acknowledge the Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris; its previous Director Jacques Taddei; Aurélie Gavoille and Claire Gooden, Attachés de conservation; Marianne Mathieu, Deputy Director in charge of Collections and Communication and Director, Patrick de Carolis. Much appreciation is extended to Fondation Claude Monet, Giverny for providing research access and Musee de l' Orangerie, Paris during my residency.

I would like to thank my family who supported me during my research journey, offering patience and my colleagues who provided support in the final stages.

Introduction

Claude Monet's Nymphéas cycle, provides a platform from which to open interpretations and locate connections between immersive 'lived' experiences and hybrid readings of landscape; one filtered through the Modernist constructs of Abstraction.1 The Nymphéas, as research, sit within a collective body of work focussing on the immersive installation in the Musee de l' Orangerie, and the studies and sketchbooks which inform them from the Musee Marmottan Monet. Lived encounter of the works and landscape, offer several propositions to allow for an interrogation between somewhat conflicting philosophies; firstly, those which exist between Abstraction and Landscape, dealing with critical location as a genre; secondly, our confrontation of space and bodily location when viewing these works as painting and drawing; and thirdly, how this is transferred to interpretation of landscape; as a viewer and participant.

Bringing my orientation of immersive Australian coastal landscape experiences to the research attempts to re define the terms of reference for the Nymphéas; as one which pivots around private territories and 'lived' sensory readings of site. It explores shifts in the terms of reference of landscape through my journey and return to the Nymphéas paintings, Paris; their associated sites in France and my Australian site, the shoreline and coastal walk at Port Macquarie, on the mid north coast New South Wales.

Rather than adopting the more traditional approach to Monet research, as an art historian, the research is haptic; interpreted through intuitive material practice. The creative work posits itself between the shifting interface between drawing and painting practice around the sketch and through exploring these

1 Alarco (2010 p.14) argues Monet would inevitably be viewed as an abstract artist through the stance of transferring a personal perception of the world in a painted image through the self sufficiency of forms and colours. Alarco (2010 p.12) ' it was Symbolist Maurice Denis who in 1890 would provide the first true theoretical formulation of painting’s new autonomy when he defined a painting as a 'flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order '.

intersections, considers landscape as a spatial experience of nature and landscape rather than a view. Using Monet sites as models, the research interrogates the evolution of the release of the mark and spatial readings of the open ground. Drawing as a process becomes a method of notation, interpretation, historical record and act of making, while painting becomes a synthesis of the findings. The research moved between both processes.

The research sites become immersive locations for an interpenetration and intensity of perceptive and bodily experiences. Monet’s Nymphéas were a culmination of extended and concentrated 'lived' sensory experiences; becoming a site of aesthetic experience and deceleration. My research intersects with these experiences and participation in ritual; that of daily walking in familiar territory through my ocean site; as was Monet, in his garden and territories of youth.

Chapter 1 contextualises the research within scholarship and the critical parameters between Abstraction and Landscape. It locates landscape and personal geographies through my Australian lens and situates my walking ritual as a method of becoming familiar with subject. Chapter 2 outlines the research methodology as primary research and a chronological process; critically structured around Abstraction and Landscape; mediated through lived encounters of image and landscapes. Chapter 3 probes 'lived' encounters of the Nymphéas as an image being an immersive 'site' for painting; highlighting the frictional points of spatial and visual orientation both as a 'viewer' and a 'maker'. This chapter isolates and traces the formal conventions of the panels with specific reference to the expanded format visually extending and presenting the need for the body to physically engage by moving along the works to experience them. It argues the location and relevance of the Nymphéas within a contemporary context against historical intention; one based around sensory experience.

Chapter 4 pays attention to the pivotal unfolding of the spatial evolution from Monet's observed site as landscape through to the painted studies housed in the Musee Marmottan. This chapter highlights the significance of the Monet sketchbooks underpinning this research, with specific relation to the life of line and the reserve of the ground in drawing.

Chapter 5 explores how, on returning to Australia, the research structure employs specific Nymphéas paintings in the Orangerie as models for compositional and spatial enquiry; commencing with Green Reflections, and its role towards Abstraction as a compressed surface. It outlines strategies to abandon Monet's literal landscape referential of motif by exploring the subjective qualities of colour and mark; as independent identities, to initiate active and passive visual fields. This chapter concludes with an analysis of the findings which propose an interpretation of the space of my Australian site of ocean, its expanse and light.

Chapter 6 argues while historical scholarship has been directed toward Monet and the Modernist surface as Abstraction, it becomes a zone of critical friction between Abstraction, as a non referential compressed space, and Landscape as an observed representation. This chapter explores the findings through Abstraction; interpreting Monet's pictorial devices such as verticality, indexical marks and spatial ambiguity to locate ways to reconfigure and reopen interpretations of space.

Chapter 7 asks how this study of Monet has been used as a platform to underpin interpretations of site; and links the research to my immersive landscape experiences and the role drawing has within the process. It highlights the cultural contradictions based on the points of entry and definitions between Abstraction as the self referential and nature as a source in Abstraction; before proposing the landscape as a site for immersive subjective responses. The landscape becomes a construct for a form of hybrid; one which

becomes mediated through the ‘filter’ of Abstraction yet informed through the immersive and psychological experience of site. It discusses the relationship between Monet and plein air 'lived' experience and my own; outlining interpretive responses of my interaction within my landscape. Further, it suggests how walking to, and on the site facilitates a familiarity and experience of 'slowing down'; a process of gathering perceptive and shifting spatial experiences. Gesture as a bodily and sensory act rather than one stemming from pure perception shifts interpretation. This approach suggests a contemporary reading of Monet and is expanded in Chapter 10.

In Chapter 8 and 9 the research returns to France, highlighting the findings; the fundamental, that Monet's images are of landscape and reinforce connections to personal environment. The research returns to the site of Monet as maker and draws on historical understandings of 'seeing' and 'making'. It explores knowing a landscape through a structured retracing of site using processes of observation, dismantling, re enactment and rehearsal, while exploring my psychological relationship to Monet's sites.

Chapter 10 reinforces and maintains the focus of this research by aligning it with current practitioners; Spencer Finch (b, 1962), Fabienne Verdier (b, 1962) and Lee Kang- So (b, 1943), whose practices are based around immersion, rehearsal and recording, as experiential and transformative experiences of sites of landscape, interpreted through Abstraction.

An Appendix provides fieldwork documentation, archival research and expanded notes which supports both context and lived encounters within my research. It also touches on potential areas for research within the secondary layer of reference involving gender.

Summarising, the research aims to dismantle the ‘immersive’ qualities inherent in the Nymphéas cycle. It will re- member them in abstract terms; using drawing as a key process for painting. Through intuitive haptic response, my research uses Monet's work to propose alternatives to interpreting my experience of Australian landscape as a 'site' for immersive experience.

The research argues through my 'lived' encounters and Monet scholarship, the polarities between Abstraction as the self referential, and the shifting definitions of Landscape as representation and embodiment of experience. This avenue of research draws the viewer's and maker's attention to ones relationship to nature and landscape, as an immersive and psychological experience rather than the source of a singular reading of painting as a site within Abstraction.

CHAPTER 1 Rationale

Critical and Cultural locations; Mixed Geographies

Figure 1: top row: Sites of experience: The Pacific coast, Port Macquarie; childhood rural memory Bell River, NSW images: Wendy Stokes 2011, B. Stokes. 1957

Figure 2: bottom row: Sites of experience: Monet's garden site, Giverny; Étretat coast of Monet's earlier years. images: Wendy Stokes: 2014

Previous models of research appear to be historical retrospectives and from a U.S. and Eurocentric position. They have indicated the Nymphéas provided a legacy toward Modernist Abstraction, where 'image' becomes a closed compressed surface and one detached from its location of original experience. These definitions play a key role in my arguments. At the time of the Nymphéas

installation in Paris in the Musee l' Orangerie, in 1927, they were placed in a critically ambiguous zone between naturalism as representation and abstraction, yet later were instrumental towards Modernist Abstraction. 2 Monet's style was one of friction, defined, as one 'stemming from separate, incompatible entities . . . deriving from opposite cultural impulses'(Gibson 2001, p.118 cites Kramer 1956). This research instead, navigates a return to landscape, as a link to immersive and affective experiences; and site of psychological significance to the maker. Throughout the research these incompatible entities are referred to as friction, both in critical and visual terms.

Pollock's framework; one exploring personal histories, gender and geographies provided a cultural re entry to reviewing the Nymphéas (2010, p. 35); consequently, providing an opening for my research to shift the critical parameters, and allow personal involvement to play a role and contribute to 'fracturing' the confines of Abstraction.3 Pollock (2010) highlights the missing blanks of art history when outlining the development and curatorial foundation of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and expands, that the foundation of the collection was via a linear route from Cubism through to Abstraction and thus provided a misreading. From Pollock, I interpret that Monet was overlooked by Barr in the initial curatorial plan for the MOMA; not through gender but

2 Duchting (2001, p.21) provides an expansion on the reception of the Nymphéas. Within the historical lineage of painting from the turn of the century to 1926 (when the Nymphéas were completed), they no longer aligned to any current avante garde approach. According to Duchting's summation, ‘in view of Cubist and non –objective painting, Monet’s concern with subjective sensations, his recurrence to nature and his dispensing with solid pictorial structure were viewed as an irrelevant retreat into some private earthly paradise’(2001,p.21).

3 Gender, may be recognised as an entirely independent argument and it does not form a focus of this research. Rather, it focuses on personal histories and geographies. Although my research makes a contribution providing representation by a female, it is not a study of female practitioners. The positioning of female artists perhaps opens avenues for further research. See Appendix C .ii for expanded comment. Gender, however needs to be clarified in the context that Pollock emphasises this collection comprised of male practitioners and adopted the stance where the woman was the object of the work rather than the practitioner. I noted that Pollock had not mentioned Monet in this masculine mix nor had Barr included Monet in the curatorial frame until 1956 when Abstract expressionism has reached its pinnacle. See Appendix C. ii for expanded discussion. The writings of Shirley Kaneda may provide potential connection to the expression of gender within Abstraction, with particular attention to the 'concrete' as against 'lyrical' expression; however it does not sit within the scope of this paper.

rather, the aesthetic of Monet was not running parallel with the contemporary context of that time, which was through the off shoots of Cubism. It appeared Monet, rather than striving to separate himself from nature into a more emotionally removed and intellectually constructed space of abstraction he was seeking to become closer to "his" nature, to better understand its rhythms, through his experience of it. This approach to his work perhaps unknowingly became more subjectively charged.

This research attempts to locate connections between Monet and myself and focus on the intersections between drawing and painting, as processes of 'knowing' through 'lived' experiences via Levine and Kendall.

My aesthetic position has developed from that of being an Australian whose life has been embedded in the landscape experience with its combination of rural upbringing and panoramic coastal vistas. For almost four decades I have participated in a bi daily ritual of walking in a coastal landscape, one which is dominated by sky and water. Annual winter excursions to alpine country further reinforce and permeate such mutable experiences. These observations share linked references to Monet and myself, irrespective of land mass. Duchting cites Frieze (2001, p.192), 'Giverny systemises the organisation of an effective device where Monet benefits from a primed position every day. The constant and changeable elements of the garden remain exterior to him, inexhaustible’. This shares parallels with my ocean landscape as a lived encounter, participated in all weather and seasons. It is an organic environment in continual flux (see Appendix A).

Physical and sensorial relationships to site are connected as fluid geographies and further links are made to memory and association connecting Monet's geographic imprint to my own (Figures 1 and 2). Rey indicated 'all the places where [Monet] chose to live had water as the common denominator. . .' (Rey 2008, p.66). Scholarship further indicates Monet's foundation years were spent

physically immersed in a landscape of coastline enveloped by the weather and huge skies, cliffs and shorelines (Kendall, 2007). Even though the last three decades of Monet's life concentrated on his Nymphéas project at Giverny; Monet took vacations to the coast. In contrast, my experiences of immersion in garden and rural location in childhood were followed by coastal experiences. My research indicates Monet’s late painting practice maintained an ongoing engagement in a combination of plein air and studio practice with a preoccupation and synthesis of personal place and memory. My research further suggests, maybe it has been through water as opposed to 'land' which has provided 'the medium of extension' (Levine 1995, p.40). This dual connection to coast perhaps presents alternative ways to re - member the Nymphéas, one lived through personal encounter.

What relevance may Monet hold in a current context? Nickas (2010) argues Abstraction today tends to be drawn from digital and secondary sources rather than that of the primary experience of an immersion in nature. Halley (1997, p.32) presupposes this view and speaks of ‘the emotional blankness, emptiness, and numbness of an abstract world where social relations have become as untethered as technology has'. Nickas (2010) supports the notion of the need for 'a slowing down ' and suggests that it is in Abstraction in which this is able to occur. This research therefore returns to a direct 'lived' experience of image as painting, and landscape, rather than a mediated one.

While extensive research has been allocated to Monet's legacy towards Abstraction and the Modernist surface, particularly via the collapsing of traditional perspective through closing the ground; this research shall find, through an immersive interrogation of Monet's paintings, studies and sketchbooks, ways to reopen the surface; as a site for immersive mark making, utilising the reserve of the ground. This anticipates locating spatial suggestions and lived connection to immersive landscape experiences. Where Monet too, has been previously researched in the context of surface as a site for the physicality of paint, this research highlights the immersive potential of the mark;

one informed through direct immersive experience of both the paintings and site. 4 The findings may provide a link to an interpretation of my experience of landscape and nature connected to 'lived' body readings.

Additionally, it may connect to eastern considerations. Cheng, (1994), outlines in Chinese landscape painting how it acts as 'a medium for contemplation . . . one which embodies primal forces'5. The concept behind Monet's pond site was to create an intimate place of withdrawal, possessing a strong contemplative focus revolving around the lily pond, and to provide infinite subject matter for his painting. These findings intersect with participation in ritual; the daily walking through my ocean site as Monet in his garden and also share parallels to Monet’s Nymphéas as an installation. All of which further reinforces connections to the eastern concept of both garden and landscape painting providing a site for withdrawal and detachment.

Entering the research at an historical point recognising a lineage of Abstract Expressionism and automatism may connect to Monet's Nymphéas through a hybrid engagement between an immersive experience of nature and acts of 'making'. Trying to find a 'way in' through immersion as both maker and viewer using Monet’s Nymphéas installation was to try and enter from an experiential level rather than approaching them preloaded with historical research.

These parameters provided the scaffold to determine my contextual and psychological relationship to Monet, one which developed and moved

4 (Wilson,2002,p.24) ‘Late modernist painting, as it was understood by critics such as Clement Greenberg, dictated 'visual art[painting] should confine itself exclusively to what is given in visual experience and make no reference to anything given in any other order of experience'.

5 Alternatively , from an Eastern standpoint, (Bloemink 2008) notes that Korean monochrome Abstraction holds a tradition grounded in painting with its origins rooted in a history and culture of nature.

beyond the legacy and surface of Abstraction. The research pivots and oscillates around and between these values reconfiguring image; blending geographical, critical and cultural boundaries. Little research seems evident in this area and contributes to a wider reading of The Nymphéas.

CHAPTER 2 Methodology

The Nymphéas research is a case study. It commences as primary research in the Musee de l' Orangerie, Paris, France using interpretative fieldwork. The research dismantles the Nymphéas, both as image and site framed around the interaction of 'lived 'experience between viewer and maker. It required a sustained study of the Nymphéas in the Orangerie as painting; the painted studies and the sketchbooks housed in the Musee Marmottan Monet; and plein air onsite investigations. While the research commenced through an immersive experience of the Nymphéas as an image, it concludes at the Giverny pond site as landscape in 2014.

The Nymphéas paintings present contradictory spatial orientations challenging both critical location and viewing orientatation. Commencing with the Orangerie experience, the research uses drawing; to re - trace a ‘way in’ to find painting strategies to locate immersive experiences which considers the 'opposite cultural impulses' of Abstraction and Landscape. It has been through a study of Monet's sketchbooks and studies, with their apparent incompleteness which suggested possibilities of interpretation employing line and gestural mark. My research of Monet's sketchbooks began as primary research, as exhibited viewing; later substantiated through digital archive and the Musee Marmottan archive. My research processes are interrogated through en plein air sketchbook investigations, in my coastal site, Port Macquarie, Australia and Giverny, France, while studio making, using expanded format paintings, and works on paper became a synthesis of findings. These too were executed in both France and Australia.

