Bad habits

Wendy Meares discovers that in McLean Edwards’ work there is much more than meets the eye…

After my first piece appeared on The Art Life I had to take stock of my ambition to be an art critic. Eric could see that I was upset and after a few days of trying to cheer me up he suggested we just leave everything behind and pop up to Byron for a few days. The house is in the hinterland and its one of Eric’s finest pieces but sadly we rarely get a chance to visit. Even after we landed at Ballina and arrived at the house I was still glum. My old paintings are hung in the lounge room and every time I looked at them I was struck with a terrible cold feeling in the stomach. Finally, not being able to take any more, Eric sat me down and gave me a good talking to – if I didn’t have faith in my own creativity then what was the point? And – he added with a little glimmer – strong words and opinions always make him feel emboldened. I remember well the time his bid to design Tracey Moffatt’s place in Noosa got knocked back with some pretty strong language and he was positively frisky.

McLean Edwards, Blue Cowboy, 2010. Oil on canvas, 183x153cms.

Back home refreshed and happy, I decided to go on an artist’s date. Have you ever read The Artist’s Way? Roger gave it to me for my birthday a few years ago. I haven’t read the whole thing yet but it’s still very good. The author thinks that creative people should go and look at exhibitions on their own. It’s apparently a balm for the soul. So it was off to Martin Browne’s spotless gallery for a look at McLean Edwards’s show Bad Habits. As luck would have it – or lack thereof – I was walking down the street when who should I see but Rhonda Katz outside that bookshop. We got to talking and the next thing I knew she was coming with me to the gallery and then for coffee at the Yellow House. So much for my date, I thought. Rhonda is quite radical – she likes video art and goes to Artspace to see shows. I didn’t know what she would think of the painting but I really had no choice. I started telling Rhonda about this absurd little shop in Byron where you can get your portrait done as either a pixie or a spirit guide. The artist is quite good but they don’t really look much like you at all. Rhonda is quite a tough lady and she just squinted while I told her this.

McLean Edwards, Family Group, 2010. Oil on canvas, 200x150cms.

Anyway, McLean Edwards’s show is very colourful and bold, and he’s very good with his lines. Some of the paintings seem a little over done to me, as though he can’t make up his mind when to stop, but the characters are very amusing. We slowly walked around the room and a lovely young man offered us a room sheet each. I was taken aback to see that Mr. Edwards charges $33,000 for some of the paintings – others are even more. I said as much to Rhonda and then she said she thought he must have a lot of collectors following him since the works are so psychologically provocative and so very, very interesting. Apparently that’s all the rage these days, to be challenging, but I frankly couldn’t see it. Rhonda then came out with this fascinating idea that the characters in the paintings aren’t meant to be taken literally, that they’re metaphors. Looking around the show I could see what she meant. There’s a very large blue one called Blue Cowboy and thought that yes, there’s a metaphor there – and then Family Group was interesting too as it became obvious to me that it’s a metaphor for Christmas. Everyone in it looks disappointed and unhappy and the artist has made that plain on the edges where it’s a bit of a mess. I should have kept my mouth shut because Rhonda was off on one of her crazy tangents talking about a German named George Immandorf. I think I remember him from NAS, teaching there in the early 1990s.

In the cafe afterward Rhonda kept on with her smart art chat but all I could think to do was order a lemon tart. As we waited for our coffees I read the catalogue essay by Noel McKenna who Rhonda told me later is a well known artist himself. It was all about golf and how Mr. Edwards is putting from the rough. It was at that point I started laughing thinking of one of Eric’s cruder jokes and had to excuse myself.