A Question and Answer with Michael Kluckner

The following interview with Michael Kluckner focuses on a 10 week trip he and his wife made in late 2009 through Australia.

How did you decide the route of your trip? And how did you settle on your mode of transportation, the camper van?

Most people who have the choice – especially the "grey nomads" – travel to the tropics and desert in the winter when it's coolest. We weren't able to leave Sydney until early September, the Australian Spring, and so went north into tropical Queensland as directly as we could, then to the desert, and spent the end of the trip moving through the south of the country which would supposedly be cooler but turned out to be the hottest of all.

The camper van, or travel trailer aka caravan, is probably the best way to do a road trip as motels and cafes are so scattered, the distances so huge. Arguably you could do okay with a car, a tent, a portable stove and an Esky (a cooler), reducing your fuel bill and from time to time sleeping in a proper bed in a rented cabin in a caravan park. There's not much of the pull-off-the-road type of camping in Australia – I don't know whether it's because it's dangerous or because the police will move you on. But the caravan parks are cheap and cheerful and give you a window into an aspect of Aussie life – the nomads on the one hand, the relatively poor long-term residents on the other.

In deciding what medium to use, how much was dictated by the environment, and how much was personal choice?

Part of the problem with a long road trip is that you can get so far behind on the pictures you're doing unless your pace of travel is solely dictated by artwork. That was the case here – we were on the road for ten weeks, and saw uncountable numbers of towns, landscapes, beaches and people.

Watercolour has always been to a me an illustration or documentary medium: i.e. I paint a picture that looks like a particular place, not copying every detail of course but putting in the elements that record it for me. On this trip I thought I would try a medium into which I could arrange elements that would give me more "generic" images – such as caravan park, beach, old buildings by the side of a road – ones that represent the spirit of the trip rather than the specifics of individual places.

The other matter was colour. The intensity of the tropical greens and blues in Queensland and the extraordinary desert colours in the Outback are very difficult to obtain in watercolour – my technique of layered washes has always worked best in paler landscapes further from the Equator. I hate an overworked watercolour – the kind where the paper begins to close up because too much pigment is pushed into it, because of working too dry.

So I took an Isabey brush and Chinese ink and painted on a natural-coloured smooth paper to capture the intensity of light and the way that shadowy forms merge into a single solid black,
like a woodcut with no modelling at all. All the harshness of the Australian landscape is in that tonal split from blazing sun to deep shade, from chiaro to scuoro. I would draw the core of the image in pencil and then when I began to paint it in ink I would alter or re-imagine the background and make it fit to the subject, with shadows highlighting sunlit (blank) shapes, creating a pattern of black and white. Those drawings are at www.michaelkluckner.com/troz.html.



A fellow artist in Australia, Roland Hemmert, www.rolandhemmert.com.au, travels with pastels
and gets very strong results. And of course there are the brave souls who take along oils and snazzy travel easels and paint outdoors – I tip my hat to them. I resolved to paint a few canvases in oils as soon as we ended the trip, while the colour memory was still fresh – these of course are not "travel art," but they complement the on-the-road work. www.michaelkluckner.com/artoz.html

What particular technical difficulties did you encounter (I'm particularly thinking here about your attempt at watercolors at Alice Springs)?

Heat was a problem everywhere. On the tropical coast humidity made it very difficult to find the energy to work. In the desert it was the dry air, of course, which has a particular impact on watercolours for me. I try to work on a slightly dampened surface but the hot dry air simply sucked the moisture out of the paper, making it very difficult to paint any washes at all without them drying with a "tide-line" at the edge. And I couldn't get back into any of the washes to model them as the paper was instantly dry as a bone.

People who know their Australian art know about Albert Namatjira, the aboriginal watercolourist active in the middle part of the last century. His desert landscapes are superb, quite strongly coloured, the paints almost tending to go opaque like gouache, and I totally admire them. There is a gallery of his and his followers' work in Alice Springs. I haven't been able to figure out how he painted as well as he did there, except he probably worked in the winter when the temperature is usually in the 20s – when it's easier to control the moisture on a piece of paper. It was rarely below about 39 Celsius (100+ Fahrenheit) in our time there.

Other than the heat (if that can be ignored), what difficulties did the Outback present?

You could tolerate the heat if you could find shade, but Australian trees typically cast a very open shade that only lowers the temperature a little. I didn't have the sort of portable umbrella gear that some really serious painters have. And the flies are brutal. I know that some people work with nets over their hats and faces, which is a little like painting hens through a chicken wire fence.

How many distinct environments did you work in? Was there one you enjoyed more than the others?