The research, although haptic is structured around selecting specific Nymphéas paintings, as armatures from which to examine a set of propositions investigating spatial readings and mark making as a site for immersive experience. The choice is governed through my argument, commencing in the

context of Abstraction and the first painting created for the suite; Green Reflections. The research, then, methodically moves through paintings toward frictional references in landscape to Morning with Willows and Three Willows. These findings are then tested within an Australian context as immersive lived responses of my landscape experience.

Fieldwork at Giverny and Étretat on the Normandy coast, France was undertaken later in the research and is documented in Appendix A and B. The Giverny research as drawing formed a pivotal process of connecting the site to the Nymphéas paintings and my own research findings. Rather than inform new work Étretat reinforced findings and became support research as an archival response. My location of 'site' and 'knowing' a landscape is researched through acts of re tracing territory and site; relying on both perceptive and sensory experiences as the body moves and orientates itself in space; both as a static and moving experience. In broader terms it is also structured through the understanding of an experience of landscape through the reflection of journey and return to the Nymphéas paintings and associated sites in France and my Australian sites. My findings moved between formal, 'lived' sensory encounters and the psychological. They are evaluated, reflected and integrated throughout the research as part of an unfolding as process; of 'knowing'.

While one may see and analyse the Nymphéas installation via reproduction, the 'lived' experience occurs in the engagement as a lived encounter with the viewing site, the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. The site provided a grounding in the tactility of experiences of 'making'. This argument contributed to the contemplative, slowing down experience to which Nickas (2010) referred in Abstraction, and is carried across the breadth of research. Using on site drawing as an immersive approach to research, the works as findings become grounded in an authentic connection to experience of site and the complexities between mark and surface. Responding to the sensitivity of touch and paper surface in the Monet sketchbooks hinged on primary experience and connection to the tracing of the hand of the maker. Reproductions were

only of value in the Wildenstein Volumes at Bibliotheque Forney, Paris to assess Monet's entire oeuvre at a glance and assist drawing relationships between site and the evolution of Monet's visual strategies; later confirmed by my own lived encounters.

To measure my own findings and create openings for further questioning I have referred to scholarly historical contributions; filtered through their currency and cultural location. My research makes connections between perceptive encounters and bodily involvement linking to Merleau Ponty and geographer Yi-Fu Tuan; commencing with the viewing experience of paintings, followed by the experience of being and walking in my landscape and Monet's. As Merleau Ponty proposed 'our body is in the world as the heart is in the organism; it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly and with it forms a system (Merleau Ponty perception and mind p235, translated Smith1962, p203). When one views an image as direct encounter, or as a view within landscape; perception alone is not an independent function. Our comprehension of them requires the brain to process and intellectualise the stimuli into one of logical arrangement. This argument then requires the body, as a complex and mutually dependent organism to impart these stimuli through the gestures of the body into 'making' the work.

To construct my argument around the 'lived' experience; I also draw on aspects of spatial and sensorial relationship. My argument is the Nymphéas have also been informed and impacted upon through sensory experience of plein air practice and walking to sites. This acknowledges Tuan; the spatial experience of landscape is not actually fixed, as in the frame of a view; but interpreted through ones bodily orientation toward it and how it is modified as one physically moves within it or through it. Tuan refers to the landscape as not something separate but an organic changing environment that we respond to both as an embodied and psychological space. My research uses drawing in the landscape as a method of collecting a complex variety of perceived

information. This information is combined with sensory subtleties acted upon the body; such as contrast in temperature, light and shade, and atmospheric impacts of rain and wind. Psychologically, shifts in weight 'felt' upon the 'body" through the physical closing and opening of light according to density of vegetation also aligns to the viewing experience in the Orangerie. This disparate but unified collection of experiences is re - membered both on site and in the studio. This approach has been informed through the initial dismantling of the Nymphéas paintings and drawings, locating contrasts, rhythms and punctuation points.

On site and plein air research in Australia and France relied on the portability and scale provided through drawing in sketchbooks, and their ability to capture information quickly; aligning with Monet's practice of carrying a sketchbook. 6

While in contemporary practice, Abstraction has a tendency to be desensitised and codified through digital technology and abstract relationships, practitioners, Spencer Finch, Fabienne Verdier and Lee Kang -So, share a dialogue with Monet and my work. It is one located within an immersive experience of landscape; using 'lived' sensory experience of image and site to transform their experience into a viewing environment through Abstraction.

My research shifts between the Nymphéas as an historical study, review and a re - membering; as reconfiguration. The research methods pivot around the points of entry, both as painting and as physical geography. The sites as landscape are explored as private territories of the maker; both Monet and my own. Landscape is defined as a geographical site of psychological and personal significance to the maker and whether the location is French or

6 The media selected were in part controlled by the museums sketching protocols and the prevailing weather conditions at the time of plein air visits, yet formed a pivotal approach to the research. This was reinforced through historical research and Monet's use of coloured pencil and pastel. 15

Australian landscape is immaterial to this research. Rather it is in the mutable and atmospheric qualities they share. The outcomes as painting and drawing become 'sites' of experience and a record of process.

PART 1 LIVED ENCOUNTER: THE PARIS RESEARCH

CHAPTER 3 My Experience as Viewer and Maker at Musée de l’ Orangerie

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions

Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 3: Claude Monet (1840-1926) Reflections with Willows, (1914-1918), (197cm 425 x2 panels) total size 197cm x850cm Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Image: Wendy Stokes

Figure 4: Claude Monet's Waterlilies exhibition at the Orangerie c. 1930 ARTstor Slide Gallery

Monet may be repositioned within a current context through 'immersion', both in terms of process and creating a sensory viewing experience around

deceleration. Naasgard, suggested that Abstract paintings 'come to life only when we use them as sites, . . . [and] make them events of sensory experience, immersing ourselves in the pleasures and mysteries of sight' (Naasgard 2001, p.6). This engagement with the viewing site and the work is part of the contemplative, slowing down experience. A decade later, Nickas adds, reflecting upon the immediacy of the image in our mobile digital age, 'that [abstraction] can be seen as a antidote' (Nickas 2010, p.7).

Nearly a century earlier, The Nymphéas were installed in Musee de l' Orangerie, Tuilleries, Paris, in1927 (Figure 3 and Figure 4)). Their primary purpose; being to provide an extended and concentrated aesthetic experience, an immersive environment; a site for slowing down aligning to a panoramic immersion in nature (Duchting 2001, p. 26).. In the1880's; when Monet eliminated 'figures as a romantic reflection of the sublime, he [began] to make the connection with his self- identification with the unpeopled extension of nature' (Levine1995, p.42). This develops a double presence both as site and the work as site. In my view, The Nymphéas succeeded and still are an experiential immersive connection to nature, striving to develop a visual syntax providing a contemplative, 'slowing down' experience. This view is further reinforced in a contemporary context through the construction of Chi Chu Art Museum 2004 in Japan.7

Both the horizontally expanded format of the Nymphéas panels and the expansive experience of landscape align with an expanded field of vision and the panorama. Such visual extension presents the need to physically engage by moving along the work to experience it and opens possibilities to explore bodily involvement through shifting experiences. Merleau Ponty wrote of a ‘system of experience’ and the act of seeing as something that is ‘lived’…

7 Tadao Ando designed the Chi Chu Art Museum, a purpose built construction 'as a site rethinking the relationship between nature and people'(Hatakeyama, Miyamoto 2005).It has been designed specifically to house the late work of Claude Monet and contemporary works by Walter de Maria and James Turrell.

'It is by lending [ones] body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings. To understand . . . we must go back to the working, actual body—not the body as a chunk of space or a bundle of functions but that body which is an intertwining of vision and movement' (Edie 1964 cites Ponty, revised Smith1993, p.2).

Viewpoint and physical distance are integral to the experience and reading of the panels. The panels are two metres high and installed, as was Monet's intention, relatively low to the floor (Figure 5). This positions them at human height, which invites the viewer into the intimacy of experience of the work and aligns to Monet's bodily viewpoint looking into or onto the pond (Figure 6).

Figure 5: Studio- Claude Monet poses in the larger studio before the Nymphéas Decorations c. 1920 ARTstor Slide Gallery

Figure 6: photograph of Monet's water lily pond, Giverny 2014, image: Wendy Stokes

In spite of a central seating arrangement in the Orangerie, the panels do not encourage a static experience but rather one which involves the body and eye actively moving along the expanse of the work. Yet, simultaneously as a primary viewing experience the viewer is struggling between points of orientation and 'distances away from the canvas', grappling for cohesion and spatial reading (Fortnum 2004, p.144).8 I refer to this lack of cohesion as friction. How could these attentive acts of seeing and bodily shifts of experience be translated into formal pictorial terms as maker and what purpose would they

8 Fortnum (2004) discusses these notions (independently of Monet) as the Gaze and the Glance, and summarises 'the static viewpoint as the Gaze and that of moving and lack of cohesion, the Glance'.

serve? How would drawing on site inform my understanding of the Nymphéas? Within a few feet the experience becomes sensorial, one is pulled into the subject of paint; qualities of surface and history of the painting. The experience becomes about the 'lived' body, tracing the mark with eye and body, focusing on details of gestural interaction; assessing the rhythm of the brush mark. The materiality of these experiences as viewer assisted an understanding of locating myself within the experience of making, considering punctuation, linear movement and shifting gravities. Rosand proposed:

'The drawn mark is the record of a gesture . . . the mark invites us to participate in that recollection of its creation [and the] invitation to the viewer, to rehearse the creative gestures in his or her imagination' (Rosand 2002, p.2). It becomes an act of engagement.

When reading the panels as individual images it seems clear that Monet’s obsession and frustration was attempting to create unity between the surface, reflected surface and the water below the surface. As a way of grappling 'for cohesion', my research considered visually extracting the layers of colour and mark and re- member them. This became a key process in my research.

Figure 7: Wendy Stokes, Fieldwork Sketchbook 20108cm x 25 cm, adapted from Claude Monet (1840-1926) Green Reflections (1914-18), 197cmx 847cm Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

My Orangerie sketchbooks explored several approaches, pivoting around intuitive response, visual and bodily orientation and frictional notations of

representation.9 My original sketches (Figure 7), in coloured pencil and crayon loosely paralleled the colour areas from the panels. In order to record the works and to provide a point of orientation I had to comes to terms with the expansive format. As a reference point I considered the edges of the panels and where they joined. I began by visually dividing the expansive spaces and using a colour or pencil band as a formal division (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Wendy Stokes, Page from1st sketchbook 2010, adapted from Claude Monet, Two Willows with Clouds and Morning with Willows, (1914-26), Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. 20cmx30cm

Working in a similar process, (Figure 9b), I noted colour areas as a formal proposition and recorded the visual tracing of the mark. In some panels the gesture was disrupted at the joins while near the edges the gestural residues remained on the bare ground, uncropped by the framing (Figure 10a and 10b). Other sketches focussed on the lineal floating of the gestures across the paper trying to capture the rhythm and movement of colour across the surface. They attempted to create an equilibrium between static areas of colour and the calligraphic marks which punctuated either representational elements or more active areas of colour (Figure 9a and Figure 9c).

9 Titles are not exhibited with the works, nor did I include them in my sketchbook at the time. I included the titles at a later date to provide reference for the research. 21

Figure 9 a b c: Wendy Stokes, Fieldwork Musée de l’Orangerie sketchbooks 2010, adapted from Claude Monet Clouds (1914-26), Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. 20cmx30cm

A few studies dismantled the panels from a more literal point of view. They considered the consistent placement of the lily motif, the repetition of the circular lily pad forms and the open areas of dense cobalt blue and viridian green which linked their way across the expanse of canvas.

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Figure10a: Claude Monet detail panel join, Green Reflections, (1914-26), Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

Figure10b: Claude Monet (1840-1926), Sunset (1914-26) 197cm x600cm, detail lower right corner, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. image: Wendy Stokes

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FigureRefer 11a :to Claude List of figures/Monet (images1840-1926 ) Bright Morning (1914-26) detail lower r corner, Musee de l' Orangerie, Paris.

Figure: 11b Wendy Stokes, Fieldwork sketch orientations edges and joins, 2010 adapted from Claude Monet, Bright Morning (1914-18), Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. 20cmx30cm

Depending on the body's position when viewing the panels, space and image are translated differently. Claude Monet's Bright Morning (1914-18) appears to be painted from different viewpoints and this tends to be evident when considering the works as separate panels. This suggests one panel may have been painted before the other at a different time. Also, the lack of 'finished' painting at the edges, (Figure 11a), different orientations of the panels, particularly the right panel, and an opening out of central space became ongoing points of reference (Figure11b). Some studies explored directional marks especially the vertical networks, while others were about my own 'way in' to express an affective resonance of site.

Additionally, eliminating the pond edges removed the grounding reference as in Claude Monet's Reflections with Willows (1914-26) (Figure 3).Here another dimension occurs. When viewing the work the image dissolves into itself in a harmonious low tone of red and blue violets and reads differently depending on the shift and intensity of light filtering into the room and the body's position (Figure 12).

Figure 12: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork sketch 20cmx30cm, 2010, adapted from Claude Monet (1840- 1926) Reflections with Willows (1914-26), Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. 8cmx25cm

My findings through the Orangerie fieldwork sketches present qualities which are light and open. Stuckey (1984, p. 370) noted, 'the instantaneity that [Monet] wanted was first of all a principle of harmonious unity; the permeation of the entire scene with an identical quality of light and colour.' This aspect is referred to as l ‘enveloppe. I interpret this as an experience, as an opening out of space experientially. Monet appeared to achieve this opening out through the equal values, continuous layering, scumbling and calligraphic gestures. My findings were about opening up space behind the marks which began from an intuitive reaction emerging post Monet, from automatism.

In offering these different viewpoints the Orangerie panels were also suggestive of movement through time; through the time lapses in the resolution of the work and the initial positions adopted from the original studies in the Musee Marmottan. They are images in flux, moments of perception and suggest re- orientating themselves, within a conceptual framework of sensory impression, experience and immersion. When reviewed through these contructs, the Nymphéas may be revived within a contemporary context, as 'site', one for 'slowing down' through 'lived body' encounters.

CHAPTER 4

In Context: Monet's Studies and Sketchbooks in The Musee Marmottan Monet

How could my experiences as recordings and notations be applied to interpreting landscape through Abstraction? While Monet's Orangerie panels became acts of painting in their own right they were originally informed through studies and a small grouping of sketchbooks. Monet made hundreds of painted studies based on his Nymphéas pond which served as fragments or researches into 'knowing' his subject (Rey, Rouart, 2008). A substantial holding of these are housed in the Musee Marmottan, Paris and provided valuable insights into Monet's 'making' and my own. 10 The Marmottan research also assisted establishing relationships between the studies and the Orangerie panels.11

Monet's painted studies assisted unfolding the spatial evolution within the panels. Briefly summarising the Marmottan findings; as changing viewpoints and raising of horizon; through raising the location of the Japanese bridge until it was abandoned entirely. Some studies too, dealt with the edge of the pond, those abandoning it or looking across and down onto the pond. These shifts of viewpoint in Monet's studies perhaps are not solely attributed to these physical barriers or edges but an assimilation of these references in Monet's growing and extensive Japanese print collection.12 Forge (1984, p. 98) highlights 'the unorthodoxy's of composition and 'skewed perspective' in Japanese prints have provided compositional direction to experiment with'. However, from 'walking' the coastal terrain where Monet frequented and painted numerous works in the 1880's, my experience suggests Monet's 'lived' experiences also pre-empted

10 Solid representations of these were shown at National Gallery Victoria, 2012, Monet's Garden, and facilitated consistent research.

11 Kendall (2007, p.260-271)) has made a comparative study which focuses more on sketches correlating to singular paintings rather than the Orangerie installation .

12 My experience as primary research made this determination however images as evidence are reinforced through Aitken and Delafond (2003).

these shifts in perspective, viewpoint and scale. 13 My lived research (Figure 13), further suggests, many compositional devices employed in Monet's drawings and paintings from the ocean sites also pre-empt the later Nymphéas, which become a synthesis of these approaches and further contributed to an immersive experience (see Appendix A i.B i).14

Figure 13: top row: Monet's pond at Giverny and bottom row: Monet's viewpoints at Étretat, 2014 images: Wendy Stokes

13 Notes were taken on this visit and referenced against the images in the Wildenstein volumes 1-4 in Paris.

14 I noted however, contrary to the asymmetry Stuckey(1984)and Spate(2001) refer, my research found that most of the Orangerie Nymphéas panels tended to be constructed on a symmetrical axis further emphasising the body's location at the centre of the experience(see Appendix A ii). 26

It is from these findings that my research suggests too Monet's spatial configurations were a synthesis of memory and lived experience, rather than direct observation of the present. These findings further reinforce when the body as figure is removed from the work, the body is within the landscape as part of it rather than as viewer and re connects to the immersive experience of the Nymphéas installation.

Valuable insight into the links to the garden site was also indicated through the residues and acts of painting. However a visual friction occurred through the character of the gestures. If considering Fortnum's argument when viewing a painting; the pond, clouds and lilies as subject, interrupt the paint surface introducing a 'lack of cohesion'(Fortnum 2004, p.144). This became a distraction from the energy within their execution; the lyrical mark making and repetitive brushwork (Figure 14a). The works returned to the frictional representational references to nature.

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Figure 14a 14b: Claude Monet (1840-1926) detail incomplete studies, Water liliies Inv 5164 (1916- 19) ; (1917-1919) oil on canvas(full size)150cm x197cm and Inv 5118, oil on canvas 110cm x300cm Musée Marmottan,Paris

The Marmottan studies demonstrate too that a gestural colour notation was freshly executed predominantly with broad linear strokes upon the open white ground of the canvas (Figure 14b). It was upon this initial gestural framework that Monet developed his complex web of loose brush marks or colour fields. These lineal painted gestures suggests a parallel location to drawing and also

bear a direct relation to Monet's pastel Étretat (Figure15 )and his sketchbooks; reconnecting to Rosand and ones invitation to participate in 'making'.

Figure 15: Claude Monet (1840-1926), The Cliff at Étretat, c. 1885 (pastel), Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images 21cmx37cm

Monet's sketchbooks, present as lived documents to the rhythms of nature.15 Such rhythms are expressed through quick gestural lineal notations (Figures 16 and 17). Mirbeau indicated 'all life, all movement, all modelling is contained in a line' (Mirbeau, 1907, cited in Spate 2001, p.206). My archival research of Monet's Nymphéas sketches focused on the willows, pond and lilies; all of which demonstrated lineal drawing as contour and the qualities within the vacancy of paper.

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Figure 16: Claude Monet(1840-1926 ) sketchbook Weeping Willow (purple pencil on paper), Wildenstein D 118; sketchbook inv. no 5128 fol. 15v; carnet de dessins; crayon violet; study for left panel of 'Trois Saules'. 23.5cmx 31.5cm

15 The studies and the remaining panels not included in the Orangerie suite were left in the Giverny studio after Monet's death and only much later in the 1950's sold to institutions . The studies and sketchbooks were bequeathed to the Musee Marmottan by the sole remaining heir Michel Monet in 1966.

Figure 17: Claude Monet (1840-1926) sketchbook Nymphéas (pencil on paper), Waterlilies; Wildenstein D 347; sketchbook inv. no 5129 fol. 8v; carnet de dessins 23.5cmx 31.5cm (each page) accessed 11/07/15 Bridgeman Images

The themes and sketches in Monet's sketchbooks are randomly located with some images overdrawn with an entirely new image in a new time frame; for example, the reflections of poplars underneath in (Figure 18). It is suspected this was not a conscious decision but one of convenience, yet for me opened pictorial possibilities of superimposing drawings and paintings over time. Another observation lay in the transfer of the fluidity of line from Monet's pencil drawings of the willows to the painted mark embodying a more literal interpretation and the gesture becomes more static (Figure19). This shift is later carried across mediums in my fieldwork drawings discussed in Chapter 7.

Figure 18: Claude Monet (1840-1926 )Saule pleureur au bassin de Giverny; Wildenstein D 351; sketchbook inv.no 5129 fol.11v and 12r; carnet de dessins; drawn on older drawings; Weeping willow, Giverny pond (pencil on paper))sketchbook 6 pp 22-23 W#D351 wax crayon over pencil, Musee Marmottan, Paris. 23.5cmx 31.5cm (each page)

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Figure 19: Claude Monet, (1840-1926) Weeping Willow and the Waterlily Pond, 1916-19 (detail of 182047) (oil on canvas) 200x180 cm / Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris, France

My archival research makes particular reference to the willows reflections on to the pond where a serial process is also evident. This process suggests ways of finding and knowing through drawing as rehearsal and is evident in (Figure20) where the line becomes rhythmic, echoing the movement in the willow fronds and the shifting light.16

The lineal style of drawing Monet adopted in his sketchbooks is rather consistent throughout. Generally, as an observation, they appear quick notations on site and reflect repetition of contours. However what becomes evident (Figure 21and 22) is that the line weight varies across the paper to provide emphasis. Later investigation suggests, in these images featuring the waterlilies that perhaps Monet was drawing without taking the pencil off the paper and may indicate he was looking at his subject rather than the actual drawing (Figure 21). What suggests this conclusion is that the line is continuous and looping. In

16 From my visit to the Giverny site it is probable to suggest that Monet made the reflective studies in one session trying to capture the shifts in reflections and a slight change in viewpoint. 30

several of Monet's sketches the horizon line disappears and the focus becomes the lilies. This provides a pivotal reading in that the paper becomes the water surface rather than a background foreground composition. This finding begins to align with an eastern sensibility, one creating another spatial reading through the reserve of the paper surface (Cheng1994) (Figure 21 and 22).

Figure 20: Claude Monet (1840-1926) sketchbook Reflets de saules pleureur et Nymphéas; Waterlilies; Wildenstein D 350; sketchbook inv. no 5129 fol. 10v and 11r; carnet de dessins; drawn on older drawings 23.5cmx 31.5cm (each page) Bridgeman Images

Figure 21: Claude Monet(1840-1926) sketchbook 6 p 34 -35 , c1914-1919 W # D357 waterlily pond waterlilies; Wildenstein D 357; sketchbook inv. no 5129 fol. 17v and 18r; carnet de dessins. 23.5cmx 31.5cm (each page) Bridgeman Images

The findings from my Orangerie sketchbook were notations, articulating light through spatial qualities of the paper and shifting weights through the experience of line. Monet's sketches are best evaluated as private notations of idea, rather than an end point for an audience which is what makes them so

interesting. 17 However, it has been through this research that one gains access to 'making' and understanding via process. My on site Giverny research (Figure 23) tested a retracing of these sketchbook findings and through drawing became a place of 'knowing' through active participation as maker (See Appendix A iii).

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Figure 22: Claude Monet (1840-1926 )detail top right side p 35 sketchbook 6 p 35 23.5cmx 31.5cm c1914-1919 W # D357 waterlily pond waterlilies; Wildenstein D 357; sketchbook inv. no 5129 fol. 17v and 18r; carnet de dessins.

Figure 23: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork Sketch, retracing site: Giverny, 2014, coloured pencil on A3 Canson paper 30cm x 42cm

17 Kendall (2007 p.119) indicated 'the majority of Monet's pastels were conceived as extensions of his pictorial repertoire, parallel representations of the visible world with their technical and imaginative history... and that, 'the pastels are separate independent works, not preliminary studies '.

Although the initial focus of the archival drawing research were the sketchbooks I was also drawn to an early Monet pastel, Étretat, circa 1885, from his coastal excursions (Figure15 p.28). This opened up the 'material' substance of drawing. While Monet's sketchbooks were about line, his pastels were translations of broad areas of colour. It is also from the pastel that one can determine the shift from the drawing into a linear gestural response as paint in the Nymphéas decades later.

CHAPTER 5 The Nymphéas and the Studio Research: Pivotal Directions

i. Toward the unified field

Informed through these experiences, my research attempts to abandon Monet's literal landscape referential of motif and explore the subjective qualities of colour and mark to interpret and initiate a ‘field of experience'. On return to Australia, the research used specific panels, as armatures for a series of spatial investigations.18 Monet's (1840-1926), Green Reflections (Figure 24), became the first entry point. 19

Figure 24: Claude Monet (1840-1926) Green Reflections (1914-18), Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. 197cm x 847 cm; Bridgeman Images

As discussed when in the Orangerie, in order to read the 'natural view’, the viewer is required to retreat and move to the other side of the room. However, a more interesting reading is presented within two to three metres. Using Green Reflections as an example, the field of vision is too vast to read the work as a literal image. The viewer becomes drawn in by areas of colour where the patches of cobalt blue and viridian green operate anonymously as marks and hover rhythmically across the expanse of surface (Figure 25). This lack of cohesion is only temporary as one attaches the eye to the calligraphic mark of

18 My study commenced with the first panel which focused entirely on reflection, offering the most potential into Abstraction. A different grouping perhaps may have provided alternative outcomes. Sunset is often referred as the most abstract but I refrained from making the panel a focus of study as my visit to Giverny indicated it was in many ways the most representational. The Two Willows also did not become a focus in this research.

19 It was the first painting Monet donated to the state for the celebration, Armistice Day WW1 and the precursor to the extended donations which would be intended for the Orangerie. Originally it had been intended to be donated to Musee de artes des Decoratif (Forge). The early Nympheas commenced in 1899 and the specific panels for the gift commenced in1914. 34

a lily pad, which then creates anchor points across the canvas. As the lily pad mark draws the eye and mind back to the burden of recognition and representation, an area of visual and critical friction arises.

Figure 25: Claude Monet (1840-1926) Green Reflections detail, left section (1914-18) Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris. Credit: De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images

Figure 26: Wendy Stokes, detail Study1/3, painted ground, 2011, acrylic wash and oil stick on Fabriano paper, 3x 112cm x 84cm

Spatially, Green Reflections demonstrates the elimination of sky as reflection. The viewpoint is at the pond and the reflections of willow fronds. In formal terms, if the literal motif of the lilies is removed from the image, and the eye allows them as marks to act as punctuation points across the work they draw the eye, up and down and across as a compositional tool. They provide a resting place for the eye against the vigorous vertical brushstrokes in cobalt blue and viridian green which are suggestive of the willow reflections. Apart from the gestural energy within the vertical structures of mark it is by the visual competition between these closely valued hues, which begins to unify and fuse the space.

I made 3 studies based on these observations (Figure 26). The primary aim was to create a unified field by avoiding a distinct focal point, allowing the vertical brushstrokes and marks, as colour and stroke, to punctuate and energise the field; while simultaneously closing up the space. The work explored how mark

and colour can sit right in front of you and how the surface pushes the eye out again. These studies while meeting my aim were too dense, closing in the space, rather than opening it out and interpreting a field of immersion, of actively moving back and forth.

Another study (Figure 27) explored developing a field where the eye would have difficulty gaining supremacy from either colour as area and colour as mark. Other considerations were to create shifting passages of movement; firstly, anchored through using static form or vertical mark and secondly, through broad brush marks, to utilise the repetitive placement as in Green Reflections. This study further reinforced my observations of shifts in pace in the mark between Monet's sketches and his painted studies. The emphasis on the vertical in both colour areas and mark in my studies kept them hovering and sliding at the front of the picture plane. This was another way of unifying the field, incorporating both the equal values of Green Reflections and energy of the mark.

Figure 27: Wendy Stokes, Study 2 in Blue, detail 4 panels of 6, 2011, acrylic and oistick on Fabriano paper 112cm x 84cm

However, the open ground of the paper initiated the movement just as much as the crayon gestural marks. A visual experience is established where the eye is unable to settle on foreground or background at a different time for long. It does not rest into flatness and the eye moves in and out of the space but to no fixed point. The very nature of retaining the ground of the paper opened up a new direction which conveyed more about the experience of space while still operating within a unified field.

ii. Two propositions: space and light, closing and opening; Clouds and Bright Morning

Two distinctly different panels, Clouds and Bright Morning (Figure 28) and (Figure 33) hang opposite each other in the first room of the Orangerie. These panels were considered as separate propositions to open possibilities of dealing with space and concepts leading toward the Modernist surface.

Figure 28: Claude Monet (1840-1926), Clouds (1914-18) 197cm x (3 panels 197cm x 426cm) total size 197cm x1275cm, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Bridgeman Images

Clouds presented a 'lack of cohesion' through abandoning perspective, which created spatial disorientation. The sky is reflected onto the pond, and the pond as a mirror, becomes the motif. What happens at this point is that the boundaries of landscape between sky and water are fused and the image begins to operate as a flattened picture plane and colour field (Figure29). However, rather than the eye moving along the work the eye logically attempts to moves inward via the narrative of subject matter suggested by the darkened areas framing the composition. Contradiction arises in that the eye is pushed outward. Space could be described as what one looks through or behind yet the space seemed to stop at the surface, it becomes compressed. My research suggests too that the seeds for Monet's evolving process of sky as reflection may have been due to his en plein air coastal experiences with his early mentor Eugene Boudin (Figure 30) and expanded upon in Appendix B. i. and ii.

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Figure 29: Claude Monet (1840-1926) Clouds, (1914-18) detail central panel lower central section, Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris. image: Wendy Stokes

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Figure 30: Eugene Boudin (1824-1898) Cloud studies, Musee Malraux, le Havre, image: Wendy Stokes 2014

Reviewing my observations and sketches from location at the Orangerie, space and image are translated differently. In Bright Morning, (Figure 33), Monet continued to flatten the space and remove the horizon but offered another variation of spatial friction, a shifting and re arranged viewpoint. These mixed viewpoints suggested a possibility of a Cubist notion, the juxtaposition of different viewpoints in the one image presenting a combination of flatness and

pictorial space. Rather than presenting it as an argument to be proved it was utilised as a compositional device.20

Working initially through the research using sketchbooks, line presented as a primary approach (Figure 31). At this point it could be argued that line as painted gesture was as integral to Monet's process as colour. Expanding this argument (Figure 32) became a synthesis, concentrating on pulling forward colour as gestures toward the surface. The focus was a magnification of gesture, monopolising and confronting the space it occupies. This suggested the Modernist reading of surface as a site of painting (Gibson 2001, p.117).

Figure 31: Wendy Stokes, Fieldwork A5 sketchbook, adapted from Claude Monet (1840-1926), Clouds, Musee d l' Orangerie, Paris 14cm x 42cm

Figure 32: Wendy Stokes, detail, Colourfield experiment, 2011acrylic on canvas 80cmx120cm

Synthesising the findings from my blue studies (Figure27), informed by Green Reflections and Clouds, the research considered the surface as a flat field in Modernist terms. This approach showed how the shifting marks, gestures and

20 Perhaps the time lapse between Monet reworking his configurations resulted in these viewpoints rather than a concept he was exploring.

coloured patches create their own hovering, optical effect and present a way forward to compressing but activating the space with colour and mark. 21

Figure 33: Claude Monet (1840-1926) Bright Morning,(1914-18) Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris each outer panel 212.5cm and 2 central panels 1.97cm x4.25cm,total size 197cm x1275cm Bridgeman Images

Figure 34: Claude Monet (1840-1926) detail central panel Bright Morning, (1914-18) Musee de l' Orangerie, Paris, image: Wendy Stokes

Another approach to the colour passages is applied in Bright Morning, where ultramarine brushstrokes weave their way across the expanse of water surface, hinting at acts of writing (Figure 34). These notations of colour both unify and activate the surface as a field, and, as a lineal treatment perhaps suggest

21 There are a select few of Monet's loose leaf drawings in crayon which utilise softly tinted grounds and in doing so narrow the distance between the image and ground. I made studies with tinted grounds and elected to eliminate from the paper as they closed the spatial distance rather than open it. 40

borrowings from the detailed lineal cutting in Monet's Japanese print collection (Figures 35 and 36). 22

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Figure 35: Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865) Picture of Abalone Fishing, early 1830s (woodblock print) Cat No 91. 27.4cmx40cm

Figure 36: Toyokuni, Utagawa (1769-1825) Three Women on a Boat Fishing by Lamplight (woodblock print) Cat No 83 36.3cmx76cm Bridgeman Images

As a further contradiction, Bright Morning, presented as one of the most representational panels in the cycle; and for this reason I did not gravitate to this work initially. However, because of this very observation as a ' landscape', I used it as a marker; a 'way into' landscape as a site to respond to. Interpreting

22 Spate (2001, p.p 1-63) makes suggestions of possible influences of Japan on Monet's work and suggests that the 'observation of Japanese painting could have made him aware of a visibly abstract calligraphy"(p31). My lived experiences suggest Monet's involvement with nature, and his need for rapid execution also had a strong bearing on his mark. 41

my Orangerie research sketches (Figure 37), I determined that it was in the spaces which were of interest and the relationships set up between them. Additionally , Bright Morning as a literal image presented a sensitive opening out of space in the blue central passages against the density at the panel's boundaries; alluding to the opening up of light. This suggested a resonance of an Australian space; my connection with ocean, expanse and light, proposing possibilities for interpreting immersive experience.

