About writing that two texts （ˇˍˇ）

    My supervisor wanted me to write a text for a client. The artist's name is Stuart Watters. His painting looks like Vincent's starry night. I was a little nervous actually, for the computer in my office is not installed with any translator. As not a native speaker, I found this was not a piece of cake. The curator required no more than 500 words, but I know that the less, the harder. 
    I researched Stuart Watters from the file and the internet, and indeed got some useful information, such as his general style, but not too much. I established a new word file to take down all the information and references, and then I spent more than a half day writing this text. The curator was very satisfied with what I wrote and she gave me another one to write. But I had completely no idea how to write this one. The artist was a very emerging artist and I could hardly find any review about his general style. As this series I required to write was screen printings, I spent some time researching the aesthetic characteristics of printmaking.
    I love writing art and I benefit much from a book called A Short Guide to Writing about Art, what gives me a lot of clues regarding how to analyse formal qualities. I ll soon show these two article I wrote, when I go to work next Monday.

The first

Reinis Zusters was a prolific painter who produced large landscapes, cityscapes as well as portraits. Absorbed in oil painting, he expressed his fascination with exploring nature and his inner world.

Zusters bought an old house at Greenwich, NSW, because he enjoyed the peaceful Harbour scene and its beautiful light. Painted in an abstract style, Zusters’ Harbour depicts an evening harbour scene with warm light and a charming seascape. The image features a luscious surface created by using a palette knife onto the canvas with brave but thoughtful gestures. The interplay of horizontal and vertical paint strokes constitutes a stable composition; the coolness of blue sea is complement with the warm of yellow light; the use of dark colours such as brown and dark blue endows the whole image with mysterious serenity, while the purple and red increase a sense of romance and joy. The music of composition and colours presents a peaceful view full of harmony and imagination.

Reinis Zusters OAM was born 15 October 1918 in Odessa,Russia. From 1935 to 1940, he studied Art at the Riga Technical College. The Zusters family settled in Western Australia in 1950 as post-war refugees. He started to hold solo exhibitions around 1960s and won numerous awards in Australia, Japan and USA and was honoured with the Order of Australia Medal in 1994. His work is represented in Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australian National Gallery, Contemporary Art and Cultural Centre in Japan and many other public and private collections in Australia and overseas. Zusters died on 8 October, 1999 at Wentworth Falls.

The Second

Stuart Watters is an artist who specialises in creating abstract work. He chooses succinct creative language to constitute a pictorial surface of formal rhythm.

His screen printings Fillet (1984) and Whisket (1984) show the strength and beauty of abstract form by the manipulation of shapes and colours. Fillet (1984) presents an attractive visual focus by the artist’s construction of the layered shapes, fresh and mute colours, whilst Whisket (1984) reveals a more succinct language to emphasise a beauty of a large blank which not only enhances the sense of light but also leaves us something to guess. The configurations of two works show fresh and strong visual effects.

Stuart Watters studies painting at City Art Institute, Sydney. Since 1984, he has had numerous solo exhibitions including the latest The Shape of Language (2010) in Kudos gallery, Sydney, and his work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He was a recipient of the inaugural Sir William Dobell Art Foundation Award and the artist currently lives and works in Sydney.