MY BRUSH WITH MONET!

My little tribute to Conder - ‘Semaphore Sunday’ - 90 x 60 cm | Oil on canvas | White frame | This subject was based on the annual Kite Festival at Semaphore many years ago and it was the basis of the very first painting I sold in an exhibition. I have done several since and they are all different. I like the feel of this latest one and felt happy when it was finished.

My brush with Monet! (Blog by Mike Barr)

“Back in the late 60s when I was about 14 years old, the family visited the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. It was my first encounter with some original masters and the experience was not lost on me.  I remember the feeling I got when confronted with one of Rembrandt self-portraits. There was a thickness of atmosphere that was tangible, I knew I was looking at something special.

Of interest to me though from the early 2000s, was the impressionists, particularly Monet and the Australian Impressionists.

It was about 10 years ago when I saw an exhibition of the Australian Impressionists in Melbourne, many of whom I hadn’t heard of. I remember feeling a bit let down by it all apart from some of the more well-known artists like Streeton.

What I didn’t appreciate then, was the fact that these artists were pioneers and the impressionist work that is produced today is thanks to these trailblazers. They were the ones that had to put up with the barbs from the art world, until their works were finally accepted as legitimate.

I have been enthralled by certain pieces that have greatly influenced what I have done. Monet’s Water Lillie series was the subject of some of my early paintings and it was only later that I discovered how large the original Monet’s were!

My first art show sale back in 2004 was a painting inspired by Charles Conder’s work ‘Holiday at Mentone’ (Art Gallery of South Australia). My take was of the Semaphore Jetty during the annual Kite Festival and I’ve done several versions of it since. I felt privileged to visit Mentone beach and try to figure out what Conder saw, without the public baths and walkway that have long gone.

This is all leading to a visit to the Art Gallery of South Australia back in 2003, to see one of Monet’s imposing haystack paintings that was there on loan. I ducked in one lunchtime to have a look. Being a weekday, there were no crowds and I virtually had the Monet to myself.

The thing is, that I had read a news report that these paintings had bits of straw in them that had blown into the wet paint and I had to see this for myself!

I moved in for a closer look and my face too wasn’t far from the canvas. So, as I lurching over the rope and close to finding this elusive piece of straw, the proximity alarm went off in the gallery and I had set it off!

It was loud and as I looked around in embarrassment a tour guide leading a group of people on the other side of the room, reminded me that “yes, you got too close”.

It was a marvellous painting and a visit I shall never forget, but I can’t believe it was back in 2003 – the humiliation feels like it happened just yesterday!”

Happy painting!