Figure 37: Wendy Stokes, top Orangerie research sketches 2010, and later response A5 sketchbooks 2012, 20cm x30cm and 14.8cm x42cm

My research (Figure 37 and 38a, 38b, 38c) determined that the unpainted surface or open ground became integral to developing the spatial language. I saw part of the way there may be in the spatial distance between the marks and their configuration, whether spreading out, closing in on itself or through a uniformity in positioning. My aim was to locate the tempo of affective response, losing points of reference yet attempting an equilibrium in focus. My emphasis concentrated on removing the motif and attempting to work through elements of abstraction to locate an experience of immersion; as in landscape.

I was seeking a 'way' in that reflects an experience of opening space; to allow one to wander back and forth, in an out between the shifts in colour.

Figure 38a: Wendy Stokes, Response Bright Morning, 2011, acrylic on Canson paper152cm x320cm

Figure 38b: Wendy Stokes, Response, Bright Morning, acrylic on academia 2012, 70cm x 500cm Figure 38c: Wendy Stokes, Response Bright Morning, 2011, acrylic on paper, 80cmx112 cm 1/4

CHAPTER 6 Monet and Contradictions Toward the Modernist Surface

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Figure 39a: left Claude Monet (1840-1926) detail Clouds, (1914-18) Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris image: Wendy Stokes

Figure 39b: right Wendy Stokes, detail, colour and field experiment, Musée de l’Orangerie 2014 pastel on Fabriano paper30cmx30cm

Figure 40a and b: the Nymphéas garden, Giverny 2014, images: Wendy Stokes

When Monet's late paintings were finally acquired for the MoMA, New York; Monet was re-evaluated in formal terms in the context of Modernist Abstraction and U.S. Abstract Expressionism. At this point 'Monet's establishment of the surface of the painting as the location of meaning made him modern'(Figure 39a), (Gibson 2001, p.117 cites Hess p.p 42, 53).23 Wilson goes further to outline:

23 Rose adds( 2006,p. 27) 'The elimination of the horizon line and the occupation of the total field of vision [were] the beginning of the progressive eclipse of the distance between the subject and 44

‘late modernist painting, as it was understood by critics such as Clement Greenberg, dictated visual art should confine itself exclusively to what is given in visual experience and make no reference to anything given in any other order of experience' (Wilson 2002, p.24).

However, contradictions arise in that Monet was not deliberately setting out to arrive at Abstraction and deny space but instead, adhere to what he observed and his ‘sensations'. My fieldwork visit to Giverny (Figure 40a and b), made it very clear, the Nymphéas water garden, as Monet's physical space, was intimate in comparison to landscape as vista, and the physical nature of his subject was compressed through the dense vegetation surrounding the pond. Considering motif as air, light, and reflections from the sky onto the pond another contradiction arises; Monet's subject was intangible and when translated into painting as a surface, the actual paintings rejected space physically and visually (Figure 39a); they were opaque and impervious.

Another proposition suggests when all the painted space becomes as important as the object; when the areas of close valued hues unify the surface; it closes the ground and the space becomes almost impenetrable as evident in my fieldwork study (Figure 39b). Rose suggests through this unification, a link to the 'monochrome'. 24 This treatment of the surface suggests one of the key arguments Clement Greenberg used for the shallow space inherent in his theories on Modernist abstraction (Wilson 2002, p. 24). However, when the coloured areas resist the reading as object, they operate as a condensation of marks activating the space, for example, the red and pink lilies become a lineal introduction and float across the surface anchoring and punctuating the compositions.

object that characterizes large-scale post Cubist abstraction such as the paintings of Newman and Rothko'.

24 (Rose,2006, p21), The Monochrome painting had its beginnings in a Eurocentric sense in the early 20th century and is often considered an experience of the metaphysical and they merge in the first true monochrome paintings by Kazmir Malevich. Rose suggests however a link to Monet's early winter scapes as precursor. (Maloon 2011, p .111) adds that ' Malevich acknowledges Monet and draws an analysis which was akin ‘to woven textiles- faultlessly integrated and unified'. 45

Evaluating these interpretations and my observations from the Marmottan studies (Figure41a), I made small studies approaching the works in what Stuckey refers to as 'particles of information [that} are arranged on basically flat surfaces . . . physically removed from the real tangible objects to which they correspond '(Stuckey 1984, p.114). The research worked through a sequence of sketches exploring the mark upon the surface and found as the marks became more open they animated the surface spatially (Figure 41 b and c) .

Figure 41 a: Claude Monet, (1840-1926) Waterlilies with Reflections of a Willow Tree, Inv 5099 (1916-19) (oil on canvas), Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, France, Bridgeman Images, 131cmx 155cm

Figures 41 b and c: Wendy Stokes 2 sketchbook studies adapted from above, in coloured pencil in situ Musee Marmottan, Paris 2010 30cmx30cm

It appeared at this point in the research, that retaining the ground of the paper or canvas to activate the space provided a contradiction to Monet's condensed, compressed surface. My approach, in contrast, working in strokes and gestures to separate them, may share connections to Cézanne's later watercolours through the active engagement with the reserve of the ground for example, my Response, Bright Morning, Figures 38b and Figure 38c in preceding chapters and (Appendix C. i).25 It also shares similarities with that of eastern landscape painting and what Cheng (1994, p.77) refers, as fragmentary suggestions and incomplete structures. The research therefore identified a problem, the closed Modernist surface critiqued as a U. S. legacy from Monet was stopping an immersive experience. I questioned how to find a way through the location of marks to open up the experiential aspect without it

25 Although acknowledged as a possible path to research I saw Cezanne firmly grounded in a geological structure rather than an experiential one like Monet

becoming an exercise in formalist painting. A major part of this process as research, led to the place of gesture as mark in sketchbooks. My initial Orangerie sketches and their spatial properties inherent in the natural paper surface led me to develop a strategy of working with the paper and canvas as reserve, allowing the space to be porous and open.

Figure 42: Wendy Stokes studio 2011coloured pencil in A5 sketchbook 14.8cm x 42cm

Further, if Monet's 'acts of writing' across the water surface are pared down and the layers of marks separated, an aerated quality and rhythm of gesture is revealed. This too could perhaps be an indicator for my own experience of Australian light and space (Figure 42), one that demands an opening out rather than closing in of space or atmosphere. It is this lyric gesture and unpainted space that attracted me to the relationship this bears with the light and air in the Australian landscape and to the critical rupture between a Greenbergian non referent to external subject and nature with its own forces and sense of tempo. Abstraction re- opened the surface.

PART 2 MY PLEIN AIR EXPERIENCE: AUSTRALIA

CHAPTER 7 Bringing the Modernist Findings to Landscape

i. Knowing through process

Figure 43: Wendy Stokes, Coastal field, 2012 acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 183cm x 760cm polyptych

In what ways could the Nymphéas findings facilitate 'knowing' and understanding landscape? It was becoming clear that it involved a philosophical position as much as a formal one. What role would drawing and painting have as part of this process?

My research had to come to terms with the rather divergent dialogues contributing to the Modernist surface as 'site' in Abstraction. As argued, for Monet, the problem was never about moving from figuration to abstraction; his work was firmly set within the realist myth and nature. This positions the research within Andrew's definition of landscape as an embodied experience of environment and an experience of nature as a changing organism (Andrews 1999 p 179). Philosophically, this further entwines with Ponty and 'lived' body interpretations. Furthermore, Duchting highlighted:

'that Monet’s blending of nature as the referential and the abstract elements of colour and gesture tended to be his critical undoing during 48

the Monet revival of the 1950’s. The artists rejected the reference to nature as . . . romantic'(2002, p.117). (See Appendix C ii).

However Nickas argues for pictures in the 21st century which are hybridised, 'create bridges between representation and abstraction'. . . Abstraction can be thought of as the 'filter’ through which the recognizable passes and is transformed' (Nickas 2010, p.11).

Alternatively, if one considers non western perspectives, for example, contemporary Korean monochrome abstract painting, Bloemink (2008)emphasises that the crucial difference is the link to nature and its immersive potential as opposed to the immaterial. As Fenner (2004, n.p) too, points out 'contemporary Australian Indigenous painting is strong as a contemporary art image and it is often viewed through contemporary Abstraction' in spite of its cultural heritage and being of the land, (see Appendix C iii). 26 If one considers an Australian perspective of landscape, Snell (2011, p.10) argues the point in Indigenous painting that the horizon is often removed and suggests that 'they [Indigenous artists] stand in and live in their country'. This again returns to Monet's Nymphéas, his removal of the horizon, creating an immersive orientation in nature. This finding reopens connections to my own location as maker.

While the research navigated the Nymphéas position toward Abstraction, what was at stake if one negated landscape references and the autobiographical significance of the maker? Could the more humanist element pose more relevance in current Abstraction?27 The very connection to the immersive experience of nature in Monet’s works provided the model to probe these questions.

26 Fenner (2004,) comments on links to the contradictory nature of Indigenous painting as abstraction.

27 Naasgard (2001, p .10 cites Halley 1997 p.28) "that current abstract art… is constructed of codified signs employing a highly abstract language of generalised shapes that are completely removed from the representation of the specific.'

Monet was preoccupied with 'knowing' the landscape through immersion in it. Monet made repeated visits to his sites discussed within this paper and they involved walking as part of the process. He repeatedly spoke of his effort to 'merge with nature, and, in a unity of sensation and memory, to achieve a holistic conception and translation of reality into art' (Sagner-Duchting 2001, p27). But how can one visually articulate our experiences of spatial relation within landscape and nature? I returned to the viewing experience of the Nymphéas panels and considered Ponty's awareness of 'being in the world' through our 'lived body'; and Tuan; using the body's relations to space, one determined according to the posture of the body and our relations to objects as we move through space(Tuan 1977,p34). These could propose another way of reading the landscape experience. 28 Locating such connections returned my research to the choreography of the viewer and maker, as one moves by walking along and through the work and space of landscape rather than the installation.

It then became clear through my daily walking ritual; the physical space I was dealing with was immense rather than confined like Monet’s Giverny lily pond. I was responding to sensations as I was moving or passing through the landscape each day; not always from a fixed vantage point. In my terms compared to Monet, there was no horizon or grounding, the sky fuses with the water and becomes immersive; the sky is not just in front of you, it is above and around. By adopting these shifting positions and pulling the areas of colour from all around reinforces the all encompassing, which returns to Monet's enveloppe of light. Walking in the landscape before drawing and painting it as an interpretation, returns to an eastern trajectory; its link to landscape as a source for distillation of an immersive experience of nature. French artist, Fabienne Verdier reiterates her immersive eastern experiences of landscape among Chinese landscape masters and her European mis location of perception and view. She comments:

28 Yi-Fu Tuan(1977, p. 34) expands at length, the human body whether upright or prone, static or moving and considers the spatial relations to human beings; however I have applied this to the bodily relation to landscape as 'lived body'. 50

' when you were in front of a beautiful landscape you had to let it enter you and become part of you and wait until it has been reduced to its essence before ever thinking of drawing or painting it' (Peppiatt cites Verdier, 2013,p. 6).

Figure 44: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork sketchbooks A5 2011- 2012 14.4cm x42cm and 20cmx60cm

Plein air sketchbooks (Figure 44) became an extensive exploratory tool interrogating both strategies. While walking facilitated familiarity within the site, the process of sitting and working in sketchbooks created a 'way in' as a 'slowing down', a process of seeing. Using the formal findings as spatial strategies in direct reference to Monet's Bright Morning and Clouds, and the Marmottan studies towards Abstraction; I tested them in terms of re thinking and remembering landscape interpretation. The outcome, Coastal field (Figure 43, p.48) became an immersive experience of landscape in terms of no specific boundary but a continuum, without a horizon, dealing with space without demarcation.

ii. Critical friction, hybrid slippage, rhythms of nature

While the previous panels discussed in Chapter 5, opened the way toward Abstraction and a modernist surface, Claude Monet's Morning with Willows 51

(Figure 45) and Three Willows pulled the work back to a figure ground relationship and Landscape; through the inclusion of willow trunks as a compositional and bracketing device. Monet also relied on the verticality in the calligraphic drawn willow fronds, linking the two images through these devices. This introduction and grounding in such a spatial and landscape device became a critical rupture. My studies (Figure 46 and 47), explored these devices which became cornerstones of pictorial structure in the research, re grounding it within the hybrid zone between Abstraction and Landscape.

Figure 45: Claude Monet (1840-1926) Morning with Willows, (1914-18), 197cm x1275cm Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. image: Wendy Stokes

Monet's gestural mark remained organic in character and suggested it stems from the lineal rhythms of his observation and lived experiences within nature. 29 For example, his brush mark, as a linear gestural stroke recorded the contours of plants, watermarks, the fronds of the willow and their linear reflections in the water, yet without being observationally accurate (Figure 48). This suggests a direction toward the intuitive inherent in the lived experience and again aligns philosophically with an eastern orientation having its grounding in nature, re connecting with the concepts of immersion and 'knowing' the environment.

29 Rouart (2008 p.25) noted that, 'a considerable proportion of the plant kingdom is comprised of flexible, light materials that move in the wind; his [Monet's] work was naturally affected by this process’.

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions

Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 46: Wendy Stokes early coloured pencil sketches adapted from Claude Monet, Clear Morning with Willows 2010, and 2011 20cm x 60cm

Figure 47: Wendy Stokes detail fieldwork sketch2010, adapted from Claude Monet (1840-1926), Morning with Willows, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. 5cmx 10cm

Figure 48: Wendy Stokes adapted study from Claude Monet, study Water lilies Inv 5117 in the Musée Marmottan, 2012 at NGV, Australia 30cm x 20cm

On return to Australia, through plein air on site engagement, the hybrid connection was reflected in both the drawn and painted mark as an anchor to nature, reuniting with the organic quality of Monet's mark. The mark developed through drawing, (Figures 51-56) and synthesised in studio paintings (Figures 49 and 50).

Figure 49: Wendy Stokes, Untitled, 2012, detail 3 of 5 panels,acrylic and oilstick on Fabriano paper

100cm x 70cm each

Figure 50: Wendy Stokes, Vestige 2014, acrylic and oil stick on canvas 152cm x304cm 2 of 5 panels

Ritual became a powerful interpretative tool. My walk as ritual; along the coastal fringe, one which is performed morning and evening on most days of the year, irrespective of the weather has been integral to the immersive experience in my research. Walking involves moving through a space and upon a surface. Russell (2011, p.60), notes Guillemot on Monet's routine walks in his garden, [Monet] ‘observes, contemplates and stores away'. The geography

of my terrain offers multiple perspectives as the body moves through the landscape space; one is able to look down from above, where form and space are compressed, one looks across the ocean as surface, at another moment the edge of the ocean, where the sand becomes surface, porous to the tide; ocean glimpses shift through twisted foliage, headlands dissect the space; sky and ocean merge without an horizon. This aligns to Monet's positioning at the pond but also to his earlier immersive coastal experiences of Étretat. (See Appendix A i).

