A meditation on the Landscapes of Kynan Sutherland

By Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA

A parallel may be drawn between the drawings of Kynan Sutherland and the sort of Zen meditation that one associates with someone like Japan's most celebrated haiku master, Matsuo Basho (1644-94).  When Basho wrote his Travel-Worn Satchel and Weather-Exposed Skeleton, or, slightly later, his The Narrow Way Within, the portrait of the journey through the landscape becomes the portrait of the mind.  It is as much a physical journey, as it is an account of an inner voyage.  A small detail is a comment on the absolute, like the symbolism of the haiku form itself, where the seventeen syllable poem, can embody a whole physical and mystical landscape.  As in Basho’s pilgrimage, where the great shrines which he visited are never fully described and their existence is only hinted at, as we are called upon to witness the periphery, so too in Kynan Sutherland’s drawings there are no monumental proclamations, but a large number of relatively small scale meditations which collectively and almost diaristically combine into a major statement.  His description of a tree or of a rock have both a specificity of observation, yet metaphorically they comment on a much greater phenomenon.

Kynan Sutherland maps his landscapes, but not topographically or within any scheme of direct linear or aerial perspective, but in terms of sense impressions, meditations on the place and the symbolic emblematic aspects of the particular landscape.  He observes “I’m trying to be more faithful to the energy and magnificence of the place, rather than to any particular view of it.”  Although he was trained at the Victorian College of the Arts and studied Art History at the University of Melbourne, a major experience in his development as an artist was the year he spent working out of Alice Springs teaching music at the remote Aboriginal community schools in 2004.  This first hand exposure to Aboriginal art and the experience of living in the landscape became a significant part of his practice.  Ultimately all of his landscape images are ‘walked landscapes’ – they trace an actual journey through the landscape where distance is distilled into a single line.  His is concerned with the authenticity of the image and what could be termed the unique signature of a place. 

Kynan Sutherland’s technique is also unusual.  He works on poly-cotton canvas, usually roughly 121 x 92 cm in size, which he has primed with several layers of white acrylic paint with each layer sanded back.  It becomes a very tight, textured surface which he then seals by applying an oil base (Art Spectrum oil medium number 3) and into this wet oil base he draws with pencil his landscape meanderings.  While there may be rough compositional sketches, the detailed design is worked out on the actual arena of the canvas, always working on it while the paint is still wet.

 This exhibition mainly deals with the central Victorian goldfields and his work from 2007 and 2008.  In the four years since he started doing his ‘walked landscapes’ the sense of place and the actuality of being there in the landscape have become increasingly important in his practice.  Each specific location has its own unique twigs, rocks, trees and ground formations which are peculiar to this place and to this place alone.  In the microcosm of each element there is a reflection of the greater whole, the sprawling, all over drawings set out to bear witness to these unique peculiarities.  Although all reference to the horizon has vanished and references to site specific peculiarities may appear to be less apparent, there is a growing fidelity to the spirit of the place. 

Kynan Sutherland is an unusual artist, one with a very refined, even oriental sensibility with few obvious parallels in Australian art.  Parallels which spring to mind are with the literati artists of the early Song dynasty, with their calligraphic brushwork and the monochromatic paintings of emblematic images of nature.  In some of Kynan Sutherland’s finest paintings there is a very distilled poetry of elements which brings to mind the words of the immortal Dogen:

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.

The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.

Although its light is wide and great,

The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.

The whole moon and the entire sky

Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA

The Sir William Dobell Professor of Art History

Australian National University