“. . . to me they look the way life feels – swirling, chaotic, sunlight flickering, tensions pulling and pushing, in some sort of dance.”

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Bold compositional lines and forms, gestural marks, a rich golden colour palette, and a textured materiality that springs from the fibrous weave of linen and jute canvas layered with lashings of oil paint emote a transformative dance across the painterly works of Melbourne-based artist Eleanor Louise Butt.

In this interview, the artist enlightens our interest in her artistic practice, life in the studio, and her inspirations.

Where is your studio, and what do you love about running a studio-based practice?

My studio is at home in Kallista, amongst the forest of the Dandenong Ranges. It’s a room high up on the west side of the house with white painted floorboards (now covered in oil paint) and has wonderful afternoon light; the large window overlooks our garden and the mountain ridge above us. The wattles are just starting to bloom outside.

I love that my studio practice is so integrated with our daily lives; wet paintings hang on the walls of our living spaces to dry where I can see them outside of the studio and notice any changes I might want to make. It does fill up the house somewhat, but once we have reached capacity, I tend to have an exhibition, and they’re all shipped to the gallery and we are empty again, ready for the cycle to start over.

What mediums do you like working with and what qualities do they bring to both the process and outcome of your work?

I predominantly paint using oil paint on linen, canvas jute and paper, as well as watercolour, gouache, and inks. I love drawing, and most recently have begun working with lost-wax bronze casting. These mediums are very immediate and show the hand of the artist. The materials are manipulated in such a way that you can see layers of time and energy that have gone into making the works. Scratching paint with a brush, pushing materials, folding wax to be transformed into bronze, squeezing paint from a tube, and maneuvering it into something else, allowing accidents to happen, allowing chance to lead the way, following a path paved with a series of problems, questions, and answers that arise through process.

Your paint palette leans to variations of yellow, orange, and umber with hints of green and blue. What is it about these colours that inspires your creative vision?

When I work with a reduced palette my ideas feel clearer than when there is a lot going on colour-wise. Many of the tones in these new works were reflected from nature (although the works themselves are not landscapes); the autumn season where I live blew my mind this year. Outside my studio window there are large deciduous chestnut trees that turn rich shades of brown and yellow, and these colours radiated into the studio – it literally glowed. I wanted to imbue something of this sensation into the paintings. I’ve been thinking about bronze sculptures a lot so there are some of those warm patinaed tones in there as well.

Some of your paintings are quite large. What are the challenges and the positives of working to such a scale?

I feel energised when working at a scale larger than my body and filling that amount of space. It’s a challenge to work on multiple pieces that size primarily because of storage and where to dry them – I prefer to work on a lot of pieces simultaneously – currently there is one atop my piano and another on a bookshelf beside it as well as a stack in the studio and by the front door (we have reached the capacity I mentioned earlier).

What can you tell us about your new body of work for your exhibition at Nicholas Thompson Gallery?

Most of the works in the show were made this year. There are some large paintings [around 200 × 170cm] as well as smaller paintings, works on paper, and there will also be some small bronzes. The works utilise colour, texture, line, and form to charge surfaces with gestural energy. I am working with the potentialities of paint to create visual dialogues where action, experience, perception, and memory are interwoven and folded back into one another. Coarse linen, cotton, and bronze are used as foundational surfaces, which function neither solely as object nor image. What then follows is an intuitive process of applying and removing paint, pouring, rubbing, and layering, where each painting occurs within a wider process of material exploration. Emergent forms oscillate in constant dialogue with one another.

There is a sense of motion that dances between the layers of paint and brush marks in your paintings, alluding to deeper dimensions the longer you look. What do you hope your paintings evoke in the viewer?

I was striving for a sense of energy and movement: to me, they look the way life feels – swirling, chaotic, sunlight flickering, tensions pulling and pushing, in some sort of dance. I want the paintings to draw the viewer’s eye across and into the surface, as if it is a space they are able to physically traverse. The paintings at first seem entirely gestural before giving way to flickers of representation then dissolving back into abstract potentiality.

 

Butt’s latest body of work in her exhibition titled All that which sings will be on view at Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne, from 17 September to 8 October 2022.

Eleanor Louise Butt is represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne.

eleanorlouisebutt.com
nicholasthompsongallery.com.au

 

Kirsty Francis is Sydney-based arts writer.