I found the hybrid correlations valuable and probed different ways to apply them. A concentrated period of fieldwork explored the plein air sketch using graphite, pastel and charcoal. My research experimented with how the mark was made and the focus shifted from fusing the spaces of sky and water alone to an introduction of formal vertical structures as a pictorial tool (Figure 51). While the subject was removing itself more and more from the direction of Abstraction and presenting clear markers from nature and specifics of site, the very material processes were developing from a different place, one dictated through bodily engagement in site(Figure 52 and 53).

Figure 51: Wendy Stokes, Fieldwork on site, Coast, 2012, charcoal and pastel on Stonehenge paper, 35 x100cm

Figure 52 a and b Wendy Stokes, charcoal frottage; walking in landscape 30cm x20cm

Figure 53: Wendy Stokes, 2013, Fieldwork site sketchbook - frottage sequence A5 14.5cm x42cm

A parallel strategy was introduced using plywood as drawing boards. I drew directly on the boards as a recording process; while walking through my site. They were carved out and used both as plates to be relief printed repeatedly and in varying sequences (Figure 54). 30 While exploring process they retained

30 Photographic evidence of Monet's working process reflects multiple configurations of the panels in the studio as part of Monet's working process. In my initial sketches I had divided the panels into smaller components which in turn became a way of managing the extended format canvases. There are also examples in Monet's sketchbooks where he has drawn multiple images over each other on the one page at different points in time. 56

the closed compressed surface of the Nymphéas paintings rather than opening out the space.

Figure 54: Wendy Stokes, Walking drawing, 2013 relief woodblock print on Fabriano paper 1 of 8, 60cm x 90cm

The boards were also used as a base for frottage rubbings engaging with the materiality and organic character of site. An extensive grouping of drawings tested this process from a number of sites (Figure 55). The very process of making involved a range of bodily positioning or posture. Some drawings also involved frottage direct from trees on site, which had a more static grounding effect against the lyrical rhythms of line. These works retained a spatial feel through maintaining the open ground of the paper (Figure 56).

Using characteristics of the multiple offered through printmaking processes the research was able to explore the composite, both for multiple readings of site and blending geographical composites of site. This suggested opportunities for making and also aligned with multiple journeys and composites of memory.

Figure 55: Wendy Stokes, Edge 2012-13, frottage and coloured pencil from cartridge sketchbook 20cm x30cm

Figure 56: Wendy Stokes, Edge 2012-13, frottage and coloured pencil in cartridge sketchbook

20cm x30cm

Figure 57: Wendy Stokes, Mark and Place, the space between, 2013-14 acrylic and oilstick on canvas, each panel 152cm x 152cm configuration variable152cm x 456cm

A key finding was the surface as space, one working in opposition to the Nymphéas heavily encrusted surfaces yet linking with Monet's sketches. The impasto surfaces of Monet's painting become impenetrable and perhaps defeated his aim, but in this defeat opened up the surface as an active surface, a field of painted mark. It releases the image to some extent into a vacant space, that of water; the water becomes filled with marks, unifying the painted surface. My findings, (Figures50, 57), considered too, how the painted mark sat upon or soaked into the surface of the ground. The ground becomes part of the surface and the meaning within the work, providing a habitable space. It functions as both a positive and negative space at different intervals within the work. These findings also established the mark as possessing a psychological gravity.

My research found while the drawings engaged with knowing through process, the studio paintings were a synthesis, translating hybrid readings, spatial readings and surface experiences. They were made from stored, lived experience of immersion in the landscape and its atmosphere.

iii. Engagement with the landscape, residues of action

Critically, as a researcher, entering from the other side of U.S. Abstract Expressionism, 'the canvas began to appear . . . as an arena in which to act. . . [and] what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event'(Shapiro cites Rosenberg 1990, p.76). A point of rupture developed in my research between my plein air hybrid readings as description to that of inner mark; the friction between what is observed as contour and what becomes a subjective translation of space, and colour through the mark (Figure 58). I observed a strong link to the 'act 'of making in Monet's incomplete painting, one which reinforced the gestural act through the body, yet, within this act remained an intimacy, one indicated through the wrist (Figure 59).

Figure 58: Wendy Stokes, Notation II, 2014 acrylic and oilstick on canvas178cm x 650cm

Figure 59: below, Claude Monet, (1840-1926), detail top left corner incomplete study, Water Lilies (1917-1919) Inv 5118, Musée Marmottan, Paris. Bridgeman Images

Tuan asserts that 'an object or place achieves concrete reality when our experience of it is total that is through all the senses as well as with an active and reflective mind' (Tuan 1977, p.18). My lived research (Appendix B i) has suggested physical and sensorial engagement in reaching sites also filtered experience for Monet. Stuckey indicates the weather had a profound impression on Monet's psyche and insists, ‘Spiritually, Monet was a man of nature; not of its objects . . . but of its mysterious processes: storm, wind, rain, fog, darkening and lightening'(1995, p.p 368, 370). Rey further argues that Monet interpreted his environment subjectively, reinforcing that '[Monet's] unprecedented relationship with the components of nature, are no longer treated as forms but intuited as forces'(2008. p. 82). Pivotal 'lived' body experiences are played out by Monet as early as1886. (Levine1994, p.58 cites Maupassant, 1886),'. . . he [Monet] took by handfuls a rainstorm beating down upon the sea and threw it upon the canvas'. Such arguments suggest colour and mark were both subjective and experienced for Monet and reconfigures the reading of landscape. Another often used quote in Monet scholarship is:

'. . . I am mad about the sea; but I well know that truly to paint the sea one has to see her every day, at every hour, and from the same spot in order to know her '(Levine1994, p.63 ); (30 October 1886;L. 731).

However, Levine includes the final text often omitted, 'life just at that spot' (Levine1994, p.63). The word 'life' is crucial in supporting and recognising that the site itself possesses a rhythm of nature and is pivotal to Monet's phenomenological reading and pictorial language; one no longer reliant on light and view alone. 31 This account reinforces that it has been through bodily engagement which mediated his understanding and 'knowing' of his landscapes and consequently have impacted on my own.

31 Kendall's (2004, p. 89) translation however, 'in the same place so that you can understand its ways in that particular spot', suggests more of an understanding through observation rather than felt experience.

Figure 60: Wendy Stokes, Untitled drawing, 2013-14 A5 sketchbook 14.8x42cm

My later sketchbooks (Figure 60) considered the scale and magnification of marks in terms of the distance they were experienced from the Nymphéas panels. Considering too, the spatial dynamic of the body in space, as lived encounters in landscape, the research as painting continued the expanded format and practice of moving along the work, as maker. It paid attention to zones of action. The works (Figures 58 and 61) became records of 'knowing' and acts of memory leaning toward a subjective reading of place, atmosphere and energy of weather.32 A contrast developed between the grand and intimate gesture, and shifts in movement between the slower more static mark against the active fluid drawn marks. Landscape is no longer interpreted as static and is transformed through shifting experiences.

Figure 61: Wendy Stokes, Notations I, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 183cm x 650cm

32 Seitz (1990. p 189-21) notes that Monet's brushstroke, acted 'as [a] barometer to his moods and the reaction to the weather.

PART 3 JOURNEY AND RETURN X 2: FRANCE, FLUID GEOGRAPHIES

CHAPTER 8 The Nymphéas as Landscape

'One comes to understand and to know a landscape through movement within it, and often one comes to understand and know a landscape as a landscape through the journey 'there and back again' that one takes from one landscape to another-from the familiar to the strange and from the strange to the familiar. . . '(Malpas 2011, p.18).

Figure 62a: Giverny pond 2014 and Figure 62 b, c: my childhood location rural NSW: images Wendy Stokes

The journey between the French sites presented psychological and visual connections which was unpredicted. I also became interested in the ocean sites of Monet's youth offering insights and connections to my Australian sites on the Pacific Coast.

Where my earlier research was engaged with locating pictorial strategies toward a modernist surface, later testing the research as an interpretation of landscape through Abstraction, the latter French experience presented differently. The Nymphéas as images were now familiar; however they were images of landscapes. They were records of Monet's embodied experience of his landscape. This provided new frames of reference, both in critical terms and psychological positioning. The research shifted to Monet's landscape, Giverny (Figure 62a).

Figure 63: Fieldwork, Giverny 2014, image: Wendy Stokes

I made several trips to Giverny over the three months of my Paris residency involving thirteen visits to the garden (Figure 63). The site was an experience of landscape but how was I to navigate 'knowing' this site as landscape.33 Mitchell

33 Each trip involved early morning and evening visits providing private extended time of immersion in the garden. It became about coming to know the site and being in it as Monet may have been. The research uses the Nympheas garden loosely and it incorporates the garden surrounding the pond across the road from the house. The research does not discuss the large more formal layout in the front central flower garden in front of Monet's house. Although the landscape is a constructed space it remains an organic one. 64

defines landscape as 'a medium of exchange between the human and the natural, the self and the other' (Andrews cited Mitchell 1999, p.15). The site visits clarified my observations in the panels relating to spatial reading, varying viewpoints and releasing reflection into vertical mark. These findings became a scaffold to reopen the ground.

The body of drawing as research became a dismantling of site and returning to place of memory (Figures 62 b and c). The Giverny pond is longer than it is wide. It is really a creek with lilies on it and one must ask why it is so different to my Australian lily pond or creek? It is not, but it holds the weight of the legacy behind it. For me the site became about association, memory and loss. I asked how to make something out of it, that was my own experience. Landscape maybe defined as an environment which is 'the current field of significance for a living being' (Andrews 1999, p.193). The willows within the garden, the original four possessed a strength and quality which grabbed my attention, uneven, twisted, gnarly, and far from perfect. Was this an Australian attraction and a psychological link to my childhood memories and garden? For me the poplars bordering a creek beyond the garden boundary became familiar as did the entire garden. This was as much about Monet as a resonance with my own experiences of Australian childhood. Trying to understand the connection to site was made through written notes, plein air studies; linking psychology of place and memory through my immersion in it. Works considered triggers of site such as scale, space, mark; attempting to find psychological connections through line and colour.

Fieldwork sketches investigated Monet's origins of line and its gestural connection to his paintings and drawings. They were used as a process of 'rehearsal' to find a way into familiarising, 'knowing' and understanding 'site'; both as painting and a site as 'a landscape'. Adopting Monet's 'intuited forms from nature', an integral part of the site research lay within structure and forms of vegetation. Twists in growth were stripped down to lineal structures and

contained their own rhythms, while shifting reflections of vegetation and sky created active fields upon the water surface.

Extending on the Giverny experience; a large series of drawings (Figures 64a, b and c) commenced by returning to the Orangerie and gradually dismantling the mark, unravelling and pulling out the gestures to the surface; releasing the line from contour. This seemly repeated approach operated out of a new 'lived' body experience. It was as if the body was embedded in and under the surface of paint itself; or metaphorically beneath the pond trying to find a way out. It recalled the experience of swimming, being submerged, struggling to the surface for breath. This was in contrast to the early Orangerie response working from the image as first encounter and on more formal terms.

On my last visit to Giverny, I took the drawing as line, back to contour of site until it had engaged enough with the plants forms via a rehearsal of their rhythms to release the line into its own gesture. This rehearsal commenced through observation, focusing on the line weight and continuous line relating to the findings in Monet's sketchbooks.

Figure 64: a b c Wendy Stokes, Study Reflections with Willows A4 2014, Study Green Reflections, 2014 21cm x 30cm and 1 of 9 completed drawings 2014, 60cm x42 cm oilstick on Canson paper

Drypoints assisted this unravelling and rehearsal process and were made on two different occasions using small hand held plastic plates on site (Figures 65 a b and c). The process allowing composite impressions aligned to Monet's composite drawing in his sketchbooks. The drypoints functioned as sketches in both line and colour and were explored to release the mark from the water pond and site. The inscribing of line opened up different possibilities, one being quite descriptive (Figure 65 a and c) while (Figure 65 b) released the line into an open ended interpretation. When the line is executed through an intermediary as a plastic plate or frottage plate the gesture is slowed down. It creates a different pace within the work yet still within drawing. This was also evident in my earlier relief woodblocks and frottage drawings in Australia.

Figure 65 a b c: Wendy Stokes; releasing the line, 2014, 3/38 drypoint on A5 plastic plates, printed on A4, BFK image size 20cmx15cm

While Monet's painted surfaces are impermeable, his drawings utilising the reserve could be viewed from an eastern perspective in painting; that of an emptiness, an incompleteness, allowing gaps and fragmentary suggestions. Cheng (1994, p.77) highlights such as a place where, 'forms remain in a state of becoming, between being and non being'. This pulled the research back to Monet's drawings, but also a consideration of Monet's Japanese print collection (Figure 66); one which became an immersive experience in itself. What became valuable was the opening out of space through the open surface of the paper, reading as one, water and air in combination with the contrast and clarity of Prussian blue ink against it.

Image has been removed

due to Copyright restrictions

Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 66: Hokkei Totoya (1780 -1850) Paysage chinois Cat No 85(approx. 33cmx20cm)

Some of Monet's Nymphéas sketches too were executed in the contrast and richness of indigo pen or blue violet crayon against the open ground of paper. While Monet immersed himself in his garden in a compressed space the Japanese prints suggested a remembering of connections with his love of the sea and the water (Figure 66). These observations again hinted at an eastern sensibility of space and suggested contemplative qualities. The research explored these possibilities through a combination of frottage processes from woodcuts carved at the garden site and mono printed later in the Cite Paris studio (Figure67).

Figure 67: Wendy Stokes Untitled 2014 Giverny woodcut monoprints on rice paper 21cm x 34cm

On reflection, my drawings at Giverny rely on a spatial fusion and the simplicity of Monet's sketchbooks, to 'draw' a way into releasing the line into its space, using the organic rhythms of the garden site. This was arrived at, by both walking through and sitting within the site. Figure 68 allowed the line to possess its own independent identity to site fused with the record of my experience as a maker. It created the bridge to the interpretation of lineal rhythms in nature and articulation of space and light which returns and relates to my Australian experiences. Where Monet's memory imprint of his coastal territories filtered into the Nymphéas, memories emerged from my 'lived' experience of my childhood garden; enveloped, nurtured and entangled becoming embedded in the work.

Figure 68: Wendy Stokes My Coast, Filtered through Giverny, Cite drawings, 2014, blue pastel and oilstick from sketchbook 60cm x42cm

CHAPTER 9 Reflection; Mutable Boundaries

Figure 69a: Wendy Stokes, Giverny 2015, acrylic and oilstick on canvas, polyptych 183cm x 760cm

On return to Australia I made work evaluating my research at Giverny. The works became a synthesis of my findings as 'lived' experience and memory (Figure 69a and b). I became aware of the body's position, where one is situated in landscape. Rather than taking a static position and using line solely as contour, the painted mark was considered in terms of a weight and velocity and returned to an awareness of spatial relations, sensory imprint of the closing and opening of space as one's body moved through the garden site.34 The works became documentations of bodily experiences, composites of memory connecting to hybrid readings and rhythm of site. They exploit the linearity and verticality from the Monet sketchbook findings and make use of Prussian blue upon a vacant ground, opening the ground toward an eastern sensibility.

My collective experiences of Giverny, Étretat and my sites reinforced that in a current paradigm concerned with acceleration and new technologies, my research became a regrounding in the 'immersive' experience of landscape,

34Tuan (1977,p.12) refers to kinaesthesia, and through sight and touch 'enable [s} human beings to have their strong feelings for space and for spatial qualities. '

one connected through 'lived' experience and the imprint of memory to inform making. This had me consider at length that the immersive engagement and daily rituals of walking within familiar landscape were not about selecting sites for paintings, but instead were about a ritual of slowing down, to 'know' a place and the remembering of intensity of observed and sensory experiences within particular spaces. These core experiences were integral to a 'deceleration' process and also aligned both, a Romantic view and eastern philosophies, linking landscape and gardens to that of withdrawal and detachment.35

Figure 69b: Wendy Stokes, Retracing Place Giverny 2015, acrylic and oilstick on canvas, 204cm x 330cm

35 The subject itself, Monet's environment, the water garden was his own site for deceleration. As a site itself it has been restored and today is still able to impart these experiences of deceleration to visitors. Cheng, 1994 outlines in Chinese painting how [landscape] acts as 'a medium for contemplation . . . one which embodies primal forces'.

