CULTURAL CENTER OF CAPE COD

THIS WEEK’S MUSE

Art is a profoundly powerful tool for change.”

BEN QUILTY, ARTIST

It’s refreshing to know not all art roads lead to Europe or America. For so many years that seemed to be the case, but Australian artist Ben Quilty shows that if we look just a little past the past, we find a creativity every bit as exciting as those great traditions.

“I feel it’s important I tell my story, that I respond to the world through my own eyes.”

Born in 1973, Quilty lives and works in Robertson, a town close to the coast of New South Wales’ South Pacific waterfront. Like many artists, his work is driven in part by personal life experiences; drugs and drinking, colonialization, politics and conflict, destruction of indigenous cultures, and racial discrimination all filter into his work.

Part of the ‘cause’ of all this ‘effect’ is a passion for finding and participate in “Australianness,” following an edict—popularized by impressionist landscape painter Arthur Streeton—that Australian artists should look to their own backyards for inspiration.

Quilty takes this stance and acknowledges his country’s difficulties and challenges. He is immersed in its past and emerges into its present, just as 20th century artists like Newman, Warhol, or Basquiat did in the US – challenging and embracing nationality and nation. In Quilty’s eyes we humans are conflicted – but we are alive partly because of that conflict. He is self- reflexive with a dedicated sense of social responsibility; ultimately, an observer of our treatment of one another.

When painting, he is less concerned with true likeness or presenting a direct narrative. Features can be smudged and blurred with thick, banking strokes of paint that seem suspended, as if yet to land on the canvas; lines can be rough-hewn and energetic – a gestural style achieved through speed and focus. Painting landscapes or faces, beaches or figures, he searches for a reality inside what he observes.

“Portraiture for me is about depicting someone that I know and respect and I’m interested in,” he says. “It’s about the relationship, the collaboration between the artist and the sitter.” And this intimate cooperation doesn’t just apply to the people he paints, but to other subjects too – cars and landscapes, furniture and interiors – they too are his sitters. Finding that cooperation in what he sees lies at the heart of his work.

He believes in the power of art to confront our lives, our society, our culture, and our future through a creative lens. We can comment, challenge, criticize, embrace, and motivate ourselves and our fellow human beings. “For me,” he says, “Art is a profoundly powerful tool for change.”

Quilty remains relatively unknown outside of Australia, so it’s our job as art lovers to find him, and others like him. Wherever they come from, we need passionate artists who pose and address important questions about humanity – to consider and challenge our shortcomings in an effort to create a path towards a good life.

“All of the things that humans I respect strive for somehow involve ideas of beauty.”

HAPPENING

Four Thursdays, from September 7, 2:30–5pm