Adam Nudelman

Pinocchio to the Park Hyatt
painting the picture perfect

Adam Nudelman writes candidly about his family, his background, and painting against a backdrop of self-discovery.

In the past fifteen years I have engaged myself in many realms of picture making. These years have been some of the most personally rewarding ones of my life and also some of the most challenging. While academically trained in fine arts at the Victoria College of the Arts, I feel that much of my work has been borne from the intuition of my heritage, and from subconscious understandings.

The act of drawing the natural environment is essentially a stimulus for evolving my painting skills and sensibilities. This has been vital in tuning my senses to the subtleties of medium and representation. Each work has a life and identity of its own recorded in its mark-making, color, light, gestures, atmosphere, climate, space, scale, time and place. The result is a constantly evolving body of work that is ‘figurative’ in orientation. Works are created using a variety of media such as oil paint, acrylic, watercolor, ink, tempera, pencil and printmaking. They sustain a series of observations and concerns in both the spiritual and intellectual areas of life and reflect the interrelations between my own personal experiences, field trips, imagination, research, education, and memories.

STILL LIFE

Throughout the last fifteen years where I have been producing artwork, several particular themes or images have figured predominantly amongst my artistic output. These are my grandparents’ home, their furnishings, toys, shoemaking tools shoes, suitcases and their Pinocchio figurine. I have felt compelled to explore these themes often and, as is the case with most things one feels compelled to do, there is always a strong motivating reason. In my instance, it was the discovery of rich and diverse lineage, a discovery which came to me completely unexpectedly.

Not long before my father’s parents passed away in the mid 1980s, I learned that they, and my great aunt Mania were Jewish. I also learned that they had narrowly escaped the atrocities of the Holocaust before immigrating to Australia in the late 1940s. Previous to their deaths, I had no idea about my Jewish origins or cultural background. But what I did know was that my grandparents and aunt Mania lived an extremely sad and lonely existence so after the discovery I saw this in light of a bigger picture. Interestingly, in the time I spent with them I gleamed very little of this hidden and mysterious information. A language barrier and an inability on their behalf to share any details compounded the problem.

Just what their lives were like before World War II I do not really know, but their experience afterwards for over forty years in a life of self imposed exile from their family, friends, religion, culture and in essence, from life itself, I am certain was not just their experience, but many other holocaust survivors as well.

As has been well documented, the effect of the events that surrounded that appalling moment in human endeavor has had significant implications. Not only was a great impact felt directly by the survivors, but indirectly by their offspring in generations that followed like myself. It is this impact which manifests in much of my art.

After their deaths an ever-growing list of questions would surface in my mind - questions that needed answering. The questions not only pertained to what had happened to them during World War II, but more importantly what they were like before the war and then what became of them afterward. My father speaks both Polish and Yiddish but because he was so young in Poland before and during the War, he remembers only very basic information. This hasn’t been able to help me a great deal so most of the information that I have been able to ascertain has been mainly derived from the personal experiences and memories of others –through the filter of film, literature and documentaries. It is this frustration of having a great need for information whereby the best information is very difficult to find is expressed in my works such as:


‘Fatherly Advice’	‘Behind the Mask’	‘The Lesson’

To me, the mystery that surrounded my grandparents’ and aunt’s lives seemed inexplicably tied to their house in the Melbourne suburb of West Preston. On the regular occasions I visited them but then could only observe one room in their house. After their deaths I became convinced that the answers to many of my questions would surely be found in the confines of their self-imposed, suburban internment camp.

Consequently, the themes and images that have since dominated my ‘Still Life’ pictures have primarily been derived from the objects that my grandparents and Aunt Mania had surrounded themselves with during their time in the house. These objects are evident in:


‘Towards Utopia’	‘Pairing of a New Beginning’	‘Stacking the Memories’	‘Waiting for Poppy’

Through the use of their personal artifacts I have carefully composed many of my ‘Still Life’ pictures. The pictures can be appreciated and shared even without prior knowledge of my background.

LANDSCAPE

Regular excursions into the field have allowed me to produce a large body of work that explores my experiences in the Australian landscape and documents my ever-evolving process of picture making. My regular excursions into the great Australian landscape to locations such as Lake Mungo National Park in New South Wales, The Flinders Ranges in South Australia, and The Cradle Mountain National Park in Tasmania have provided an abundant wealth of information, reference, and inspiration for my studio practice. Each studio work inspired by these locations takes on a life of its own and could be considered as a reflective documentation of thoughts, exposures, responses, memories and passions for places I have visited. Through these works I explore and communicate physical elements such as the shapes, patterns, textures, striking colour situations, tonings, light, and darkness. I also embrace ineffable elements such as seasons, weather, spirituality, and time, all of which are so intrinsic and specific to each individual environment.

Far from being simply facsimiles of the places I have visited, these works have a life and identity of their own accord. They record in mark-making and gestural rhythms the light, atmosphere, climate, space, and scale of particular places in time. Such techniques are evident throughout:


‘Tempest over the Walls of China’	‘The Flinders Ranges from Port Lincoln’	‘Across the Casselettes’

The field trips have become almost ritualistic, representing a time of intense concentration and productivity. They occur in cycles to provide constant renewal within my respective studio work.

Made with a variety of mediums, each work explores in its own manner the appropriate techniques needed to enhance itself. Some ‘Landscape’ pictures are smaller gestural sketches and studies not unlike:

‘Pink Lake, Dimboola’

Larger sustained pictures that further develop color, mood, symbols and greater mapping devices include:

‘Towards the Flinders Ranges’

Pictures that show the similarity between the ‘Still Life’ and ‘Landscape’ genres of my art practice in terms of their carefully arranged composition include:


‘The Flinders Ranges from Bunyeroo Valley’	‘Admiring the Grass Trees’

Other works seek to not only express an understanding of the complexity of a specific location, but also to attempt to reconstruct a more cerebral response to the experience of being:


‘Before the Future Eaters’	‘Surveying Lake Mungo’

COMMISSIONS

As my artistic career has continued to develop, so to has my output of specifically commissioned artworks. Moreover to providing me with the satisfaction of having my work displayed in public domains and also financial remuneration, commissioned works have given me the opportunity to develop and create artworks that I would not usually produce during typical studio practice. Commissions have originated from a wide cross section of clients ranging from individual patrons to larger corporate entities such as the Park Hyatt hotel, Melbourne. The result of having such varied clients is the creation of many paintings that are diverse in their imagery and style. For example, these contrasts can be seen when comparing the portrait of the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating:

‘Paul Keating Portrait’

which was commissioned by Strategic Australia in 1998 with the paintings:


‘Royce No. 3’	‘The Amberroom’

which were both commissioned for the Royce Hotel, Melbourne, in 2000.

Although some commissioned works are vastly different from my normal studio work, the process of creating them doesn’t detract from my normal practice because, to say the least, painting pictures for specific environments or functions is very enjoyable. Commissions have encouraged me to see, think, and create in new and alternate ways. The result is a further development and, more importantly, a greater challenge to my artistic skills. It is extremely exciting fulfilling a client’s brief or vision, and partaking in the collaborative process that such an endeavor involves - in the end we are all enriched.

Thanks for stopping by,