CHAPTER 10 Re-viewing Monet in Context, Current Practice

This chapter highlights my findings through the Nymphéas research and draws connections between it and contemporary practitioners, Spencer Finch (b1962), Fabienne Verdier (b1962), Lee Kang So (b1943). My research respectfully includes and acknowledges Indigenous painting's unique position while refraining from direct association with Monet (see Appendix C iii).

As referred to in Chapter 1, Pollock highlights current curatorial models, proposed by Warburg and de Zegher as those which concentrate on mixed geographies, histories and genders of the maker and where their personal histories become more relevant (Pollock 2010, p. 35). This became an entry point for unravelling connections in my research between my Australian location, the experience of landscape and Monet. I have included current practitioners who still engage painting within their practice, who are globally disparate in their geographical location and have incorporated it as part of their practice. 36 They further reinforce connections through an acknowledgement to nature as a source for their practice. Their selection has been for the parallels they share with my research rather than directly inform it. Specifically, they locate their practice and share the territory of immersion, and in formal terms are predominantly engaged with colour, scale and mark.

U.S. cross disciplinary artist Spencer Finch deliberately pivots his work around disparate geographies. His work moves between large immersive scale installations and intimate subjective interpretations on paper both acting as records of moments in time, through the perception of light. This recording process however crosses over and between scientifically recorded light readings using a colorimeter, serial photography and subjective watercolour notations of perceptive light shifts in landscape locations. Thematically Finch

36 Since undertaking this research Mrs Gabori has deceased. 72

creates interventions by offsetting installations at different geographic positions at the same time, transposing light and time at each site (Queensland Art Gallery, Ellwood 2009, p. 9). The outcomes become sites of poetic resonance and a contemporary reading of place.

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 70: Spencer Finch, Painting Air 2012, installation Rhode Island School of Design, February 24-July 29, 2012

During the time of this research, Finch undertook a project based on Monet's Giverny pond site (Figure 70).The gallery walls at Rhode Island School of Design were painted in square sequenced colour notations recorded from the reflections on the Giverny pond. The gallery space was intersected with hanging glass panels which reflected not only the colour from the walls but the viewers themselves. It pivoted around Monet's legacy of contemplation, slowing down and engagement with site, further reinforcing that Monet still maintains current.

Monet and Finch, with a century of separation, both attempt recording time using the science of perception and, as research, involved their embodied experiences en plein air. Finch also made watercolour studies of ocean sites, where water is translated and interpreted as notations of colours perceptively

recorded and, like Monet, attempts to record these sensations in real time on the site (Queensland Art Gallery, Chambers 2009,p.p13,30-35).

Where some contemporary painting has forged a separate identity as 'spatial painting', within an expanded field and embraced the psychology of immersive possibilities within painting; they like Finch, align themselves with other genres and breakup or into space itself (Ring Petersen 2010, p.p123-137). Although the Nymphéas are fixed to the wall, the expanded format maintains an immersive dialogue through preserving a bodily engagement and sensory experience as one moves along and between the works. My research retains this dialogue within a two dimensional tradition yet aligns with Finch through immersion, ritual recording as process and installation.

Both French female painter Fabienne Verdier and Korean Lee Kang –So underpin immersive experiences of nature as a source for abstraction which aligns with an eastern trajectory. They share perspectives which sit comfortably with 'knowing', through 'slowing down' in landscape. These too are associative experiences in the artefact itself, aligning with the Nymphéas. Verdier's practice has revolved around ritual meditation practices, studying traditional calligraphy in China and acknowledges a rediscovering of Monet through an eastern conceptual re entry (Peppiatt 2013, p.6). Zarcone draws attention to the Chinese garden and landscape painting as a quest for serenity and detachment through a withdrawal into nature (2005, p.93). Verdier has maintained a disciplined approach to life which moves seamlessly between, 'the house, the studio and the garden'(Zarcone 2005, p.93). Such views commune with Monet at Giverny and myself.

If one separates the mimetic power of colour inherent in the Nymphéas, an equally immersive experience is manifest through the painted mark. Duchting (2001, p.152) indicates that the Nymphéas, '[are] interpreted anew . . . by every generation of painters' and the common link is 'the revival of the painterly

element'. Duchting explains further it is 'to become aware of oneself in the process of picture making as a human being, both a thinking and a sensually responsive being' (2001, p.152). My research has indicated the intermeshing and apparent freedom of application of the painted gesture became the signifier or residue of energy of the maker and their experience.

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions

Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 71: Fabienne Verdier Color Flows 7, 2012 mixed media on canvas, 143cmx257cm http://www.indesignlive.sg/articles/Fabienne-Verdiers-Geography-of-the-Spirit accessed 8/07/20158.04pm

Monet and Verdier link through such assimilation of place, organic mark and gesture as intuited forces. Verdier's work (Figure 71) aligns with an immersion in making through rehearsal, magnification and isolation of gesture and through this magnification, the gesture monopolises and confronts the space it occupies. This returns to the choreography of maker. Using distilled gestures from field studies, Verdier rehearses gestures as a form of knowing by using a brush loaded with clear water before the final act of a loaded paint brush upon the surface. While Verdier's preliminary process is meditative and fluid, the technical act is rather mechanical, extremely physical, through manipulating a' life size brush suspended vertically from the ceiling' (Peppiat 2013, p.3). The outcome relays a monumental gesture, one remaining static in time. Verdier appears to magnify this by using a closed surface, through a coloured ground, reconfirming the modernist reading of surface as a site of painting.

My research position however, has been in the use of gesture but in a more intimate approach. I focused on the marks and brushstrokes of the Nymphéas works and the initial response sketches were exploring the separation of marks and application of colour. My research, in retaining the ground, found the gesture as a mark activated the space, and time becomes more open to a continuum rather than a fixed point. The gestures become more singular than the gestural amalgamation of Monet and align with the distillation of Verdier. My research shows the unpainted ground is still able to operate within a shallow space while the quieter lineal painted gesture allows for a more immersive experience. Monet’s gesture presents an energy that is alive but operates at different paces depending on the medium. My research of Monet revealed as the colour areas of paint settle, it slows down the image where in the Monet drawings they open out and are activated. My frottage works realised the slowing of mark as did the act of carving the plates on site, yet, in contrast through the acts of extraction and rehearsal at Giverny reconfigured and activated the mark again.

Bloemink reinforces and relates to the simplicity of gesture of Korean painter, Lee Kang –So, relating his work as an interpretation from nature, 'on a stroke that is simply beautiful and alive (2008, p.187)'. Kang - So, a 1960s cross disciplinary Korean artist returned to painting in the1980s to explore monochromatic schemes imbued with water, sky and mountains stemming from 'literati' painting (Bloemink 2008, p.187). According to the artist, ‘images are never fixed ... are always floating and continuously changing' and thus merges with Monet's obsession of trying to capture fleeting sensations. (http://www.wellsidegallery.com/artists/61 accessed: 5/5/2015 3:39pm). My research (Figure 74) aligns with Kang-So, (Figure 72), through the return to the open ground and gesture. Interestingly Kang -So also places within his work a figurative contradiction, for example a bird. Further, the use of gesture, atmosphere and figure, compares to Monet's treatment of the willows and my Giverny response (Figure 73). I found this a valuable link; a natural reference point is made clear, yet the space in which it inhabits is atmospheric and

energetic in mark. These findings indicate a regrounding of the work in an ambiguous zone within a current frame.

These arguments are evident in the Nymphéas and over a century later artists have manipulated them through Greenbergian abstraction and eastern perspectives to bring them out the other side into their own hybrid environment between Abstraction and Landscape. My research outcome sits within this dialogue.

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions

Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 72: left, Lee Kang- So From an island-99176, 1999 acrylic on canvas, 259cm ×194cm http://www. wellsidegallery. com/artists/61 5/5/2015 3. 39pm

Figure 73: right, Wendy Stokes, detail, Giverny, 2015, panel 5 of polyptych acrylic and oilstick on canvas 183cm x152cm

Figure 74: Wendy Stokes, Water drawings 2014, graphite on paper A4 sketchbook 21cm x 30cm

CONCLUSION

What has Monet's Nymphéas given the researcher as an Australian interested in an immersive painting experience? My research opened passages to knowing and understanding my interpretation of landscape; one achieved through scholarly and personal evaluation, and integration of immersive lived encounters in landscape.

The research highlighted The Nymphéas complex relationships between site as paintings, sketchbooks and studies, time and memory; imparting psychologies of place, through shifting scale, surface, space, light; and the relationship of work as an installation. My research found parallels between Monet and myself; of walking, filtering heightened sensory experiences from immersive engagement in landscape. It further revealed although Monet used observational practice, he too retained lived body experiences of landscapes; of mutable boundaries, tempered through time and atmosphere; sites as private territories grounded in place of the everyday, linked to memory.

My research offered renewed frames of reference embodying landscape and a phenomenological approach through making. A deeper understanding of Monet's engagement with sites emerged from authentic engagement as lived encounters. Through the research processes of engaging the body and eye within landscape, in retracing gesture and organic forms to know sites, my own connections between drawing and painting became clearer. While my drawings on site became a way of knowing the site, through familiarising oneself within it, using strategies involving rehearsal; it has been the 'stored' information gathered from these acts of familiarising which has facilitated a synthesis of these experiences into studio paintings.

By the process of dismantling Monet's paintings; to locate a way into interpreting landscape as a site of experience; my research navigated a U. S. reading of Monet, as surface as site; only to find it released the critical constraints of Abstraction. Instead, it located and remembered them through 78

an eastern sensibility; one expanded through Monet's drawings and painterly sketches, exploiting fragmentary suggestions and incompleteness. Further, as research, it embraced nature as an immersive practice of deceleration, which expanded and articulated spatial and organic rhythms of landscape experiences; using the mark emanating from the reserve of the ground. Through creating vacancy and opening space within the work the viewer is invited to complete and inhabit their own experience of landscape and their participation in it.

What also became acutely evident through my lived encounter of the Nymphéas was the 'lived' relationship to mark as gesture, and the 'lived' spatial dimension of the experience. By adopting 'act 'as a research tool, to re trace the images visually and connect bodily through the landscape experience informed the transfer in gesture from the wrist through to the shoulder. Although this shared interpretation with Abstract Expressionism, as one of action, it combined with a more intimate reading through eastern calligraphy, Tuan and Ponty; where the 'body is an intertwining of vision and movement' (Edie 1964 cites Ponty, revised Smith1993, p.2).

Monet's gesture is clearly visible and 'lived'; it is an act and trace. The Nymphéas paintings, studies and sketchbooks while separate identities, interrelate and through experiencing such, a conversation between intense visual and lived embodiments of experiences within landscape and nature occur. My research became a distillation, a concentration of seeing and 'lived' experience, locating an essence of site, through the body releasing the mark into the space of the open ground. Verdier speaks of the brushstroke as possessing 'a structure, a flesh, a living energy' and through such, revives and validates my interpretations of Monet's Nymphéas through gestural forces of the body (Zarcone 2005, p. 98). Through the exhibited work my research attempts to reflect these findings as intimate acts, intense lived experiences of an organic symbiosis. Although scholarly research reinforced my arguments they seemed immaterial toward my understandings of 'knowing', rather it has

been through the primary experience of this 'lived' research which impressed knowing upon and within my body.

APPENDIX A. Photographic documentation:

i. The Monet garden site, Giverny, France and my coastal walking site, Port Macquarie, Australia.

Figure 75a: above left: Map of Claude Monet's garden, Giverny, (artist anon) the area of focus is the water garden on the right hand side on right; http://giverny.org/gardens/fcm/planjard.htm

Figure 75b: image of landscape of my ocean walk around and along Nobbys and Shelly Beach Port Macquarie. https://www.google.com.au/maps/@31.448928,152.9311357,579m/data=!3m1!1e3 accessed 9/12/2012 Imagery 2012 Digital Globe

These images illustrate the similarities of a looping layout of site and the close proximity through walking to access the site. Both are delineated spaces yet the fundamental differences between are that in the Monet site the focus of water is intimate and of enclosure, constructed and inward; where the Australian site the vantage point is looking outward to expansive natural water and sky. Both sites involve looking from an edge and the different sensory impressions of lightness and darkness while walking along the paths. My ocean site also shares parallels with Monet's Étretat site with drastic shifts in height and vantage points. 81

ii. Étretat and my site, Australia

Figure 76a: Relationship between Sites: Port Macquarie Coast, Australia and Figure 76b: Site: Étretat, France images: Wendy Stokes

Figures 77abc: Fieldwork Étretat, 2014, as lived encounter, Monet’s access to sites and viewpoint assimilated into Giverny pond site images: Wendy Stokes

Figures 78a b c: My Australian Coast site, mutable boundaries, Port Macquarie images Wendy Stokes 2012-14 (previous page)

Figures 79a b c: My Australian Coast site, shifting visual distance, Port Macquarie images: Wendy Stokes 2012-14

iii. Fieldwork Orangerie; associated notes and sketches

Figure 81: Wendy Stokes, A5 Sketchbook studies adapted from Claude Monet, top Green Reflections, Sunset, and Reflection with Willows indicating the centrality of general composition 14.8 cm x 42cm

Figure 80: Wendy Stokes, A5 Sketchbook studies of the Orangerie panels indicating framing and composition. The link to the asymmetry of Japanese prints is more evident in the Marmottan studies as fragments of ideas, for example, left panel of Morning with Willows.

iv. Monet's sketchbooks and the Giverny site; my drawings re tracing Monet's sketchbooks as process.

Figure 82: the Monet sketchbook archive Musee Marmottan Paris 2014

Figure 83a: Wendy Stokes, Fieldwork, releasing the line 2014, indigo pencil in Sketchbook, Giverny site 30cm x42cm

Figure 83b: Wendy Stokes, Fieldwork, Re tracing coloured pencil in Sketchbook, 2014 Giverny site 30cm x42cm

Figure 83c: Wendy Stokes: Fieldwork, releasing the line 2014 Giverny site, oilstick and pastel 60cmx42cm 86

APPENDIX B Historical research connected to fieldwork

i. Étretat: reflection and evaluation; coastal immersion

To further test Monet's physical acts of immersion, I visited Étretat, one of Monet's early coastal sites, a place of his youth and which 'reverberate[s] with Monet's private territory' (Kendall 2004, p.123). The location was painted not only by Monet but Delacroix, Courbet, Matisse and Dufy. It was interesting to consider what the different measure of physical engagement the artists may have had within the site. As lived research, my experiences reinforced the psychological and lived body connection to site and the immersive impact of Monet's experience on his works (Figure 84 a, b). These reinforced findings to my 'knowing'.

Figure 84 a b: Fieldwork Étretat coast- walking the terrain 2014 Wendy Stokes

Monet became physically and psychologically immersed within the sites; not just as a spectator. Walking in search of subject was integral to Monet's practice. From my lived immersive encounter with the sites I drew the conclusion that to gain access to the sites which Monet painted and drew, involved a committed physical engagement within the landscape. It clearly involved extensive walking, steps, steep declines, ascents as well as negotiating restrictive tidal coves; all of which I experienced myself in Étretat and also engaged in Australia. Correspondence indicates 'that a visit to his old haunts on a survey of new terrain often began with a long, meandering walk in search of a potential motif' (Kendall 2004, p.122). Another letter, 7 February 1882 to

Alice, 'I've had a very tiring day, I've been all over the countryside, along the paths below and above the cliffs'(Kendall 2004, p. 122).

It appears too that Monet had a sensorial involvement with the landscape to access his sites, moving through them exposed to the elements. Monet places himself at the site of energy of nature, and becomes involved with his subject, concentrating on the energy of water at the same level, front on at low tide level and is especially pertinent (Figure 85) where the focus is on the waves straight on. Titles also indicate varying temperaments according to the weather and sea conditions whether calm, choppy or wild (Figures 85, 86 and 87). The Wildenstein volumes show there are at least 25 images of Étretat exploring scale and atmospheric drama of site. Titles indicate, for example catalogue numbers; #650 Temps calme, #663 Fecamp,#817Mer Agitee, #821 Étretat Soleil couchant, Étretat, #661Mer Agitee, #662 Etude de Mer,#663 Mer Agitee. It appears too that the motif variations; the sea, rocks and vegetation provide an armature for the subject of paint, all possessing their own rhythms.

