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Artist Statement Cloisonné

This body of work has been completed over the last 18 months and continues to focus on an intuitive approach to painting and the mark making process of drawing. Using pigmented inks, collage and acrylic paint to explore pattern and repetition in nature; I draw on rich sources of motifs and organic structures from the specimens at the Australian Museum, my personal collection as well as found images. Using a magnifying glass (which also dictated the format), to examine mostly marine invertebrates I amassed sketchbooks full of detailed research drawings in pen and ink.

Working back in the studio it was clear that the next works were not about faithful representation, but development of a personal language where subject matter is embedded and suspended in the viscosity of the paint. The works are structured in layers where I “arrive” at a resolved work. This emphasises the element of chance and importance of play in the production of drawings or paintings and has been a preoccupation of my art practice for the last ten years.

The title Cloisonné refers to a type of delicate jewel like enameling process originating in China and derived from the word “partition” which in French is cloisons. I see each of the series of three drawings as a description of one organism or specimen partitioned into its constituent parts, patterns and structures. The mounting is intended to highlight the object ness and emphasize both intimacy of production and viewing. Sarah Mufford August 2006

Mottled

“Mufford works with a more personal production of the mark, an intuitive mark based on nature but evolved from the painting technique. Mufford allows her calligraphy brushes to dictate the scale of the mark and tiles her canvases with full brushstrokes of pure colour. Her work explores pattern and repetition of forms sourced from nature. She uses her organic marks to create tightly constructed surfaces that are exercises in pure abstraction, delighting the eye with their colour, illusory depths and textured surfaces.

Mufford uses the surface of her works as a palette, mixing, layering, scraping and even dissolving the paint directly on to the canvas or paper. Mufford has found a spontaneity and freedom working with acrylic inks. In her black and white Mottled series Mufford worked quickly, experimenting with a variety of marks and patterns. Excited by the impact of chance in her works, the production of the Mottled series was used by the artist as a teaching method, to gain the desired control of her materials and tools, making the most of their potential for expressionistic use. The resulting works have a print-like quality, particularly with the tension created by working ink on wet paper. They have a rhythmic sensibility as if the artist has acted as composer.

In Pomegranate Lozenge 2002 Mufford displays her mastery of acrylic ink on paper. The diluting properties of the inks allow them to be washed back by the artist, reactivating the layers of ink below to reveal the kaleidoscope of colours that Mufford has used to build up her canvas. Sections of the canvas have been worked back to reveal prisms of seed-shaped light that beam out to the viewer. The acrylic ink is also used like a glaze by the artist, with each application forming one semi-translucent layer that influences the next, weaving a complex composition of colour studies. Mufford also delights in the fluidity of the medium; her works examine and celebrate the viscosity of paint. Like a controlled accident, she allows the paint to freely dribble down the canvas and become suspended within its surface”. Emma Epstein, “Homeground” 2004 ANU School of Art Gallery, Goanna Print, Canberra

“Mufford's paintings enter a more ambiguous space. The works are abstract in the true sense-that is to say they belong to the 'non-representational' code of painting. Visually as well as conceptually, this work is vastly different from that of colleague Anwen Keeling. To begin with, her approach to colour is actually very traditional, although the result is far from its origins. 'At art school 1 researched the traditions of the seventeenth century Dutch schools, particularly the food paintings, and the artist's discovery of the medium of oil as a vehicle for paint. Oil was found to increase the translucency of certain pigments resulting in increased optical depths in shadows, and as a way to give colour over the opaqueness of egg tempera. The resulting glazes allowed a glowing light to predominate from these passages and as 1 explored my medium 1 became obsessed with the technique of glazing and working my transparent paint starting with lighter hues and layering with dark,' says Mufford. 'I have since discovered that 1 am mostly terrified of opaque paint/ pigments and their finality. Transparent pigments allow limitless layering and playing with shifting colours and lights, all bouncing off the pristine whiteness of the gesso ground. So my only rule as I push ink and oil around is light to dark.' …..” John Stockdill p21 Artlook, Issue 3 August 2004. Muse Inc Publishers, Canberra

Surface and Structure

"Alchemy and painting are two of the last remaining paths into the deliriously beautiful world of unnamed substances". James Elkins

Sarah Muffords paintings are irresistibly tactile; their viscous surfaces beckon you to their touch. One feels compelled to pull back and admire their aesthetic boldness as much as desiring to draw close and take in their thick, pulpy surfaces. Her current suite of abstractions literally takes the surface as their subject matter. Moving away from naturalistic representation, she has become much more interested in the alchemical processes of the painting medium itself.

