catalogue essay
Andrew Lamprecht
in: 'Deborah Poynton - selected paintings, 1998 - 2000', 2001

There is a noteworthy lack of finality to the work of Deborah Poynton. If we compare her paintings to our dreams we are reminded that while we may wake up with a start or slowly tumble from our slumbers into waking, the dream itself does not come to an end like a neatly plotted novel or a three-act play. In this way, it may seem that there is a peculiarly uncompleted quality to her paintings which has nothing to do with the surface of the work; after all, her paintings are patently finished. Their completeness illuminates the canvas, calling forth vacuous epithets such as "photorealism" or "naturalism" amongst superficial viewers. But this surface illusion which lulls the viewer with its beautiful technique is only a small part of a larger picture. Poynton's works can overwhelm the viewer with their attention to detail, symbolism, rich colour and disciplined texture. Such a viewer, giving in to the undoubted pleasures of the eye may lose sight of what lies encoded in those brushstrokes, foolishly revelling in a fictive reality that is in fact a form of concealment - an abstraction if you like - of a hidden work.

We see this idea played out in The Show. The artist presents herself to an audience made up of her familiar circle. But in our view she has her back to us: we cannot see her face. We see her hands (which have made this which we behold) and we see her table of toyed-with but uneaten food. The represented audience alone has the privilege of addressing her directly but by and large they seem only mildly interested, affecting that studied nonchalance peculiar to the gallery visitor. What they do not see, but which we are privileged to, is the artist's object of view: a partly opened window. What can we (as viewers of the work but not, presumably, the show) make of this? Is this the "frame" through which the artist envisions reality? I think not. Is it an escape route? Maybe. Is it the window opening on the next view, on another landscape, onto the horizon of new sights implied by the ribbon of dawn in the background? Is it in fact the next show?

Consider for a moment the issue of windows. We see them in several of Poynton's works. Train Journey connects the ever-changing but pictorially frozen view from a train window with a sleeping figure. In her dreams this figure is unaware of the night visions endlessly unrolling beside her. Interior with Red Tub presents us with a notion of interior space that is contextualised by an evocative exterior. The relationship between these spaces is non-intuitive. The overwhelming sensory display of fabric in the bedlinen, wedding dress and carpet is in contrast to the flattened and seemingly unrelated exterior. This is emphasised by the discord inherent in an almost incongruous red bucket and a silhouetted and meticulously classical nude figure in the composition. The Blue Hour and Dog Day also echo this theme of "a room with a view" (and a view which in all these works is ignored by the human inhabitants of the picture).

Perhaps it is in Hotel de Dream in which the significance of this theme is most explicitly articulated. Invoking the paintings of Manet with its ineffable "strangeness" - a sense that something is not quite right with the world as it is presented - we are forced in this taut and concentrated representation of torpid slumber to acknowledge the artistic qualities of Poynton's vision. This is no view as a camera would record it or as a person would naturally see it. The peculiar clarity of focus and the interesting and contradictory angles of perspective demand a dynamic reading of this languid subject. The power of the steeply inclined landscape to capture our attention demands an explanation of the subject's seeming indifference. The title is suggestive: we are viewing a place of temporary abode where we are not only permitted, but rather expected, to dream. These absorbing vistas which make up a noteworthy portion of the artist's recent output force us to consider the nature of what is inside and outside, what is visible and invisible, what is on the canvas and what lies beyond it and especially what is viewed and what is withheld from view.

The panoramas we see so fleetingly and under such visual stress in the window works are opened out in a remarkable way in another group of chiefly larger works. Domestic Bliss, The Game, Being Here, and The Fool, amongst others, all give significance to the theme of broad open space. In most cases this space is curiously configured so as to cause us to doubt the veracity of what we are seeing. In The Fool there is a sense of impending danger as if it were the will of the artist and viewer alone which prevents the precarious rocks from tumbling down: only a joint act of faith keeps them in place. The Game plays with botanical and cultural forms confusing notions of place and time: Where is this? Who is buried here? What is the game? The children, literally "a picture of innocence" are cast beneath a looming and oppressive sky and in a morbid and sinister topography which, by sheer skill of the artist, retains the frankness of childhood in a paradoxically cheerful expanse of desolation. The ambivalence of Poynton's landscapes, rich in symbolic objects and at once defying ordinary identification can be seen in Domestic Bliss. Here the city (but which city?) is located in an Augustan landscape. The city stands as so many boulders fallen from the mountain and yet is clearly a built and created environment. In this work a television set, showing the home fires burning, serves as a window on another, less visible scene. "Domestic bliss" (a viewer's conceit perhaps) is seen to be located in the space between city and countryside at once stable upon a rocky ground and about to topple into urban confusion.

How then do we look at works such as Being Here? Here the urban seems to be victorious. The view is utterly dominated by a modern indus-trial city. If not actually threatening it is certainly overpowering and totalizing. Only the barest hint of sky survives. But the foreground is made up of a gorgeous array of plants, upon which a new-born child is seen to lie, unaware of that which lies beyond. This theme of the vista beyond the uninterested or unknowing subject recurs in the complex work Landowners in which we are presented with a listing, almost bleeding aerial view of a landscape clearly marked with its human, agrarian and proprietary markings. Across this patchwork of land ownership, three figures, almost silhouetted, stalk off towards the unmarked hills, oblivious to the surface over which they cast their impossible shadows. Here we have a dream-like scene, fitting of fairytale but cast in a similar mould to what we have seen before: a stark contrast between humans and their surrounding environment. Perhaps this theme reaches its high point in a witty, almost self-parodying work entitled Initiate. A sleeping figure basks in glorious sunshine drawing around him the landscape upon which he rests as if it were a luxurious blanket. Here we see the tension between figure and surroundings resolved in the accessible language of comfort. The dreamer is at one with that which he fails to observe: he is dreaming up his surroundings or they are dreaming him.

This last-mentioned notion may account for the remarkable work Life. A seething mass of landscape utterly surrounds and envelops a sleeping figure. Fragments of her past, future and present seem to be coalescing into a unified dream-tempest. Mountains, billowing smoke-stacks, lush hills and a river which tumbles towards the subject's resting head all focus in upon the human figure. Life has become encompassed by the dream: conflict between dreamer, dream and landscape have melted away. These works have been viewed within a very specific context. Deborah Poynton's work cannot be simplistically read as being about dichotomies of dreamspace and the spaces in which we rest to dream. However the implication that her work deals with a reality beyond that which can be represented by "realist" painterly technique is important. This body of work in its deliberate estranging from everyday vision and experience demonstrates her power to reconfigure the worlds in which we operate. This is no less true of the world of the canvas itself. Her concern with her difficult role as artist, as illustrated in The Show or the wickedly funny High Art demonstrates a commitment to the practice of art which is not precious. Ultimately the consequences of refraining from the blissful unconsciousness of sleep is seen in a small but noteworthy canvas, Insomnia. A figure sits up in bed, staring out into the dark. He is clearly awake but it is not altogether clear who or what is referred to in the work's title. After all, who is the insomniac here? The painted figure, the artist, or the viewer?

© Andrew Lamprecht 2001