Interview with Eric Hiller
‘In my paintings I’m trying to present a vast number of things.
A lot of these things are beyond words.
The best I can do is to give people some sort of visual experience which can add to their stock of experiences.
Something directly from me, which I am creating, and not something that mimics landscape or something they have already seen or perceived.’
1. David Hawley paints in an unprepossessing small shed in the back garden of his house in a suburb of Burnie.
The shed/studio has in it many canvases stacked against the walls, empty paint cans and tubes and a mountain of palettes, originally milk cartons, opened up and used as a surface on which to mix oil paints, useful because of their waxed outer covering.
During winter the studio is heated by a rather inadequate bar radiator. Close to the heater David’s dog Molly, a roughly shorn poodle has reserved her place.
‘Some artists are quite casual in the way they paint.
I’ve got to paint all the time.
Painting should be a struggle. It should be honest.
A painting or exhibition which does not reveal some sort of struggle is idealized and not really about who we are and what we are.’
2. David Hawley is a ‘proper artist’ (that is he works incessantly and believes that painting is just about the most important thing a person can do).
‘A lot of these works are about whether there are riles in making pictures and whether a composition should be done in a certain way – according to the elements of design – or whether a painting should be about the elements of design at all.’
3. He is one of those ‘driven people’ who sets himself very clear and mostly achievable goals, like ‘a painting a day for 596 days and only then will he grant himself a day’s rest.
‘A lot of my paintings do not mimic anything outside them – they are objects in their own right.’
4. The work he does is not done easily. It is, as it should be, a struggle. While he works he is continually assessing where he has been, how far he has to go and what he needs to do next.
‘I think art has to be about who you are and where you are.
It’s about here and now.
If here and now happens to be beautiful, then fair enough, but most of the time it’s not.
It’s difficult for me to say whether I’m happy about works.
Each work is an entity in itself.
5. David Hawley is very prolific. Out of such a huge body of work, many gems occur. The casual observer will never know the huge amount of planning and underpainting that has gone onto achieving the one work in fifty that might be displayed in a gallery or grace the wall of a collector, patron or benefactor. Each work begets the next work; each work has its origins in David’s very comprehensive art training, in his very thorough knowledge of the art of the past and the art of the present. He visits galleries, both in Tasmania and on the mainland frequently and keeps abreast of current directions in the art world via books and magazines. Each work has its origins in a series of detailed sketches, usually done from his perch on a swivel chair, amid the detritus of his studio or late at night inside his neat house, in preparation for the next days work.
‘I often do a lot of overpainting.’
6. David Hawley is obsessively compulsive in approach to his art. He will never be left wondering as to the outcome of a fleeting idea he may have visualized. Each idea is made concrete in his comprehensive sketch books and just to make sure he has not left out any possibilities, he sketches every conceivable variation of the original.
‘I’m constantly making decisions – which way to go.
I’d like to make a painting with just one thing in it.’
7. David Hawley has produced a lot of significant work. He is a serious painter who is dedicated and enthusiastic about what he does. His paintings are often bold and confronting, some unresolved, others magnificently complete. He is a very focused artist. He lives his art. It is important for most artists to get some recognition, but if it is not forthcoming, then, as in David’s case, it does not alter their focus, energy, enthusiasm and involvement with the work.
‘There is no difference between what is abstract and what is not.
A painting is a painting. You might look at abstract work as a figurative painting upside down.’
8. The contents of the studio reflect the energy and intensity of the artist. In order to make a painting live, lots of dead material is left on the studio floor. With David’s frenetic work rate, his output allows him to review his creative past with some sort of objectivity.
‘I like some degree of spontaneity but I don’t think it is that important.
It all depends where you are and in what point in time you are at.’
9. The best works are dynamic and unified and the worst overworked but when seen hung, as a group, they complement each other. David Hawley’s works were made to be seen in a gallery large enough to see them in the sweep of the viewer’s eye.
