The Immaculate Perception – Graeme W. Balchin

The Immaculate Perception – An exhibition of recent paintings by Graeme W. Balchin

Opening 5pm February 4th 2012 at Soho Gallery, Sydney.

The paintings I have created for this exhibition, “Immaculate Perception” are the culmination of a decade of working with two particular models, my stepdaughter Amy and her friend Alexandra.

I started painting Amy at the age of twelve. She loved to pose and I painted her for the local regional art prize each year. She introduced me to Alex, who was equally keen to pose, and they became my main stay muses each year, winning me Peoples Choice in 2009.?? After some time I became aware that I was capturing the lives of these two young women as they grew into adults. Theirs was such a different experience to mine when I was young and yet strangely the same. As they say, the more things change the more they stay the same.??I started playing with their ‘modern-ness’ and my era, bringing the two together, painting in a style that would bring out the feeling of them and not just the image. After you have studied a subject so long in painting it, you fall in love with every little detail. I like to paint so as to give the desire to touch the painting, the feel of the skin, or the material – kind of 3D effect.

I want to give the viewer the same feeling that I get when painting it; everything becomes so immaculate and the shapes are so beautiful you can not stop looking at them.?? Having known Amy and Alex so long I feel I can paint their personalities as well as their image. The two girls are quite different; Amy a little reserved, Alex more extrovert. I feel this shows in the paintings, not just in their images but also in the whole story of the work. Their sensuality shows in different ways. It has been a great delight to watch them obtain and recognize the power their looks have given them, and observe how they use this to get their way – how they throw it at me when they pose and then giggle at the knowledge of their suggestiveness. ?It is an amazing journey for them, and to be able to paint it is even more amazing. I hope the viewer can feel this also. ?The only way to capture this emotion is with a high degree of realism but I am always aware of not loosing a painterly effect. It lets the viewer see that the artwork has been created and crafted with emotion and thought; about how to capture the moment with narrative and symbology; how to make their temporality eternal. ??Most of my paintings carry a metaphor or symbolism, a story of a part of the lives of these young ladies. “Papiliophobia” – the fear of butterflies – the desire to be free, but with it comes the fear of the responsibility; the desire to leave the nest, crossed with their need for security. ?They want to go in search of far away castles but are hearing the warnings of danger.

To use any other style or method, for me would not convey the same message. The artworks have to be painstakingly and lovingly labored over. Each painting has the emotion of the subject thought about and slowly brought out so that it becomes embedded into it; to paint them in the abstract would simply be a waste of the precious moment. If the work is completed too quickly the subject matter does not have the time to incubate and talk to me about where it wants to go; something that can take months. Yes, my paintings talk to me and they tell me the precise moment when they are finished too.

I hope the viewer enjoys these paintings as much as I have enjoyed creating them, and that Alex and Amy will allow me to continue painting the ongoing journey of their lives.  - Artist – Painter Graeme W. Balchin