The tropical coast and the desert were the two new ones for me. We also passed through a lot of classic Australian pastoral landscape – eucalypts dotted about on rolling paddocks, long views to blue hills – that I was very familiar with from having lived there for a few years. I had made a number of short painting trips during those years into the plains west of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, which worked very well for sketchbook watercolours like the ones I've usually done on trips elsewhere in the world.

In terms of work and what you produced, how do you compare this trip to previous ones? Do you, in fact, compare trips in this regard?

Some trips, such as the ones in Europe, are made for sketchbook watercolours and drawings, partly because it's so easy to wander off for an hour and find a place to sit and draw. Also, people in Europe are used to people sitting around and drawing, and are used to being looked at by strangers, whereas Australians (and many people elsewhere in the world) are very aware when they're being observed and may become either annoyingly curious or hostile.

Another difference between this trip and others was that I painted a few oils after I came back, not of "scenes" but rather of made-up, stylized landscapes, as mentioned above.


How did people receive your artwork as you were working and then afterward?

I did everything I could to be anonymous and invisible while on this trip and had little feedback while travelling. But the response after was very positive. For once, the artwork was on separate pieces of paper rather than in a sketchbook and I sold several of them almost immediately.

Do you have any plans for a show in the near future? Is there much difference in terms of exposure of your paintings and/or sketches between Australia and Canada?

I think the "show" of these works, as with the other trips, is on the web. If I get it together to have a proper gallery show in a couple of years I might put some of these images into it. To be honest, I've made so many changes in my life in recent years that it will take a while just to digest everything I did and saw in Australia.

The main difference in exhibiting paintings between the two countries is that I show at a commercial gallery in Vancouver, whereas in Australia I was putting pictures into salon shows and entering juried shows of a couple of the art societies in towns near where we lived.

An interesting "exhibition" of my travel paintings from the United Arab Emirates came out of the blue. The magazine RAK Today in Ras-al-Khaimah published an interview and several of my sketchbook images in its January 2010 issue. The editor had found my web page; the interview was by email and I sent high-res images of the watercolours and pencil drawings to the magazine by email. That article is on my site at www.michaelkluckner.com/trem.html.

Do you have any suggestions for those looking for more exposure for their artwork? And what advice can you give for a young travel painter starting out?

I may be mistaken about this, but it's probably easier to get work shown in Australia than in North America because there are so many open competitions there – which is not to say that showing in a salon is satisfactory, but it is difficult to get a reputable gallery to represent you, either in Australia or North America. There are too many artists, not enough buyers!!

Advice for travel painters: learn to write. If you can create an illustrated narrative you're on the way to storytelling, which I think is the essence of travel art. And the web is an ideal place to exhibit that kind of story, so get yourself a website and learn how to manage it or sign up on one of the free blogging sites and use it to post your work.

Do you have plans for future travel (understanding you've just moved halfway around the world, again!)?

As I write this at the end of March, 2010, we've been living out of suitcases for seven months. We have a household to re-establish, a studio to create and a lot of catch-up to do before I will even contemplate further travel! I guess it will be two years or more before I develop an itch that needs scratching. Maybe.

Gearing up for the Middle East and Eurasia

Thanks for excusing my absence in the travel painting scene.  While I am changing things(life) up a bit, I am happy to report, that I soon will be back on the road again.  6-weeks, overland, travel painting from Georgia to Jordan.  Excited to share... Best wishes, Kathryn

Updates Coming Soon

We interviewed Michael Kluckner recently about his last trip, a tour and farewell of Australia, which will be posted soon. An interview with Tom Laukkanen about his first trip abroad to New Zealand is in the works. Stay tuned.

A Question and Answer with Gregg Fretheim

The following interview with Gregg Fretheim about his recent trip to Africa was taken in Bloomington, Minnesota on December 4, 2009.

What was the general outline of your trip?

Before I left I decided to go to South Africa where the old Zulu villages are in the east and the game reserves in that area have the black rhino. I planned to fly into Johannesburg and go to the Mkuze reserve and then stay on a private game reserve called Abu Madi. I knew from correspondence between the reserves that transportation was going to be tough so I knew getting any sort of rides was going to be rough but I just had to take it from there.

Did you give yourself a certain amount of time to acclimate yourself once you arrived?

I spent four days in Johannesburg to adjust myself and I didn’t want to be in any rush. I went to Swaziland and stayed overnight and then went down to Mkuze and stayed in a little town called Ubombo. It’s definitely a different world. It’s scrub brush and Tshaneni (Ghost mountain) rises in the distance at the end of the great rift valley. I didn’t know a lot before I left. But as you see more and more it’s like a book that opens up for you. My main stay was the animals and painting the animals because I haven’t done that.

