Kanmantoo abstract #1

I have been calling many of the rock abstracts that I have made  whilst walking along the coast between Petrel Cove and Kings Head  granite,  when they should be termed Kanmantoo.  These Kanmantoo group rocks are typically derived from  the Cambrian Period sedimentation in shallow ocean. 

According to the  Coastal Landscape of South Australian text these  Cambrian metasedimentary rocks are aligned with the Encounter Fault, occur northeast of Newland Head, diminishing  in height towards King's Head  and the Bluff (Rosetta Head). The small pocket beaches, largely derived from erosion of Permian glacial deposits, occupy bays eroded into  less resistant Cambrian rocks.

a note on abstraction

This is a bit of iron that I saw  lying on the ground when I was on a recent early morning  poodlewalk with Kayla. The iron was laying on the beach amongst the seagrass, and it was  from  the rebuilding of the causeway to Granite Island that had been happening  during 2021.

 It had been raining that morning. The sky was still heavily overcast and so I did not need to take account of the early morning sunlight shining directly onto the iron.  

McCaughey on abstraction

I have started reading Patrick McCaughey's 1969 book  Australian Abstract Art. He says that  there is no absolute distinction between abstract and representational art, that much Australian abstraction keeps in close contact with the physical world, and its aim is not to give an illusion of the physical world  but to provide us with an experience of it (p.3).   

 McCaughey argued that the Sydney modernists (eg., Ralph Batson, Grace Cowley)  in the 1950s embraced a constructivist  interpretation of abstraction as a new order different from the natural order: ie.,  a new vision appropriate to the 20th century. This is linked by McCaughey to Moholy-Nagy's book The New Vision.  The  new vision was  rooted in the technological culture of the twentieth century.   

Quartz abstraction #9

This quartz abstraction was made recently on  an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko. The walk was along  the coast in Waitpinga, on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula South Australia.  

During early autumn it has  been cloudy in the morning and , clearing around midday and sunny in the afternoon. It has been a while since  we have done this  pm walk as the afternoon light has been too bright around 5-6pm. I was fortunate on this occasion. There  was afternoon cloud. 


salt abstraction #4

 This abstraction of  salt + coastal granite rocks was made whilst  I was on an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko amongst some coastal rocks west of Petrel Cove on the southern  Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia.  

It had been a hot summers  day and the small pools of water  that usually lie amongst the granite rocks from the  high tide in the morning had evaporated. I made a number  of studies of these salt abstractions that afternoon. 

quartz abstract #8

I was taken by the soft colours of the quartz vein amongst the coastal granite rocks  in the soft afternoon light:

Wirth summer just around the corner this part of the coast is still in sunlight between 5-6pm when I am on a poodlewalk. It is only rarely that there is cloud cover at this time of the day. This was one of those occasions.  

bark abstraction #4

The trunk of a  pink gum in the local bushland in Waitpinga:

This was  made  on my  last visit to this bushland in the early morning.  The grass seeds were everywhere and it was well nigh impossible  to walk with the poodles in the bushland. Kayla  ended up being  covered with grass seeds in the legs, ears and body.  It took me ages to pick them off her body.