“. . . an ongoing connection to the reality of the place around you; it’s a duet between the prompts of the real world and your imagination.”
Art Almanac sat down with 2023 Hadley’s Art Prize finalist Michaye Boulter in her studio at Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart to gain some insight into her practice, her inspirations, and recent residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Boulter delicately depicts variations and fragments of the Tasmanian landscape that she calls home – a combination of past, present and future; of a land that existed before humanity and one that will continue afterwards.
Michaye Boutler, in the studio. Photograph: Peter Whyte
You are a finalist in the Hadley’s Art Prize this year, can you walk us through the process for your entry ‘Towards Elsewhere’?
It’s painting about a landscape I am quite familiar with, having lived on Bruny Island for many years. Just a short walk down from our house to the left there’s a lagoon that flows out to the open sea. Towards Elsewhere is the accumulative effect of time spent walking down there and reminiscing or daydreaming about your personal world. My landscapes are always about that, the harnessing of personal connection to a place, the personal psychology of what might be going on. It’s an ongoing connection to the reality of the place around you; it’s a duet between the prompts of the real world and your imagination. This particular painting isn’t a specific moment, it’s an accumulation of experience and memories, it’s the feeling of being present in this place I know so well, and imagining being somewhere else.
‘Towards Elsewhere’ is such an enigmatic title, what inspired it?
I like the dichotomy between the foreshore and the presence of being somewhere, the unknown. This horizon constantly creeps back into my work, as that simple form of endless possibilities. Either being psychologically elsewhere or physically elsewhere, it’s a form of travelling.
The hand-beaten steel is such a unique addition to the work; it casts such a beautiful and delicate shadow on the wall.
It’s always such a relief to see my works on steel hung and lit properly, since it’s such an organic surface with the pitted texture, it can diffract the light a bit too much. Gerhard Mausz makes the steel plates, we’ve worked together for many years. We meet, and I draw out a template for the piece; it took a bit of trial and error to perfect it so it’s not too warped. However, it does make them very durable, like a shield!
Michaye Boulter, Towards Elsewhere, oil on hand – beaten steel (made by Gerhard Mausz), 57 × 51cm. Photograph: Peter Whyte. Courtesy the artist
Your paintings are void of human presence, do you find yourself eliminating this or only painting landscapes that remain untouched?
I will eliminate any human presence in my works, but having said that, it’s not very hard to find untouched landscapes in Tasmania. In one way, I almost want the viewer – either me as the painter, or the audience – to be the person in the landscape, to have a relationship with the landscape. It’s also about removing a historical sense to the work; it could exist before or after humans, which takes away that relationship that’s all about humans, there’s a bigger world that we’re only part of for a small moment in time. For me, it’s a more humbling position to be able to look out into the landscape.
You did a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris earlier this year, how was that experience?
It was great, I felt like a beginner again. When you’re a mid-career artist, you begin to build some momentum, which is fantastic, but you also want to be conscious of falling into a routine of doing things a certain way. It was a great opportunity to see things afresh again, to be able to see how art had inspired me for so long; I could just spend endless time in the galleries. There were 300 studios, so I got to meet artists from around the world which was such a liberating and refreshing experience.
Have you found that your time in Paris impacted your practice since you’ve been back in Tasmania?
Yes, I think anything like that takes you outside of your normal influences and allows you to see things freshly is really stimulating. It’s impacted me more indirectly than directly, not so much that I want to paint the streets of Paris, but it opened me to different possibilities that I might want to bring into my own work, and what would I do if I could do anything. The landscape will still be my language, but how I use this and the nuances that I bring in have been altered.
Michaye Boulter, Attunement, oil on linen, 153 × 183cm. Photograph: Peter Whyte. Courtesy the artist
Do you tend to paint from photographs or from your memories?
They are an amalgamation of lots of different moments in time, and references that are current, past, and possibly the future. I’ve got a hoard of photographs that I use, often I like to isolate parts of the images so it’s more removed from the particularities, and I can add my own atmosphere and palette.
Do you have a favourite location in Tasmania to paint? Perhaps one you find yourself constantly returning to either physically or subconsciously?
It would have to be Bruny Island. It’s where we brought the kids up and I began painting with the hopeful idea of living in a remote landscape, and having that place fully surround me and being able to respond to it. It’s interesting how now we live in Hobart, I still reflect on my time there. In some ways my practice has changed since the move, it’s more of a reflection rather than an immediate relationship with the landscape; it’s got a psychological element.
Do you have any projects in the works that you can share with us?
I’m working on a series for the Devonport Regional Gallery in April next year. Then I will have a body of work at Bett Gallery in Hobart in July. At the moment I’m looking at how I can have slices of landscape that can represent different moments in time, and how to slow down that sense of a transient moment to capture the part between the landscape becoming and the landscape dissolving. I’m experimenting with abstraction at the borders of the landscape, sort of a gate or a stage for the land, taking it further out of the topographical reading and creating a psychological space. I wanted to bring in the idea of relationship between moments, still having memories of one while you move on to the next.
Michaye Boulter, Become, Dissolve, oil on board, 9 panels each 20.5 x 20.5cm, overall 61.5 × 61.5cm. Photograph: Peter Whyte. Courtesy the artist
Imogen Charge is an arts writer based on Gadigal land (Sydney).