Did you have any idea how you were going to paint the animals?

No. There are painting groups from England that offer trips but I didn’t want to go with a group. They’re very expensive as well. I wanted to maximize the time I had to paint these animals. I saw what some other people were doing and they were very brief sketches of the animals, very brief, so I thought I’m going to be lucky to get a chance to paint any of these animals, and how am I going to see them?

Rides with a professional into the bush can cost anywhere from 200 to 500 dollars a day. I couldn’t afford that so that might be a problem. I corresponded with Martha at Abu Madi and she said they could bring me to a watering hole and have a chance to see the animals in the morning and evening but I really had no idea how it was going to work at all. Everywhere else I tried was very expensive or they didn’t know what I wanted.

So the idea was to drop you off somewhere in the reserve and leave you and pick you back up later?

The idea was to bring me down to a watering hole in the morning, where there’s protection, and the animals come in and I can paint this. Martha told me when I was there in the morning at the watering hole behind protection I would have a chance to paint them. It worked out really well. My driver, Bongani, brought me to the watering hole in the morning and picked me up about five hours later. We became good friends and after a while was bringing me with him to help with his work, so I was able to go on the reserve almost everyday.

So what was the protection?

The sleeping area was inside heavily electrified wire. And when I got to the watering hole the protection area was a small box with a slit in it and no wire. They had three or four major watering holes, one had a fence, the others had these boxes with slits on the ground that you could crawl into.

So there was enough room in this box to setup your easel?

Yeah, at an angle. I had to look either one way or the other. They had a little chair in there but there wasn’t a whole heckuva lot of room. I had to position myself at one end and look out that way which obstructed much of the view so I had to watch for animals only from the angle I was looking at.

Did you find that worked for you?

Oh it did work. It was exhilarating. I’ve never painted with that level of exhilaration before. The anticipation and these animals....

How close was the box to the watering hole?

About 40 to 50 yards away. Some animals were very close, about 20 feet away. I had imagined what it would be like, but this was really different.

Can you describe a scene in front of one of these watering holes as you’re watching it from the box?

So you’re in there waiting, and you hear them coming. You hear the gravel on the road, or they’re breathing and you know something’s coming close and you get ready. Hopefully they will come in. A lot of the animals sensed something quickly. Zebras did - I had only 20 or 30 seconds to get a small sketch of a zebra. They lifted their heads, sensed something wasn’t quite right, and took off. Other animals, the impala came in large groups, would just hang out at the watering hole and that gave way to other animals feeling comfortable. Wildebeests, warthogs, monkeys, came in with the impala laying around and that was nice because it gave me the chance to do many small studies of different animals. And it was special when animals did come by. I spent days, literally days, in this box where nothing came by and I could only hear the animals around me.

And how would you describe the result?

The result is a combination of landscape painting and cave painting. It’s kind of a floating world to get the impact and image of these animals. It’s as fast as I’ve painted to get that image. They were always moving so it was quite a challenge. The exhilaration to being so close to these animals is intense, and some of them are absolutely humongous, and you feel so small in that box, and the reason for that box is protection.


Did you feel protected in that box?

Yeah, but my mind went to wander and knew the black rhino, as schizophrenic as it is, has been known to attack trains, so if it would sense something...it very well could be trouble. Once out on a road in the reserve a black rhino took a charge at our car, we revved our engine, it lifted its head and ran into the bush and hid. Over the next couple days we were hearing stories about a black rhino charging white cars. At the watering hole the rhinos stayed at a far distance. I was hoping to get one close to paint, the tracks showed it had been there during the night. But I was happy to get a sketch of one even at quite a distance. Also, the box had to be checked every morning for snakes, especially for mambas or a spitting cobra, so that was a concern.

So with this intense exhilaration did you feel, looking back at the work you produced, something different?

Yeah, for open air painting it goes to another level. There isn’t even the convenience of the slow sun that moves. This is rapid fire. It must almost feel like a combat situation, it’s like hunting these animals as they come within range to be able to paint them. And the sounds and size of these animals...I’ve seen them at the zoo...but when the driver says I’ll be back in five hours to pick you up, it’s like...well, I’m here with my paintbrush and my easel, if something were to happen, it could be trouble. Everything worked out very well. It was different from a lot of my work. Not having time really pushed me into other areas, all rules and ways I had done landscape before were completely thrown out. It was almost like survival trying to get the animal on the canvas.