‘To become a ‘good’ artist you work hard. You become committed to what you are doing but I have trouble with the term ‘good art.’
10. David Hawley’s subject matter is unspecific. David is sometimes diffident and often angry with the world. He works on his art every day despite having a full time job teaching art at Marist College. His sincerity is unquestionable.
‘I spend a lot of time moving things – shapes in the painting and physically moving the canvases around the studio.’
11. David talks intelligently about the process of making art and the problem he encounters with resolving each of his works.
‘This painting I did after looking at the work of Wilma Tabacco. It’s a bit decorative but I like it. There are some interesting things happening in the shallow spaces around the two organic forms. A sort of tension is created. It’s a bit of a departure from some of the other works.’
12. He remembers clearly what his major concerns were in works finished a year ago or more.
‘I’m interested in edges. Where lines and shapes crash into the edge.
For me the edge of a painting is really tangible whereas the shapes which I paint are merely and illusion.’
13. Like many artists David Hawley finds the works that he has the most difficulty with, often in the end are the most satisfying.
‘Some people believe that art is something you only do when you feel like it.
If that is the case, then your painting will reflect that.
If you can work hard consistently, your work will have more variety.
There are days when I don’t make art but not many.
I force myself to take a morning off sometimes – after working four or five days straight. I get calluses on my hands.’
14. Hawley (like Fred Williams, the Australian landscape painter) believes that to be an artist one has to work very hard almost to the exclusion of all else. Williams recognized few Australia artists that could be taken seriously because they did not take their own work seriously. He thought that the term ‘Sunday painter’ was often appropriate.
‘I like talking about my art and I’m disappointed if people don’t ask me questions. I get disappointed with people who think of art as some sort of purely emotional response and get too sensitive about it.’
15. Hawley believes his main subject matter is the act of painting. He is an unashamed ‘Modernist’ and is usually full consumed with the ‘formal elements’ of line, colour, texture, shape, form, contrast, composition and so on, rather than concentrating on any narrative or symbolic meaning.
‘I’m trying to concentrate on visual devices.
I’m not overly concerned with meaning when I’m doing work.’
16. There are many significant influences from other artists in his work but they are absorbed into his consciousness, processed and evolve in what is increasingly becoming a distinctive style.
‘You hit on a technique (just like we gravitate towards a certain fashion in clothes) and in the end that remains, with, of course, small changes depending on environmental, expressive and intellectual influences.’
17. Recently he has been working on a number of series of smaller diptychs – with imagery not unlike that used by Australia artist Victor Majzner. The content problem is solved (like Monet and his series based on Rouen Cathedral), by using the same basic lines and shapes in each work, thus leaving only areas to be filled in and texture to provide significant difference. Paralleling this development is the introduction of an overall grid pattern which determines the stress and balance of the works. Each different but the same.
‘I often like the hideousness, or the threatening nature of the work.’
18. These more careful controlled geometric works seem a long way from the mood induced abstract expressionist works of a year ago, but in texture and liveliness there is not such a great dichotomy. Gone is the dilemma of starting from scratch each time he enters the studio. He sees his works as a series of perhaps a dozen or twenty.
‘I probably have a new artist each week that interests me. At present Georg Baselitz, Frank Stella and Peter Booth are important. Also artists like Michael Muruste and Tim Burns.’
19. David Hawley is an artist in search of an audience. An artist who believes strongly in his art; in the act of making art. It is only a matter of time before he is discovered by those ‘who matter.’ If he is not, and he continues (and he invariably will) he will be an undiscovered national treasure.
‘I’m drawing things all the time, but the process should not be entirely cerebral.’
20. At time David Hawley’s prolific output causes him to embrace nihilism. Because of his determination and hard work he has the ability to paint himself out of corners after he has painted himself into one. David Hawley is a first rate painter who has a promising future.
‘Art is a reflection of who you are and where you are.’
ERIC HILLER
August 1997