A window into the mind of an artist: Ash Keating’s ELEVATION

Art has often been described as intimate, a window into one’s mind, but sitting next to an artist and asking them questions about their artwork on display for critique and appreciation in their own exhibition, that really is intimate.

Mr Keating said his goal had always been to create a quiet, thoughtful, “contemplative” space, and he definitely achieved that.

It felt like a crime to break the silence, but it’s kind of my job, so I began picking Mr Keating’s brain.

Mr Keating labelled his ELEVATION exhibition at Shepparton Art Museum an “interesting departure point” for the artist and a full-circle moment in some respects.

“In Year 12, when I was just first experimenting with painting, my inspiration for those quite abstract works looking at the landscape from an aerial view, they were from flights in the high country,” he said.

“Seeing the landscape from a different perspective is when I started to fall in love with painting.”

He said he knew he wanted to connect with the Yorta Yorta country and the Goulburn Valley landscape, but didn’t know how to do it.

Locals pointed him in the direction of Dookie, so he began hiking up Mount Major.

“I walked up there twice because I didn’t have the key to the gate,” Mr Keating said.

“The first time I went up there it was quite moody in January, these sort of soft luminescent sunsets with the rain clouds in the distance, and that’s what these main four artworks are influenced by.

“The other works are different vantage points at different times in the day, so even though they’re not exact to a compass, it has the sunset, the middle of the day when it’s quite clear and stark, and then later when it starts to rain and it’s kind of floating past and then when you’re really in the thick of it.”

He said he finally got the key and was able to drive up and down the mountain at will, as well as move between Mount Major and other vantage points of the landscape quickly, allowing him to capture different perspectives and conditions of the landscape happening in different places but at the same time.

He spent six weeks dividing his time between the vantage points and his studio, creating the artwork for ELEVATION.

Mr Keating used a high-pressure water tool to help create the sky effects on the canvas, letting the water drift the paint around on the canvas as part of his “gravity system response” technique he had used in previous works.

“The system response is related to the idea of the law of physics and the natural systems in place,” Mr Keating said.

“Basically what it means is I hand control over to gravity in the way I paint and I also manipulate the paint as it moves across the canvas with force, high-pressure water.

“The marks that are made are the natural forms of gravity pulling the paint down the canvas.”

The result is a group of large, looming canvases with a beautiful, colourful skyline depicted, accompanied by a strip of dark, raw colours and markings at the bottom of the paintings representing the earth below the horizon.

“I wanted a clear separation between the land and the sky,” Mr Keating said.

“The top four fifths of this work is how I normally paint, and if you remove the bottom strip they would be just minimal abstract work, it’s that line and that delineation of the land that brings you into that sort of more obvious landscape painting.

“I guess I wanted there to be an immediacy to the way it’s painted at the bottom, not too thought out. Even though it is a lot of layering, with a lot of earth and coppers, on the top of that I wanted it to be quite immediate.

“Essentially when you’re up in the landscape, it’s hard to find anything that isn’t scarred in some way or changed in some way.

“I wanted the landscape to not be beautified too much, I wanted it to be how it really is.”

Mr Keating said he encouraged young artists to look at the world around them for inspiration and start with the subject before the medium.

“At the start when you don’t know what to do, you’re quite nervous, unsure of your approach, and I hadn’t travelled up to Shepparton in a number of years,” Mr Keating said, reflecting on the inception of ELEVATION.

“For me it was about finding somewhere in the landscape where I could feel inspired myself.

“It wasn’t until I went up on the mountain that night, the drama in the sky was visually exciting for me and then I started thinking about how I might make paintings related to that and for this space.

“Hopefully, people from the area that come here go talk to their friends and family and talk about Shepparton Art Museum and how interesting what’s going on here is and how it reflects the sky and land around them.”