I want to move on now to a different subject but one that you’ve touched on before. You’ve previously talked about your approach, or an approach, to painting when you’ve said to go beyond the technical. But for many people that seems like a contradiction. For example, if a painter heard, ‘It’s not about the technical’, they could rightfully say, ‘How can it not be about technique? It’s involved everywhere from mixing the paints to catching the light to the brush strokes. It all seems technical.’

It is for the student. When you start out you study the masters and you see the masters only in technical and not in cause and effect. When I often go to galleries and artist’s web sites, I see a claim that they are Impressionist, Realist, etc. So, can an artist today lay claim to a period of historical art?

I suppose they can but I think it’s more just feel good wishful thinking. I just don’t think that anyone today will be in the history books next to C. Monet. Impressionism, the period, already happened. When you’re a student you start out studying through historic periods like Impressionism, Realism, Pointillism, Cubism, etc. Then, as a painter now, you won’t be living the historic cause and effect of Impressionism but just looking at the technical. The student in their studio can study the period techniques for twenty or fifty years but some artists may feel that they want to break out of that technical bondage to find themselves. This is the hardest question the artist has to ask himself. How do you do this and am I brave enough to go against schools that have their own rules and the artists that created groups of past historic periods?. How does one get out of the technical bondage of the past?

I believe one way is doing the same thing the Impressionists did during their time. They broke away from thinking nature by getting out of the studio where each individual can record nature in their own interpretation, wow, did it work.

You can try starting with small student size canvasses and start going larger and larger. This will be hard to finish, but you won’t be thinking technical, because you won’t have time. You’ll go past the technical and start painting what you see. Some great things will start happening. Stick with it and don’t be afraid. You’ll start finding yourself.

A few days after hearing this I, that is David Frank, was reading from the diary of the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz. A passage there bore a keen resemblance to the topic above, and I post it as reminder that the issue at hand is as much an individual one as it is a generational one.

I said to Eichler (a young Polish painter):

“I am amazed that Polish painters do not try to exploit their trump card, which is their Polishness, in art. Are you going to imitate the West forever? Prostrate yourselves before painting, like the French? Paint with gravity? Paint on your knees in great deference, paint timidly? I acknowledge this type of painting, but it is not in our nature because our traditions are different. Poles have never been especially concerned with art. We were inclined to believe that the nose was not for the snuff box but the snuff box for the nose. We preferred the thought that ‘man is higher than what he produces.’ Stop being afraid of your own paintings, stop adoring art, treat it in a Polish manner, look down at it, wield it, and then the originality in you will be freed, new avenues will open before you and you will gain that which is the most valuable, the most fertile: your own reality.”

I could not convince Eichler, who had invested a great deal of energy and effort in creating a solid Europeanism for himself, and he merely looked at me in that by now familiar way, as if to say: how easy it is to talk! Painters and sculptors are crushed by the enormity of technical difficulties and so they concentrate on their struggle for the perfect line, color: they do not, generally speaking, desire to extricate themselves from their workshops. They underestimate the fact that a new way of seeing allows them to undo several knots that would otherwise not get untied. When I, therefore, demand of them that they be people who paint, they want only to be painters. I am confident, however, that today we have room in ourselves for thoughts about art which are more specifically ours and more creative.

Do not waste your precious time in pursuit of Europe. You will never catch up with her. Don’t try to become Polish Matisses, you will not spawn a Braque with your deficiencies. Strike, rather, at European art. Be those who unmask. Instead of pulling yourselves up to someone else’s maturity, try instead to reveal Europe’s immaturity. Try to organize your true feelings, so that they will gain an objective existence in the world. Find theories consistent with your practice. Create a criticism of art from your point of view. Create an image of the world, man, and culture which will be in harmony with you, because if you can paint this picture, it will not be difficult to paint others.1

1Gombrowicz, Witold. Diary Volume I. Trans. Lillian Vallee. Northwestern University Press, 1988.

Above is a photo of a friend helping hang paintings for Gregg Fretheim's last gallery show in 2002.

Coming Soon

Interviews with two travel painting stalwarts, Michael Kluckner and Gregg Fretheim, are forthcoming. As I write, Michael is enduring the heat and dryness of "Outback Oz" (Australia) and challenging it with his watercolors. We look forward to touch in with him after the dust settles. Earlier in the year, Gregg traveled to South Africa to paint the wildlife and landscape on safari. Expect an interview to be posted with Gregg in the next few weeks. If anyone has a question for either one, here's a chance.

Keep painting and keep traveling.

