scott charles leichhardt hollingsworth

abstract pointlessism

This is a gallery of the work that I have been creating, oh, since about the turn of the century, along with other stuff, that I have tended to group together as abstract pointlessism. It really started a bit before the end of the previous millennium, when I was in the final months of my studies at QUT, Queensland University of Technology.

I was creating a lot of stuff, as was always the case, and seeing a lot of exhibitions. I was heavily influenced by the environment at QUT, after my years at QCA Queensland College of Art. The questioning of what art is, was a lot more challenging and my search was a lot more constant.

Now, I'm not trying to put down QCA by saying this, I certainly received my fair share of mental challenges there and attribute what I am as much to the time spent there as anything else in my life. I made a few life long friends there and still care about them all.

Some of the great artists that I have had the pleasure of knowing were people I met there at Seven Hills.

I also got in the habit of going to see exhibitions while at QCA and my regular band of Opening Night tourers were all QCA people. I don't think I did that sort of thing at all with the people from QUT.

A lot of people from QCA also came over that year and we infiltrated QUT, and we certainly kept up the Opening Night routine

Anyhow, I think I'm getting off the point a bit here.

I was looking for a new direction at the time and was having some life changing experiences outside of the art college world as well. But I had started being really impressed by what I could see several people doing there at QUT, which was a kind of repetition and pattern based work.

During my regular gallery cruising expeditions I happened to see an exhibition of work (I'm sorry to say I can't remember the artist's name, although it was at the David Pretorious gallery, in Fortitude Valley) that included, or was entirely based on, canvas work with rubber bands glued on them them.

This work made a big impression on me, (the work, although not the artist, apparently) and I soon found myself painting work that was similar in aesthetics, although in my case I was painting images of rubber bands on paper. I had/have a bit of a gift for painting ovals and ellipses by hand.

I remember Jill Barker being astonished during a critique of my work that I was just painting these ellipses by hand directly. I suppose that skill came from years of drawing and painting practise and from Geometrical drawing and perspective, which was my best subject at school.

At that time I was making a lot of work out of found materials, so a move back to painting was in store really.

I started doing a series of work based on the patterns formed by picket fence wood, and that seemed to lead on and on. In fact the work on this page called Bloody Monkey is a direct descendant of those works.

I hope to be able to put up more of this series of works soon. There are a few more already scanned.

I am going to try to recover more images from that late nineties, early naughties time as well, as I am planning a trip back to Australia some time this year and hope to be able to scan, or photograph some work that I have in collections there.

In the meantime I will work at getting some of the work that I can access up here and worry about filling in the gaps as I go along. In no particular order, for the moment.

In Spain, I continued to make this sort of work and even received another influence while painting the detail on another artist's painting. (long story, which I'm not going to get into right here and right now. Maybe at some time I'll blog about it.)

This detail work consisted of drawing, directly on the surface of an acrylic painting of a toreador, (bullfighter), all the beads, threads and little mirrors that form the structure of a traje de luces (literally, suit of lights) which, if you were wondering is the name of those clothes that the bullfighter wears. If you have ever had the chance to see one close up, they are pretty amazing. I'm not condoning or condemning bullfighting as a practise here, just talking about painting.

I did this for a month or so, standing at an easel with a Rotring draftsman's pen, drawing the beads and the like from a photograph, on to a grey mid tone that had been applied with an airbrush, and then scraping back to the white ground, or under painting to reveal the little reflections.

I do have a photograph of this painting, but as it's not mine I'm not to keen to put it up here.

And, to cut a long story short, ever since then I have been focusing more than 50% of my output into this sort of work, and still do.

Each work has it's own page. Please click the thumbnails, or titles to access same

Jungle Boogie, undersea

Starmap, Waiting in the Sky

Bloody Monkey

Tubemap 2050

The Search for Little Infinity

Roselines, by any other name

David Jones and his Red Right Hand

The Original Small Balls

10, 820 Blue Balls over Scarlet and Others

Synapses, painted version

Drippy Whites

Sea Monkeys 1

Sea Monkeys2

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