by Brett Ballard December 2005

Philip Hughes is an inveterate traveller who has been coming to Australia for over forty years. As an artist Hughes is curious of ancient civilisations and land masses and takes as his cue the topography of land forms. How that land may be mapped, both literally and metaphorically, is at the source of Hughes’ art.

In 1998 Hughes was the subject of a survey exhibition which travelled from the ANU, Canberra, to Sydney and then to the Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne.

The Philip Hughes exhibition, Pilbara and Bundanon (Rex Irwin Art Dealer, November 29 - December 17, 2005) provided an opportunity to ask Hughes some questions about his landscape painting and those things which inform it. 

Firstly one or two questions on the subject of drawing, a medium I take to be central to your art. Drawing is of course the most immediate form of recording and a marvellous tool of discovery. How do you see it?

Drawing is the starting point for almost all of my work. It is more than note taking, sketching. It is the key creative process. In drawing the landscape I am at that stage making the decisions for all the works to follow. Above all I am trying to find the structure by deciding what to include, what to leave out, what to emphasise.

Children unconsciously draw to place themselves in the world and commonly draw a landscape they see themselves to occupy. Where does your love of drawing come from?

I cannot really say where my love of drawing came from. When I was 11 and 12 I used to endlessly draw pictures of racehorses, taken from photographs in the papers. (I was very interested in horse racing at that age!) Then there was a long gap until I started drawing in earnest when at university. It was at this time that the influence of Ben Nicholson’s drawing was the strongest. As well as landscape I used to draw buildings in detail.

What then is the relationship between drawing and painting in your art?

As I said in reply to the first question, it is in the act of drawing that I make the key decisions that determine the structure of paintings to follow. I have perhaps three different modes of drawing. First, I do drawings that directly translate into paintings, that is to say I ‘paint in’ the drawing. I use the same piece of paper. Many of the works in this exhibition are of that type. Second, I do drawings that will not directly be painted, but rather are the designs for paintings to follow- usually on a much larger scale. Third, I do drawings that are intended to remain as such, finished works in their own right. Sometimes these are on very large sheets of paper, the largest that I can handle. For example I have done exclusive drawings of the great stone circles of  Britain like this.

Writing has been at times a feature and a diary component of your work. Is note taking, the diarising of experience a critical part of your process?

Sometimes I choose to write on the drawing at the time I am working in the landscape. This is more usual when using a notebook but not confined to that. When I do write on a drawing it is always at the time of the drawing, never added after. And it becomes an integral of the work.

Abstraction and colour. How then are these two elements combined in your painting?

The paintings in this exhibition of Pilbura and Bundanon are relatively realistic representations of these two landscapes, both in form and in the use of colour. But much of my work is more ‘abstract’: that is to say it takes images, from the landscape and uses them in a way that seeks to isolate and simplify, to show the underlying structure. In the same way I sometimes change colour to highlight and create contrast. At the limit some of my work looks completely abstract – but always it is based in the real image. I see no conflict in my work ranging from ‘realistic’ to ‘abstract’. Always I am concerned with structure and this in turn leads to levels of abstraction.

What other artists or art forms have been of importance? One sees the influence of Japanese art.

The strongest early influence on my work was Ben Nicholson. I was so struck by his incisive use of line, both in his drawing of the landscape, buildings, still life and his pure abstraction. I was also influenced by his use of pure blocks of colour, which taken together with his line, give both simplicity but also sophistication and excitement to his work. As reply to your question I realize that these basic principals of his wok still apply to what I am attempting.

As for the influence of Japanese art, people often comment that my work reminds them of Japanese prints. I can see this, but cannot honestly say that is a conscious influence. But then one can never really say exactly what influences apply. I have been to the temple gardens of Kyoto and done extensive series of drawings there, so perhaps there is a link in my work to the Classical Japanese images.

How do you start? Does a place or thing prick your interest and take you to a site?  For example the Tate St Ives show, The Tin Route.

I choose the locations where I wish to work on the basis of previous study, often quite extensive - searching out and viewing photographs - and talking to people who are familiar with the possible selected landscape. Some of these are perhaps obvious. Such as in Australia: Uluru or Wilpera in the Flinders or the Bungle Bungles. Others are less so such as Gosse Bluff, the remarkable meteor crater near the MacDonald Ranges.
But another quite different criteria is seeking out ancient sites, for example, Stone circles in the UK – aboriginal sacred sites in Australia, such as Kakadu – or temples – such as the Mayan in Central America. In this aspect of my work I am particularly concerned with how the stone circles or paintings or temples, are sited in the land and relate to their surrounds.
You ask specifically about ‘The Tin Route’ exhibition. I was invited to exhibit at the Musee Chationaise in Chatillon–Sur–Seine in France. This is mainly an archaeological museum but each year the director invites an artist exhibit. When I visited he told me of the Celtic City of Vix that was nearby. It was the most powerful city in all of what is now France in the 6th Century BC. Its wealth derived from being on the tin route that linked Cornwall, the source, with the Greek Cities in southern Italy, the users. I was fascinated by this route up the Seine, down the Rhone and set out to work in three locations – West Cornwall, Northern Burgandy and the Great Greek Temples of Paestum in South Italy. The consequent exhibition was shown at the Tate St Ives as well as Lecce in South Italy and Chatillon Seine.

Like Paul Nash your landscapes are in the main without people. They (the landscapes) seem untroubled by human presence and as ancient sites are markers that point to the past - to beginnings. Why this preference or is it simply they gives us clues to the present?

I never introduce figures into my work. An exception was to put a person beside a standing stone in Orkney, just to show the scale of the immense stone circle. And seldom ever the traces of man; a sense of wrecked cars once, some graffiti etc. But all these are exceptions.

However, my early work was almost entirely devoted to the patterns of agriculture: the fields on the Sussex downs in England, and the vines and other crops in Provence. It is only more recently that I have devoted most of my work to remote and unpeopled locations. It was working in Australia that really started me in this direction. The landscape of Australia - is in the main untouched, with seemingly no organized pattern. It was a new experience then led to other remote parts, the far northwest of Scotland for example and in the ultimate.  Antarctica.

To me the Antarctica series is very moving. The whiteness and the expansive - aloneness is immediately poetic. Can you relate some of your experience there and the resulting body of work?

In the summer (English) of 2001 I was invited to be official visiting artist to Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey. This was a competitive selection, ‘The Artists and Writers Programme’ that had just been established. (It followed the model of those set up by the Australian and US Governments some time earlier.)

I spent 7 weeks in Antarctica, two weeks travelling there by the research ship from the Falklands to the Rothera base on the Antarctic peninsular. Then five weeks centred on Rothera. As it was light 24 hours a day. I would work at any hour. Some drawings are marked midnight, or 1am. I did not attempt to paint in situ. That would have been virtually impossible at down to - 25°C. But I did draw, and draw some more. And took photographs, slides and digital, the latter which I could look at when back at base on my lap top. The highlight of the whole visit was to camp on the Antarctic plateau – towards The South Pole where the ice cap is nearly 3000m thick. We were three: the closest people to us over 1000 miles away.
Over a period of 18 months on return I painted a large number of works , some on paper, but most on canvas. For me this was a completely new experience, the manipulation of so many shades of white. I have been asked, ‘Were you not bored working just in white?’ The reply ‘No’: The variations are endless.’