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 85: Claude Monet (1840-1926) Seascape, 1881 oil on canvas 50cmx72.8cm

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions

Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 86: Claude Monet (1840–1926) The Manneporte (Étretat) 1883, oil on canvas, 65.4 x 81.3 cm

Figure 87: Claude Monet (1840-1926) Rough Weather at Étretat, 1883, oil on canvas; Credit: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia 65cm x 81cm Felton Bequest/Bridgeman Images

ii. Monet ,'lived' experience and blue

Figure 88a: Claude Monet (1840-1926) enlarged detail central section View of the Cap d'Antibes with the Mistral Blowing, 1888 61cmx 85.2cm Bridgeman Images

Much scholarship has focused on the science behind Monet's responses to colour sensations linked with his eyesight ailments, surgery and corrective lenses. Lanthony(2008, p.101) discusses the overriding use of blue in the late Nymphéas as a result of Monet's cataract surgery and explains after a cataract operation the retina is more receptive to light and a blue tinged vision; to which Monet was complaining. However, if one considers a psychological proposition that the Nymphéas panels are very much a construction, synthesis and evolution of memory as collective idea, blue and its perceived lack of reality could possibly be linked to his difficulty in executing the density and array of blues he experienced on the Riviera coast in the 1880's (Figures 88a and b). Monet corresponded ' . . . the blue plays a large role in everything I do. Today I worked in an olive grove in gray weather: everything is blue and yet is that way'(Levine, 1994, p. 81), (7 February 1884: L. 410). Not only in the Riviera paintings but blue also plays a role in the Bordighera works however vegetative screening is used as break between; Levine further indicates, 'it is as though the dense screen of tropical trees is used to ward off the overwhelming intensity of the sea itself'(Levine(1994 p.40). Such a synthesis may be indicators as a process of bringing the impossible blues with him from memory and reconfiguring these lived body experiences (Figure 88a and 88b).

Figure 88b: Claude Monet (1840-1926) View of the Cap d'Antibes with the Mistral Blowing, 1888 oil on canvas 61cmx 85.2cm Bridgeman Images

My lived research indicated extension and immensity psychologically underpinned the Nymphéas series. As well as the expanded format Monet attempted to open up space vertically through the fusion of reflecting sky and vegetation. These readings suggest a link to the immensity of Monet's coastal experiences, Boudin's influence and carrying of the landscape with him in memory. Levine (1995, p. 46) referring to Monet's early coastal works cites Verhaeren ,1885, 'the water, sky and air are treated and as though combined, influencing one another, attracting one another, interpenetrating with one another'. At the point of Verhaeren's critique, the Nymphéas project had not been proposed nor realised. This too may support Monet's preoccupation with reflected sky into the water was perhaps a way of opening up his space as an extension and a 'remembering'. Levine noted 'Monet's pictorial practice of rapid execution and the consequential incomplete picture due to the fleeting atmospheric circumstances meant that he completed his Étretat paintings at the Giverny studio'(1994, p63). Such, further indicates even at this early stage, that studio practice played an equally strong role in resurrecting memory and experience.

Correspondence from Monet, in Giverny as late as 1920, paid tribute to Boudin's studies and the 'products of what [Monet] called instantaneity'. In the same letter Monet also reflects, that Boudin suggested to Monet, then only fifteen years of age, 'appreciate the sea, light, the blue sky' (Kendall 2004 p.181).

iii Japanese Print Collection documentation

Figure 89a: Paper as vacant space reading as air and water; fusing space through the open ground of paper; Hokusai Katsushika (1760–1849) Shichirigahama in Sagami Province, from the series Thirty six views of Mt Fuji; Cat No 63c. 1830-5; 22.5cmx 37.5cm Image permission Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 89b: Lineal treatment of water surface Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) Futami Bay in Ise province cat No.146 1858 34cm x22cm

Figure 89c: Fusing horizon; through colour occupying the space

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) Shisaku dans la province d Iki, Cat No147, The British Museum, London (size unknown suggested size 34cm x22cm) © Trustees of the British Museum

APPENDIX C Historical research; viewpoints

i. A link between Monet and Cézanne

Clarke (2010, pp 77-111) brings into play the diverse routes of Abstraction and provides labels wet and dry, referencing Monet and his preoccupation with water and Cézanne and Cubism as dry. I argue that although both artists point towards the self referential, subject still becomes integral to the motif. I concur with Clarke, that Monet connects to the idea of the formless through the very nature of water as subject but his actual painted surfaces and image is one of dryness and opacity, sitting more within Clarke's argued framework of opacity and dryness. To argue Clarke's point further, if one considers Cézannes late watercolours, the medium of execution is water, and by its nature permits light and a fluidity, thereby aligning more with wet rather than dry. It seems Clarke's argument is directed more through the consideration of the geological hence dry of Cézanne, versus the atmosphere and wet of water in Monet, but the 'lived' experience of the works themselves tends to be contrary to his argument.

At this junction in the research it had been useful to draw Cézanne into the inquiry particularly in reference to his watercolours (Figure 90c). At the commencement of the research Cézanne had not been considered necessary to include but as it progressed I inadvertently found parallels in my outcomes which linked to Cézanne. Cézanne’s work provided a contextual platform both in historical and critical positioning (Simms, 2008).

The deconstructive and fragmentary approach of Cézanne has tended to preoccupy scholarship and place him in the path for Cubism and a more concrete intellectualised abstraction. This lineal path was further reinforced by Alfred Barr Jnr. By such categorising and narrowing of intention this path tended to subtract the lyrical nature of the watercolours of Cézanne. Rowley (2007) draws attention in her research that Helen Frankenthaler most likely (and she makes detailed mention of the probabilities) saw the exhibition of Cézanne’s late watercolours the year she made the pivotal work, Mountains and the Sea 93

(1952). The work was one which arose from an immersive experience in nature. It is essentially a spontaneous work with sparse sketching in charcoal line and poured formless colour which could also share links to Monet. My point being that it appeared critically dangerous to be aligned to the lyrical rather than concrete strands of Abstraction. Abstraction appeared to have a posed a relinquishing of the subjective and lyrical experience of nature as a prerequisite. Yet if we follow Rose’s view it was Monet’s monochromatic snow landscapes which had a huge impact on Malevich and leading toward monochromatic abstraction. At this juncture Monet has provided an opening to two contrasting modes of influence in the development of Abstraction, the lyrical and the concrete.

During the course of my research; making references to Cézanne has been beneficial to the research’s progress but it had been through researching the Nymphéas which has taken me there. An essential point was by exploring Monet’s edges and painted sketches; where areas of canvas remained I found a way into the air or space within the work (Figures 90a and 90b). This finding provided a way into a relationship to Australian space. I believe this was not Monet's intention; rather he was to condense, and fuse the colour to consume the entire surface through colour and mark. Cézanne on the other hand, in his watercolours allowed the reserve of the paper to act as the illuminator in the work and provide the spreading and rhythms of space and light across and through the work. It occurred to me by interpreting the Nymphéas and assessing their value to the Australian space I have arrived at an approach aligned with Cézannes method of practice. In considering both artists motifs, in their later work Cézanne was focusing on an open landscape and distance while Monet was more intensely focussed on a smaller area in closer proximity. It was more congested and in keeping with his method and approach. For me it has been through walking that one slowed down for details; providing an intimate approach to interpreting the landscape and as process.

Figure 90a b: Wendy Stokes, Open ground studies 2011 acrylic on canvas 183cm x183cm (Refer also to Figures 38a b and c)

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions

Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 90c: Paul Cézanne, In the Woods 1900, watercolour http://www.impressionistsgallery.co.uk/artists/Cezanne/1890-1905%20 (1).html

ii. Pollock Griselda and female practitioners

My research highlights Monet's connection to nature and reinforced through Duchting (2002, p.117) as a link to the romantic. This perhaps suggests an alignment to the lyrical rather than the concrete and 'masculine' connection to Cubism. However Rowley, by attempting to connect Helen Frankenthaler's Mountains and the Sea to Cézanne's watercolours, tends to make the role of the feminine more explicit via adopting this stance towards Cubism. Yet Elderfield (1989) in contrast, embraces the lyrical and landscape as a source through the work of Helen Frankenthaler.

Linking back to Abstract Expressionism, as a critical site and largely masculine dominant phenomena, perhaps opens further research, to explore the gender role of the performative. Although not within the scope of this volume this does suggests possible avenues for research. Lynn (1987) stated that some of Australia's best lyrical Abstract Expressionists were women. More recently, de Zegher (2011, p.183), references Indigenous women artists and the performance role of, and as drawing through their body. Frankenthaler, on return to the studio and making the work, Mountains and the Sea, revealed, 'I knew the landscapes were in my arms when I did it'. However prior to this studio act she had been working in the plein air painting landscape from a small easel (Elderfield 1989, p.66).

These avenues of investigation suggest links to Monet and reinforce the links to the lived body experiences of landscape. Abstract Expressionist painter, Joan Mitchell constantly defended her 'making' among the masculine arena but is very clear of her works origins; 'they're a feeling that comes to me from the outside, from landscape' Ashton cites Mitchell (1958, p.3). . '. I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me - and remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed'. This reinforces further 'that [the] body . . . is an intertwining of vision and movement ' (Ponty, revised by Smith1993, p.2)

McCaughey (2014, p.349) attempts to address a similar position within a current Australian context, albeit in an epilogue and believes, 'the revived and strengthened scene in contemporary painting is largely, but not exclusively, the work of women artists'. . . Their commitment to painting in adversity and neglect at times is a profound statement that painting matters to them and is done because it may mean something important to the viewer'.

As a researcher and practitioner, who is a female; the focus could have easily ventured into a gender interpretation of landscape. This perhaps may reference, that my ritual walk and Monet's were of the domestic or cultivated variety, rather than perhaps the male dominated references to walking; for example Richard Long or male artists venturing into the Australian outback. Alternatively, walking has been adopted as a research tool by Australian female artist and researcher, Lesley Duxbury. She uses walking as a meditative and rhythmic process whereby ideas are filtered through the exposure and endurance process of being within the landscape. The landscape she chooses, however, are generally national parks and wilderness areas; drawing on the Romantic tradition of atmospheric drama and reinterpreting it through current climatic debate. The walking expedition becomes a vehicle of collecting information documenting dates and place. To Duxbury,

'walking provides a natural pace to move through the natural world and its speed allows for contemplation... my thoughts when I am walking connect me to what I know, to what I have experienced and to what I have seen'(Duxbury 2008 p. 20).

Walking, as an act in my research, can be aligned with these terms; however it is the configuration of affective sensations through sensory and spatial orientation, through drawing and painting, which has become the outcome of my research; such being mediated through the study of Monet.

iii. Re-viewing Location

Immersive and bodily engagement within Indigenous painting must be acknowledged however lengthy discussion is withdrawn from focus in this research. Fenner proposed in Talking about Abstraction that in present Australian Abstraction 'the current generation of young to mid career non Indigenous Abstract painters in Australia have been inspired and influenced by Aboriginal painting more than any other and links to the contradictory nature of Indigenous painting as abstraction ' (Fenner 2004, n.p). Johnson suggests further, 'what is at stake for non -Indigenous artists nowadays is how to get some kind of foothold in this new reality' (2004, foreword).

Image has been removed due to Copyright restrictions Refer to List of figures/ images

Figure 91: Mrs Gabori Dibirdibi Country 2012 by Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Synthetic polymer paint on linen, 151x151cm

However, counter to the post 80's generation, Maloon sums up the earlier generation of Australian abstract painters, highlighting:

'the advantages of [this] generation of artists [is] that they understand the metaphoric relation between abstract forms and the inner, 'lived' experience of the body. They understand the syntax and visual synthesis of abstract compositions in aesthetic and intellectual terms, as well as in rapport with the intangible, inexplicable realm of human feeling' (Maloon 2004, p.10).

The connection and cultural rituals tied to the rhythms of the land of their ancestors is a vital link to Indigenous painting as in Mrs Gabori and her removal from place of heritage, Bentinck Island. Mrs Gabori decodes the topographical to create it visually and so restore a remembering of place and relive past history (McPhee 2013, p.p 25-30). But what too of other peoples who have missing links, loss and dislocated heritage, a need for remembering. Where Finch and even perhaps Verdier are artists looking out beyond their own psychology of place, others are living in it. Benjamin (2011, p.160) writes of a place of memories and experiences which are projected on it. Monet, my research and Mrs Gabori's link to a probing of private territories, one working with what one has nearby, working within life’s limitations rather than constructing environmental narratives. My research aims to reflect a current reading toward the contemporary sensibility that Maloon refers.

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Hoog, M 2006, Musee de l' Orangerie: The Nymphéas of Claude Monet, Editions De La Re Union Des Musee Nationaux, Paris

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List of Figures /Images

Note: all Monet images within the main body of the text have been viewed personally and images were taken for primary research purposes only. Alternative references to facilitate image access for future research are listed below where appropriate.

1. Wendy Stokes, B. Stokes top row; Sites of experience: The Pacific coast, a rural memory,2013,1957

2. Wendy Stokes bottom row; Sites of experience; 2014 Monet's garden site, Giverny; Étretat coast of Monet's earlier years

3. Claude Monet (1840-1926)Reflections with Willows, (1914-1918), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris; Hoog, M 2006, Musee de l' Orangerie: The Nymphéas of Claude Monet, Editions De La Re Union Des Musee Nationaux, Paris p 65-66; http://www.musee- orangerie.fr/en/article/water-lilies-virtual-visit

4. Claude Monet's Waterlilies exhibition at the Orangerie c.1930 ARTstor Slide Gallery

5. Studio- Claude Monet poses in the larger studio before the Nympheas Decorations c.1920 ARTstor Slide Gallery

6. Wendy Stokes photograph of Monet's water lily pond, Giverny 2014

7. Wendy Stokes Fieldwork Sketchbook 2010, adapted from Claude Monet (1840-1926) Green reflections; (1914-18), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris. 21cm x 30cm Claude Monet (1840-1926) Green Reflections, detail panel join (1914-18), Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris.

8. Wendy Stokes Page From 1st sketchbook, 21cm x 30cm adapted from Claude Monet, Two Willows with Clouds and Morning with Willows,(1914-26), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris.

9. a: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris. sketchbooks 21cm x 30cm 2010, adapted from Claude Monet Clouds(1914-18), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris. b: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris, sketchbooks 21cm x 30cm 2010, adapted from Claude Monet Clouds(1914-18), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris.. c: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris. sketchbooks 21cm x 30cm 2010, adapted from Claude Monet Clouds(1914-18), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris.

10. a: Claude Monet detail panel join, Green Reflections, (1914-26), Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. image: Wendy Stokes b: Claude Monet(1840-1926 ), Sunset (1914-26), lower right corner, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Hoog, M. 2006. Musee de l' Orangerie: The Nymphéas of Claude Monet, Editions De La Re Union Des Musee Nationaux, Paris p.48-49 http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/article/water-lilies-virtual-visit

11. a: Claude Monet(1840-1926) Bright Morning(1914-26) detail, lower right corner, Musee de l Orangerie, Paris.; http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/article/water-lilies-virtual-visit Hoog, M. 2006. Musee de l' Orangerie: The Nymphéas of Claude Monet, Editions De La Re Union Des Musee Nationaux, Paris p.30 b: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork sketch orientations edges and joins, 21cm x 30cm 2010 Musée de l’ Orangerie adapted from Claude Monet, Bright Morning (1914-18), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris.

12. Wendy Stokes Fieldwork sketch, 21cm x 30cm 2010, adapted from Claude Monet Reflections with Willows(1914-18), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris.

