There are many rooms in the mansion of Ken Whisson's mind. Rooms where he stores his thoughts, memories, recollections and ideas. Rooms packed with joy, whimsy, lust and energy. Rooms filled with life. Ken must visit these rooms often, encouraged to open the various doors from which flood the subjects and motifs of his paintings and drawings.

The drawings have the same immediacy and explore the same imagery as his paintings. In pen and ink, the visual language that Whisson has created is clearly evident. The line may seem tentative, but what we are witnessing is the emergence of the creative thought – “thoughts as they are about to form” on the page, becoming “more and more real”. We know this from the titles Ken gives some of his paintings and drawings, as if an explanation for the half-formed, hazy apparitions of inspiration.

In other works, the solidity is startling. The more banal titles casually point out the contents of landscapes and still-lifes as Whisson conjures up motor cars, and aeroplanes and ships as easily as horses, cats and chickens. The fantastic circus imagery in works like Fabulous beast, 1/11/94, 25/6/02 , recreates all the excitement and anxiety I feel when I see a juggler perform. And in Motorcars and dancing and seated figures , 1991 or 1992, I sense the rising temperature of a pulsating African beat.

Whisson presents a distinctly personal viewpoint in his work. What may seem a casual placement of a bottle or book without regard to the rules of perspective is infact a focussed and intentional disruption to our understanding of spatial relationships. Objects appear as monuments in the landscape, a tremulous capturing before they dissolve again into memories.

This is reportage, a snapshot, evidence of the existence of objects at some point in time, factual. Now maybe I watch too much TV, which makes up for the fact that Ken watches none, but looking at his work is sometimes like being a crime scene investigator conducting a psychic unravelling and reconstruction of events. Ken lays out his recollections of events and we are permitted to wander around in them until we have them sorted into a semblance of order that we find satisfying, piecing together a narrative if one does exist at all.

But should we rely on our own inexpert interpretations? Surely more joy can be had if we simply allow ourselves to learn the language. There is enough familiar in the work for us to understand the gist of what it is he is saying, and like any new tongue, more exposure will make us fluent. Of course, this is a living language and Whisson is the sole guardian of its grammar, so one can expect constantly to be shown new verbs and nouns, not to mention adverbs and adjectives. Translation may be evasive.

A fascinating insight into the way he works is provided in a transcript of a talk given to students at Ballarat in 1994:

…More directly in relation to where art comes from I have a distinct impression when working that the painting takes place at the point where the brush touches the canvas, and I believe that art is a result of a direct line of communication between the act of creation and a level of our being which is neither the conscious nor the famous subconscious, but which could be called the intuitive faculty, and which has to function without interference from the conscious thinking process. Our rational and conscious mind looks on and even criticises what is happening, but in the moment of creation at its fullest realisation, one's own eyes and mind, one's own self looking on is caught totally by surprise.

…And when you do look at your work, after however long, the surprise will be the threads of development that you find running through it, either linear, i.e. from one to the next, or as in my work because I try to make each painting different from the one preceding it, it will quite often be a kind of leap frog development, with elements vanishing and then re-appearing in a work that was done a week or a month later.

…All that I have been describing, as well as keeping open the flow of creative intuition, has another intention tied closely in with it but different, that of continually shaking and breaking up and disrupting our conscious thought patterns, especially those that flow onto paper or board or canvas in the sense of breaking with the prevailing banalisation of our thought patterns. Television, the media in general, and advertising flatten, lay waste, banalise all the different forms of language, including visual language.

(‘Talk 1994', Ken Whisson Paintings 1947–1999 with writings and talks by the artist , Niagara Publishing 2001, pp143–144.)

Whisson has chosen to live in Perugia, Italy for over twenty years, and returns to Australia for his annual exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. But it is in Europe, closer to the social and political cut and thrust, where he can more acutely observe the machinations of world events. His enthusiastic analysis of the arts, media, and the social condition can be found in his frequent writings. Whisson was born in Lilydale, Victoria in 1927 and sixty years later was awarded the Visual Arts Board Emeritus Award for substantial contribution to Australian art. One wonders what we could offer him to celebrate another twenty years as one of the pre-eminent artists of our time.