A Brief Biography: Sheila Thornton

Sheila Thornton is an artist living in Los Angeles, CA. She earned her BFA in industrial design at the Columbus College of Art and Design in 2000. Since then, she has spent half of the last 9 years traveling in various parts of Europe, Africa, North and Central America, and Asia, always with a sketchbook or paint set at hand. Presently, Sheila is planning her next trip to Alaska in the fall.

Sheila has agreed to a few questions about her travel painting and below are her answers.

A Question and Answer with Sheila Thornton

What mediums do you take when you travel? Oils, watercolors, pastels, etc.? What equipment do you bring?

I usually stick to pencil, ink, watercolor, oils, and/or water soluble oils. There are four 'kits' that I take with me, in any combination, depending on where I am going and how long I plan to stay.

The first kit is what I carry with me in my purse everywhere I go. It consists of: a mechanical pencil, water brush, eraser, fountain pen with water soluble brown ink, and a small sketchbook. This allows me to quickly sketch with pencil, refine the image with the brown ink, and quickly brush in values with the water brush. Then after a few minutes, I can go back and erase any unwanted pencil once it has dried.

The second kit I will take in addition to the first kit for shorter trips lasting 1-2 weeks or less. It includes a small watercolor set, permanent fine line markers, a 6" x 8" sketchbook with thicker paper, and a blue 'shop' paper towel. Now I can add washes of color to my drawings done with pencil, fine line marker, or the water soluble ink.

The third kit is for when I plan on working outside in oils, making small 6" x 8" sketches. This is usually for domestic travel, since it is worrisome to fly internationally with oil paints. These paintings take anywhere from 1-3 hours to complete, so this trip will likely be specifically for doing several oil sketches. This is when I take my wonderful 'Belly River' Alla Prima Pochade box, lightweight tripod, 'survival items', and oil set, all contained in a small backpack. The oil set consists of oil paint, brushes, panels, Gamsol in a jar, paper towels, and a few plastic grocery bags for garbage and anything leaky. The 'survival items' include: a hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, insect repellent, water bottle, snacks, and iPod.

The fourth kit is what I take for international travel, and is what I took with me to the Philippines. It includes a handmade cardboard pochade box with wet-panel carrier, a small set of water-miscible oils, a plastic water jar, brushes, a painting rag, and gessoed cardboard panels. This set is lightweight, ideal for backpacking, and best of all, everything fits inside the box and weighs less than 5 pounds!

What preparations do you make for a trip?

For my international backpacking trips, usually just book my flight online, arrange for any visas, and book my first night's stay. I'll read about and study the countries to have an idea of the places I'd like to go and paint, but for me, independent travel is about flexibility and freedom, so I don't plan a schedule. I enjoy learning about a place and it's people and painting is a fulfilling way to engage in this wonderful process.

What are your favorite subjects to paint when traveling? What is the most difficult subject you have painted?

People are my favorite subject to paint. But while traveling, I enjoy painting landscapes more because it captures the sense of the place, and it is fun to get lost and explore! People are the most difficult to paint because it is unusual to find someone willing to sit long enough to paint them.

Has travel painting presented you with any particular troubles in regard to painting itself, whether it be completion, interruptions, finding materials, etc?

I'm usually good about finishing paintings, even if they are done quickly. And, I haven't had any problems finding materials because I take everything I need with me.

Sometimes it can be irritating if people want to talk to you excessively while you are painting. Or when throngs of kids crowd so close, you can't move your arms to paint! But those are of little concern in comparison to the excitement of painting. If I get too distracted, I quickly finish up and move on. There's no point in struggling with a situation, as this will show up in the painting!

The weather sometimes pose challenges. I've had a few paintings disintegrate on me, when monsoon rains began and dissolved the water soluble oils I had just painted. Also, strong wind and cold weather can cut short a day of outdoor painting. And probably one of the biggest nuisances for me in tropical climates is mosquitoes!

What are the major differences for you between studio painting and painting in open air?

With studio painting, I have all the comforts of home, control over working conditions, and a virtually limitless time frame for painting. Since I prefer to work from life, I generally will work on still life and portraiture in the studio, which is slower paced and meditative. With painting outside, there are many variables, such as the changing light, weather, and movement of people and things. For me, this makes painting out of doors a fast and engaging activity, full of possibilities.

Because of your Filipino ancestry did your experience remarkably differ when you began to paint in the Philippines for the first time compared to other places?

Yes, there was definitely a sentimental feeling I had while painting in the Philippines. Since it is my mother's homeland, and I have such a vast amount of family there, I never know who I could be related to, so I pretend they are all relatives, which makes it that much nicer.