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13. Wendy Stokes Monet's pond at Giverny and Monet's viewpoints at Étretat,2014

14. a: Claude Monet (1840-1926 Water liliies Inv 5164 (1916-19) )detail incomplete studies; National Gallery of Victoria;2013 Monet's' garden; the Musee Marmottan, Paris (exhibition catalogue)10 May - 8 September 2013.The Council of Trustees, National Gallery of Victoria; Sydney,( p.p 107) b: Claude Monet (1840-1926 )detail incomplete studies (1917-1919) Inv 5118, Musée Marmottan, Paris ;National Gallery of Victoria; 2013, Monet's' garden; the Musee Marmottan ,Paris (exhibition catalogue)10 May - 8 September 2013. The Council of Trustees ,National Gallery of Victoria; Art Exhibitions Australia ,Sydney.( p.p110,111)

15. Claude Monet (1840-1926),The Cliff at Étretat ,c.1885 (pastel), Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris; Bridgeman Images

16. Claude Monet(1840-1926) sketchbook Weeping Willow (purple pencil on paper),Wildenstein D 118; sketchbook inv.no 5128 fol.15v; carnet de dessins; crayon violet; study for left panel of 'Trois Saules'; Credit: Weeping Willow (purple pencil on paper), Monet, Claude (1840-1926) / Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images and

17. Claude Monet (1840-1926) sketchbook Nympheas (pencil on paper), Waterlilies; Wildenstein D 347; sketchbook inv.no 5129 fol.8v; carnet de dessins; Credit: Nympheas (pencil on paper), Monet, Claude (1840-1926) / Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris ,France / Bridgeman Images and accessed 11/07/15 and

18. Claude Monet (1840-1926 )sketchbook 6 p 22-23 W#D351 wax crayon over pencil, Musee Marmottan, Paris and accessed 11/07/2015

19. Claude Monet,(1840-1926) Weeping Willow and the Waterlily Pond, 1916-19 (detail of 182047) (oil on canvas) 200x180 cm / Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images; National Gallery of Victoria; 2013 Monet's' garden; the Musee Marmottan ,Paris (exhibition catalogue)10 May - 8 September 2013.The Council of Trustees ,National Gallery of Victoria; Art Exhibitions Australia, Sydney p.118)

20. Claude Monet(1840-1926 ) sketchbook Reflets de saules pleureur et nympheas; Waterlilies; Wildenstein D 350; sketchbook inv.no 5129 fol.10v and 11r; carnet de dessins; drawn on older drawings; Credit: Weeping willows reflecting and Nympheas (pencil on paper), Monet, Claude (1840-1926) Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images and

21. Claude Monet(1840-1926 ) sketchbook 6 p 34 -35 235mm315mm c1914-1919 W # D357 waterlily pond waterlilies; Wildenstein D 357; sketchbook inv.no 5129 fol.17v and 18r; carnet de dessins; Credit: Nympheas (pencil on paper), Monet, Claude (1840-1926) Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images and

22. Claude Monet (1840-1926 )detail top right side p 35 sketchbook 6 p 35 235mm315mm c1914-1919 W # D357 waterlily pond waterlilies; Wildenstein D 357; sketchbook inv.no 5129 fol.17v and 18r; carnet de dessins; and

23. Wendy Stokes Fieldwork Sketch, retracing site: Giverny,2014,coloured pencil on A3 Canson paper

24. Claude Monet (1840-1926 ) Green Reflections (1914-18),Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris; Bridgeman Images Hoog, M 2006, Musee de l' Orangerie: The Nymphéas of Claude Monet, Editions De La Re Union Des Musee Nationaux, Paris pp 55-60; http://www.museeorangerie.fr/en/article/water-lilies-virtual-visit

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25. Claude Monet (1840-1926) Green Reflections detail, left section (1914-18) Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris Credit: De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images)

26. Wendy Stokes detail ,Study 1- painted ground, 2011,acrylic wash and oil stick on Fabriano paper, 112cm x84cm x 3

27. Wendy Stokes Study 2 Blue piece,2011,detail 4 panels of 6,acrylic and oistick on Fabriano paper 112cm x84cm

28. Claude Monet (1840-1926), Clouds (1914-18), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris; Bridgeman Images: http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/article/water-lilies-virtual-visit Hoog, M. 2006. Musee de l' Orangerie: The Nymphéas of Claude Monet, Editions De La Re Union Des Musee Nationaux, Paris pp.35-37

29. Claude Monet (1840-1926 ) Clouds, (1914-18) detail central panel lower central section,Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris; accessed11/07/2015 4.08pm < http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/visite-nympheas/02.html>

30. Eugene Boudin (1824-1898) Cloud studies, Musee Malraux, le Havre. accessed 11/07/2015 < http://www.muma-lehavre.fr/en/collections/artworks-in-context/eugene- boudin/boudin-study-sky>

31. Wendy Stokes Fieldwork sketchbook,A5 adapted from Claude Monet, Clouds, Musee d l' Orangerie, Paris

32. Wendy Stokes Colour field experiment, detail, 80cmx120cm, 2011 acrylic on canvas

33. Claude Monet(1840-1926)Bright Morning,(1914-18) Musée de l’Orangerie Paris ; Bridgeman Images http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/article/water-lilies-virtual-visit Hoog, M. 2006. Musee de l' Orangerie: The Nymphéas of Claude Monet, Editions De La Re Union Des Musee Nationaux, Paris pp.27-30

34. Claude Monet (1840-1926 )detail central panel Bright Morning,(1914-18) Musee de l Orangerie, Paris, accessed 11/07/2015 4.17pm

35. Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865) Picture of Abalone Fishing, early1830s Cat No 91 (Aitken& Delafond 2003, p. 77).

36. Toyokuni, Utagawa (1769-1825) Three women on a boat fishing by lamplight (woodblock print) Cat No 83 (Aitken ,Delafond 2003, p. 73)Bridgeman Images

37. Wendy Stokes Orangerie sketches, top and later 2011 response bottom A5 sketchbooks

38. a: Wendy Stokes Response Bright Morning, 2011,acrylic on Canson paper,152cmx 320cm b: Wendy Stokes Response, Bright Morning, acrylic on academia 2012, 70cm x 500cm c: Wendy Stokes Response Bright Morning, 2011, acrylic on paper,80cm x 112cm

39. a: Claude Monet (1840-1926)detail Clouds,(1914-18)Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris image: Wendy Stokes b: Wendy Stokes detail, colour and field experiments, 2014, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris

40. a: Wendy Stokes the Nymphéas garden, 2014 Giverny b: Wendy Stokes the Nymphéas garden, 2014 Giverny

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41. a: Claude Monet, (1840-1926) Waterlilies with Reflections of a Willow Tree, Inv 5117,(1916-19) (oil on canvas), Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, France; National Gallery of Victoria; 2013 Monet's' garden; the Musee Marmottan ,Paris (exhibition catalogue)10 May - 8 September 2013.The Council of Trustees ,National Gallery of Victoria; Art Exhibitions Australia ,Sydney. p 109 b: Wendy Stokes sketchbook study 2010 ,adapted from Waterlilies with Reflections of a Willow Tree, in coloured pencil in situ Musee Marmottan, Paris c: Wendy Stokes sketchbook study 2010 ,adapted from Waterlilies with Reflections of a Willow Tree, in coloured pencil in situ Musee Marmottan, Paris

42. Wendy Stokes studio, A5 sketchbook 2011

43. Wendy Stokes Coastal field 2012, acrylic and oil stick on canvas 183cm x760cm polyptych

44. Wendy Stokes Fieldwork sketchbooks 2011- 2012

45. Claude Monet (1840-1926) Morning with Willows, (1914-18), Musée de l’ Orangerie, Paris, http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/article/water-lilies-virtual-visit Hoog, M. 2006. Musee de l' Orangerie: The Nymphéas of Claude Monet, Editions De La Re Union Des Musee Nationaux, Paris.(pp79-82)

46. Wendy Stokes fieldwork sketch 2010, adapted from Claude Monet (1840-1926) , Morning with Willows

47. Wendy Stokes adapted from Claude Monet, Clear Morning with Willows.2010, 2011, Musée de l’ Orangerie ,Paris

48. Wendy Stokes adapted from Claude Monet study Water lilies Inv 5117 in the Musée Marmottan, 2012, Monet's garden exhibited at NGV, Australia; 10 May-8 Sept 2013.

49. Wendy Stokes Untitled,2012, detail 3 of 5 panels ,acrylic and oilstick on paper 100cm x70cm each

50. Wendy Stokes Vestige 2014, acrylic and oil stick on canvas 152cm x304cm 2 of 5 panels

51. Wendy Stokes fieldwork on site, Coast, 2012 charcoal and pastel on Stonehenge paper

52. a: and b: Wendy Stokes charcoal frottage walking in landscape 2013,A3 sketchbook

53. Wendy Stokes fieldwork site sketchbook,2013, frottage sequence A5

54. Wendy Stokes Walking drawing ,2013 relief woodblock print, 1 of 8; 70cm x100cm

55. Wendy Stokes Edge 2012-13 , frottage and coloured pencil responding to surface-tide, growth ,colour, shadows, reflections A3 sketchbooks

56. Wendy Stokes Edge 2012-13 , frottage and coloured pencil responding to surface-tide, growth, colour, shadows, reflections A3 sketchbooks

57. Wendy Stokes Mark and Place, the space between, 2013, acrylic and oistick on canvas, each panel 152cm x 152cm

58. Wendy Stokes Notations III, 2014 acrylic and oistick on canvas,178cm x 650cm

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59. Claude Monet;(1840-1926), detail incomplete study, Water Lilies(1917-1919) Inv 5118, Musée Marmottan; Delafond M., Genet-Bendeville C. , Monet in the time of the waterlilies; at Giverny,2002, Musee Marmottan Monet, Scala;(p.p.98,99)

60. Wendy Stokes Untitled drawing, 2013-14 A5 Milini sketchbook

61. Wendy Stokes Notations I,2013, acrylic on canvas,183cm x 650cm

62. a : Wendy Stokes Giverny pond, 2014 b,c: Wendy Stokes my childhood location, rural NSW 2012

63. Wendy Stokes Onsite fieldwork Giverny, 2014

64. a: Wendy Stokes Study 2014 Reflections with Willows A4 b: Wendy Stokes Study 2014 Green Reflections A4 c: Wendy Stokes 1 of 9 completed drawings 2014, oistick on Canson paper,A2

65. a b c : Wendy Stokes releasing the line 2014, 3 of 36 drypoints 20x15cm

66. Hokkei Totoya ( 1780-1850) Paysage chinois , Cat No 85 (Aitken and Delafond, p74)

67. Wendy Stokes Untitled 2014 Giverny woodcut monoprints on rice paper A4

68. Wendy Stokes My Coast, Filtered through Giverny, Cite drawings,2014, blue pastel and oistick on A2 sketchbook

69. a:Wendy Stokes Giverny 2015, polyptych acrylic and oilstick on canvas 183cm x 760cm b: Wendy Stokes,Retracing Place Giverny 2015 acrylic/oistick on canvas,204cm x330cm

70. Spencer Finch. 'Painting Air 2012, installation Rhode Island School of Design February 24-July 29,2012 accessed 1/07/2015 2.18pm

71. Fabienne Verdier Color Flows 7, 2012 mixed media on canvas, (143cmx257cm) http://www.indesignlive.sg/articles/Fabienne-Verdiers-Geography-of-the-Spirit accessed 8/07/20158.04pm

72. Lee, Kang- So; From an island-99176, 1999 acrylic on canvas, 259×194cm accessed 5/5/2015 3.39pm

73. Wendy Stokes Giverny 2015 detail, panel 5 of polyptych acrylic and oil stick on canvas 183cm x152cm

74. Wendy Stokes Water drawings 2014,graphite on sketchbook 21m x30cm each

75. a: above left: Map of Claude Monet's garden, Giverny, (artist anon) the area of focus is the water garden on the right hand side on right http://giverny.org/gardens/fcm/planjard.htm accessed 10/12/2012 b: image of landscape of my ocean walk around and along Nobbys and Shelly Beach Port Macquarie; https://www.google.com.au/maps/@31.448928,152.9311357,579m/data=!3m1!1e3 accessed 9/12/2012; Imagery 2012 Digital Globe 107

76. a: Wendy Stokes, Relationship between Coastal Sites; Port Macquarie, Australia and Étretat as image documentation Site: Port Macquarie Coast, Australia and Site b: Wendy Stokes Étretat, France,2014

77. abc: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork Étretat 2014, as lived encounter, Monet’s access to sites and viewpoint assimilation into Giverny pond site

78. abc: Wendy Stokes My Australian Coast site, Port Macquarie mutable boundaries 2012-14

79. abc: Wendy Stokes My Australian Coast site, Port Macquarie, shifting visual distance 2012-14

80. Wendy Stokes Sketchbook studies of the Orangerie panels indicating framing and composition, 2014.

81. Wendy Stokes Sketchbook studies 2014,adapted from Claude Monet, top Green Reflections, Sunset, Reflection with Willows

82. Wendy Stokes the Monet sketchbook archive Musee Marmottan Paris 2014

83. a: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork - Sketchbook Giverny site 2014 b: Wendy Stokes Fieldwork Re tracing - Sketchbook Giverny site 2014 c:Wendy Stokes: Fieldwork, releasing the line 2014- Sketchbook A3 Giverny site

84. a and b: Wendy Stokes walking the terrain, fieldwork. Étretat coast 2014

85. Claude Monet (1840-1926) Seascape,1881(oil on canvas), Private Collection / Photo © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images

86. Claude Monet The Manneporte(Étretat)1840–1926 Giverny) 1883,: Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 32 in. (65.4 x 81.3 cm) Credit Line: Bequest of William Church Osborn, 1951Accession Number: 51.30.5 accessed 25/6/2015 6.45 pm

87. Claude Monet (1840-1926) Rough Weather at Étretat, 1883, oil on canvas; Credit: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia 65cm x 81cm Felton Bequest/Bridgeman Images

88. Figure 88a: Claude Monet (1840-1926) enlarged detail central section View of the Cap d'Antibes with the Mistral Blowing, 1888 61cmx 85.2cm Bridgeman Images Figure 88b: Claude Monet (1840-1926) View of the Cap d'Antibes with the Mistral Blowing, 1888 oil on canvas 61cmx 85.2cm Bridgeman Images

89. a: Paper as vacant space reading as air and water; fusing space through the open ground of paper; Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) Shichirigahama in Sagami Province, Cat No 63c. 1830-5; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney b: Lineal treatment of water surface; Utagawa Hiroshige(1797–1858) Futami Bay in Ise province cat No.146 1858

c: Fusing horizon; through colour occupying the space; Utagawa Hiroshige (1797– 1858) Shisaku dans la province d Iki, Cat No147, The British Museum, London

90. a: Wendy Stokes Open ground studies 2011 acrylic on canvas 183cm x183 b: Wendy Stokes Open ground studies 2011 acrylic on canvas 183cm x183cm c: Cézanne 1839-1906) In the Woods 1900, watercolour, accessed12/07/2015 l

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91. Sally Gabori Dibirdibi Country 2012 by Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Synthetic polymer paint on linen,151x151cmaccessed 1/07/15 2.22pm

Installation images of The Nymphéas: in conversation, Wendy Stokes; Tamworth Regional Gallery; Tamworth NSW. 25 July -5 September 2015. Images: Lou Farina

87. 90.

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List of images

The Nymphéas : In Conversation Tamworth Regional Gallery 25th July -5th September 2015 photography: Lou Farina

1. Wendy Stokes Conversation 2015 acrylic on canvas 183cm x183cm

2. Wendy Stokes installation Notation II acrylic on canvas 204cm x700cm 2013

3. Wendy Stokes installation image

4. Wendy Stokes Site coast acrylic and oilstick on canvas 183cm x 366cm

5. Wendy Stokes Mark and place the space between acrylic on canvas 152cm x456cm

6. Wendy Stokes Vestige 2 panels, acrylic and oilstick on canvas 152cm x152cm each

7. Wendy Stokes Giverny and Memory II, oilstick on canvas

8. Wendy Stokes woodcuts -Giverny

9. Wendy Stokes Giverny II acrylic and oilstick on canvas 183cm x760cm

10. Wendy Stokes Retracing place acrylic and oilstick on canvas 204cm x330cm

11. Wendy Stokes Memory II acrylic and oilstick on canvas 204cm x276cm