Gina Lee

Melbourne 2004


	Further reading KEN WHISSON Catalogue essay from the 2004 Drawing Biennale at the ANU Drill Hall Gallery There are many rooms in the mansion of Ken Whisson's mind. Rooms where he stores his thoughts, memories, recollections and ideas. Rooms packed with joy, whimsy, lust and energy. Rooms filled with life. Ken must visit these rooms often, encouraged to open the various doors from which flood the subjects and motifs of his paintings and drawings. The drawings have the same immediacy and explore the same imagery as his paintings. In pen and ink, the visual language that Whisson has created is clearly evident. The line may seem tentative, but what we are witnessing is the emergence of the creative thought – “thoughts as they are about to form” on the page, becoming “more and more real”. We know this from the titles Ken gives some of his paintings and drawings, as if an explanation for the half-formed, hazy apparitions of inspiration. In other works, the solidity is startling. The more banal titles casually point out the contents of landscapes and still-lifes as Whisson conjures up motor cars, and aeroplanes and ships as easily as horses, cats and chickens. The fantastic circus imagery in works like Fabulous beast, 1/11/94, 25/6/02 , recreates all the excitement and anxiety I feel when I see a juggler perform. And in Motorcars and dancing and seated figures , 1991 or 1992, I sense the rising temperature of a pulsating African beat. Whisson presents a distinctly personal viewpoint in his work. What may seem a casual placement of a bottle or book without regard to the rules of perspective is infact a focussed and intentional disruption to our understanding of spatial relationships. Objects appear as monuments in the landscape, a tremulous capturing before they dissolve again into memories. This is reportage, a snapshot, evidence of the existence of objects at some point in time, factual. Now maybe I watch too much TV, which makes up for the fact that Ken watches none, but looking at his work is sometimes like being a crime scene investigator conducting a psychic unravelling and reconstruction of events. Ken lays out his recollections of events and we are permitted to wander around in them until we have them sorted into a semblance of order that we find satisfying, piecing together a narrative if one does exist at all. But should we rely on our own inexpert interpretations? Surely more joy can be had if we simply allow ourselves to learn the language. There is enough familiar in the work for us to understand the gist of what it is he is saying, and like any new tongue, more exposure will make us fluent. Of course, this is a living language and Whisson is the sole guardian of its grammar, so one can expect constantly to be shown new verbs and nouns, not to mention adverbs and adjectives. Translation may be evasive. A fascinating insight into the way he works is provided in a transcript of a talk given to students at Ballarat in 1994: …More directly in relation to where art comes from I have a distinct impression when working that the painting takes place at the point where the brush touches the canvas, and I believe that art is a result of a direct line of communication between the act of creation and a level of our being which is neither the conscious nor the famous subconscious, but which could be called the intuitive faculty, and which has to function without interference from the conscious thinking process. Our rational and conscious mind looks on and even criticises what is happening, but in the moment of creation at its fullest realisation, one's own eyes and mind, one's own self looking on is caught totally by surprise. …And when you do look at your work, after however long, the surprise will be the threads of development that you find running through it, either linear, i.e. from one to the next, or as in my work because I try to make each painting different from the one preceding it, it will quite often be a kind of leap frog development, with elements vanishing and then re-appearing in a work that was done a week or a month later. …All that I have been describing, as well as keeping open the flow of creative intuition, has another intention tied closely in with it but different, that of continually shaking and breaking up and disrupting our conscious thought patterns, especially those that flow onto paper or board or canvas in the sense of breaking with the prevailing banalisation of our thought patterns. Television, the media in general, and advertising flatten, lay waste, banalise all the different forms of language, including visual language. (‘Talk 1994', Ken Whisson Paintings 1947–1999 with writings and talks by the artist , Niagara Publishing 2001, pp143–144.) Whisson has chosen to live in Perugia, Italy for over twenty years, and returns to Australia for his annual exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. But it is in Europe, closer to the social and political cut and thrust, where he can more acutely observe the machinations of world events. His enthusiastic analysis of the arts, media, and the social condition can be found in his frequent writings. Whisson was born in Lilydale, Victoria in 1927 and sixty years later was awarded the Visual Arts Board Emeritus Award for substantial contribution to Australian art. One wonders what we could offer him to celebrate another twenty years as one of the pre-eminent artists of our time. Gina Lee Melbourne 2004