PAUL Uhlmann dug deep for his latest exhibition.
Delving into the Freudian nooks and crannies of his mind, he paid tribute to his late mum, Mary, who had Irish heritage, and his dad, Ian.
“My mother saw the divine within all living beings and my father grew up running free in rainforest country in Queensland,” Uhlmann says.
“One doesn’t have to wait for the miraculous, it is around us every day in the expansive breathing world we are all a part of.”
Paintings of Tenderness and Eternity basks in the glory of everyday nature and how ephemeral, delicate and fragile it can be—a bit like life itself.
His exhibition features 17 paintings of varying sizes and scales from nearly two-metre works to small contemporary “vanitas”.
“The larger works especially are inspired by walks along the southwest coastline where after a while the illusion of the self seems to vanish and the body becomes part of the surrounds so that self and world merge as one—there is no ‘I’ at such moments, just a unified field of consciousness,” Uhlmann says.
“The medium-sized works are inspired by walks around Manning Park—this beautiful wetland pulses with life, with all manner of bird life, plants and insects and the way in which the water is energised by the wind and reflections of the clouds above.”
• Some of the fabulous paintings in Paul Uhlmann’s Paintings of Tenderness and Eternity.
Uhlmann slightly abstracts blooms and plants until they are strange bursts of colour set against a dark, ominous backdrop—like some lonely, beautiful creature at the bottom of the sea.
One would expect him to be working in watercolours to achieve such delicate flourishes, but he used oils.
“Oil painting was developed in Europe as a way of capturing light, flesh and transitory experiences and a way of celebrating the sacred,” Uhlmann says.
“There is something almost sculptural about oil painting. There is the paradox that I am painting the immaterial—transitory, invisible states of life—but that the actual object is quite physical and material—a fusion of matter and the life force.”
Originally from Sydney, and now based in Fremantle, Uhlmann has been exhibiting across Australia for the past 40 years.
“I take my inspiration directly from the energy of the South West. It is a privilege to work, create and think on the Wadjuk, Noongar lands,” he says.
He studied at Canberra School of Art, as well as European art schools in Germany and Holland.
He admires artists like Caspar David Friedrich—“he painted the divine within the everyday; nature was key to his work” and 20th-century painter Mark Rothko—“He collapsed the contemplating body of the viewer into his mystical works to create indeterminate vibrating abstract fields.”
Two of his paintings in the exhibition, The Gentle Passing of Shadows of Clouds from Above and Swampland, are based on his love of Italian frescoes from the 14th century.
For the smaller works in Paintings of Tenderness and Eternity, he delved into the 17th-century Dutch still life tradition of vanitas where “wondrous blooming flowers might be coupled with worms, insects, butterflies and sometimes a human skull, carrying the moral message that everything that lives will soon pass; life is short and so one must not waste time.”
“There is an inherent beauty here as we can’t take life for granted, we should look after ourselves, our environment and each other and live fully in the moment.
“I have painted these contemporary vanitas images directly from observation of small dead flowers I have found on my walks; I focus on the shadows and the work emerges.”
Paintings of Tenderness and Eternity is at Art Collective WA, 2/565 Hay Street, Perth, from August 15-September 19. For more info see artcollectivewa.com.au.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK