I have just set up my new Substack page: please visit and subscribe, it is free, there is no paywall and it is available for comments or discussions either on the post or in the pages.

https://hamiltonartwriting.substack.com/about

I have chosen this painting as the emblem for the site .

The painting is held in a private collection. Oil on canvas 56.2 x 100.5 cm. c. 1892.

Best known for his vivid landscape paintings especially images in and around Sydney Harbour, Streeton was also a skilled genre artist. The painting above seems to have disappeared from public recognition, as it does not conform to the normative narrative about Streeton’s paintings. The way paintings exist in the public sphere, and then disappear from it, is one means by which art can become fugitive. Artists also think about fugitive colors, a well-established problem in oil-painting. Many well-loved colors used by artists over the years are fugitive: that is, they appear rich and strong when first painted, but over time and in unstable conditions they can lose definition and fade away.

Much art-writing is like this: our responses to art change so much, both personally and in terms of the Zeitgeist. A new generation is re-discovering forgotten art, sometimes bringing back genres and styles long considered old-fashioned and discredited. Here is a place for people who love and appreciate painting, who engage with art history and think about technique, to express their understandings. Neglected artists and art-styles, the commercial practice and presentation of art, appreciation and critique find a home here.

My Substack site is dedicated to recovering the fugitive in art, revealing the obscured, refinding the rejected and appreciating some of the strands of thought, mind and materiality which go to make up the world of painting.