Mufford delights in the messy, sticky stuff of paint. Like a modem day visual alchemist she mixes in oil paint, pigment, hot wax and glazes, with unexpected sometimes surprising results. She builds up layers, scrapes them back, scratches and scars the surface, staining and masking certain areas, whilst leaving others to shine through. Stenciled shapes often float on top of these rich organic surfaces. The use of encaustic wax is an ancient technique that dates back to Egyptian art in the 5th century BC. It is a rarely used medium that was picked up again in the latter half of the twentieth century by post-war artists such as Jasper Johns

Just as Mufford builds up layers in her painting technique, her artwork is also redolent with layers of meaning. Her Skin Suites, refer to the natural surfaces of organic forms, from fruit to animal skins - be they delicate or rough, patterned or marked, smooth and shiny or dry and flaky. She also looks at the imposed decorative elements we as humans use to adorn our skin, such as tattooing the body or smearing it with make-up. Mufford skillfully uses encaustic to create surfaces that are uncannily like human skin parched powdered ageing flesh or raw bloody tissue. Circular shapes sometimes emerge through the surface, like peep holes, allowing you to see behind the mask-like waxy surface.

A recent research trip to Samoa led to the artists fascination with Polynesian tattooing techniques. Recalling some of their designs, as well as the markings and patterns on traditional 'siapo' cloths, she has made a series of stencils which are often applied to her painted images. This repetition of stenciled images take on an archetypal resonance, recalling the 'found image' or frottage, commonly used in the Surrealist movement.

These are set against the imprints of animal skins - be they striped, scaly or spotted. Their origin is deliberately ambiguous, the focus being on the decorative elements of these surfaces. Yet Mufford does not only turn her attention to outer surfaces; she is just as interested in the inner supporting structures of these organisms. The exo-skeletons of aquatic life, such as starfish, the camouflage armor of animals, as well as human spinal columns, are all suggested in her layered artworks.

Binary oppositions are a recurring feature throughout, creating subtle tensions within the paintings. As well as alluding to internal and external structures, she is drawn to surfaces that disturb as much as attract the viewer, creating an interplay between the appealing slickness of a glaze and the corporeal materiality of wax. Her imagery also explores dualistic elements such as masking versus revealing the body and natural versus artificial physical adornment. In the process the artist takes on both a micro and macro perspective of organic matter. VICTORIA HYNES MAY 2001

An orgy in the orchard

            Show me someone unimpressed by Cezanne's pears, quinces, apples and lemons and I will show you a an old stick-in the-mud. Still, Cezanne's way, which has been canonised, copied and in many ways curdled by innumerable artistic imitators over the years, is not the only, way to paint fruit. Sarah Mufford will vouch for that. Mufford has a show that succeeds admirably in replacing Cezanne's celebrated dispassion with, well, passionfruit. And grapes, and plums and whatnot. These paintings so openly announce their intention to seduce you that it is almost embarrassing standing there letting it happen. What a pushover!
            They are big, for starters. And their titles are the painterly equivalent of lingerie and naughty lipstick: things like Indulge, Syrup, Pendulous, My Lover's Body, Voluptas and Give It To Me, Baby. (No, not that last.) There are some gorgeous paintings here. Mufford invites us to consider the palpable, pulpable physicality of fruit. Although "invites" is not strictly accurate: she shoves your nose in the matter: "See this thing, here?" ("Um, yes ... Ouch!) "Looks big close up, doesn't it? See this? It's purple! Sexy, don't you think? And this milky, globby, translucent stuff on the skin of the fruit? It's ... a light reflection! Fooled you! Ha!"
            Mufford has a wonderful sense of colour. You feel yourself to be in a darkened, Brobdingnagian world lit by drug-addled slaves carrying coloured candies. Thus, the syrup in the sliced-open passionfruit quite happily becomes lurid green without any lessening of one's sense that this is something like reality. Oranges sit friskily beside purples, yellows sidle up to reds. Mufford uses resinous glazes to exaggerate the sense of thick, liquid indolence and gloopy sensuality in these paintings - and it works.
            They're not all successful, mind you. In many of them, Mufford seems almost to be employing a formula, and painting-by-formula is like lovemaking-by-manual: it shows. But, when she hits her stride, Mufford makes you feel the cool, analytical Cezanne side of you stand obediently in the corner, while your fruity, physical side bubbles up and colonises your brain. SEBASTIAN SMEE SMH Dec 1998

smufford@optusnet.com.au
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