SurfNews magazine #65 Italia
Settembre – Ottobre issue 2007
year 13 number 5

SEMANTICA OCEANICA by Nicola
Blair McNamara
Surfista, painter, photographer and gallery owner, Blair McNamara is one of the most successful artists of the Gold Coast, that lucky stretch of coast south of Brisbane made famous by waves as Kirra and Noosa. His art testifies thirty years of Australian beach culture in a critical and enjoyable at the same time. It is no coincidence that the interview that follows, between a visit to the Cooperative Mosaic of Ravenna and a session on the rights of Adria, ranging from surfing, all'ambientalismo, Aboriginal culture. Blair is a surfer of more evolved species, loves the waves clean, Byzantine mosaics, compositional techniques of Renaissance art and contemporary Italian design. Blair is in fact Italy to contaminate new techniques with its beach-art. Fortunately its study period in Ravenna coincided with a series of warm autumn storm surges that we have given way to share both its areas of interest.
In your interviews you have often stated that the surf is your "semantic field." Where does this interest originate from?
I was born into a family of beach-watching, my father was the president of Surf Life-Saving association of Coolum Beach in Southern Queensland. In the late'60s associations salvamento were becoming increasingly important and my father wanted us absolutely that it did. Unfortunately for him I have always been a creative person and a free spirit and I never loved life club. In the late'60s surfing was becoming very popular thanks to Koolite, toy tablets produced in series with polestirolo not resin. From children, in the early'70s, legavamo the Koolite ankle with a rope and a sock. Recently there regalarono a real table, a mini-gun single fin, myself and my brother there buttammo headlong into surfing, completely forgetting everything else. At the age of fourteen I was completely taken by the waves but understand, since then, surf and paint were two closely related activities.
How could two seemingly antithetical things as surfing and artistic culture, so quietly melt in your life?
Art is emotional sensitivity. Around the twenty years I realised to react emotionally to the environment that surrounds me. I could to perceive the human and geological history of my land, an area inhabited by aboriginal right from dawn of time and dense with meaning. They were to tell their own way art. I grew up in close contact with Aboriginal families, especially fascinated by the naturalness and spontaneity of their relationship with nature. From them I assimilated, quite intuitively, information and points of view regarding my land and the coast where I live. Their cultural system is one of the most advanced and unique to that of anthropologists. I was always attracted the fact that their art is not based on royalties rigid as the prospect or classical proportions. Their paintings are almost always visions Air, organized as stories. This family sagas, maps drawn by the legendary ancestors, the re-enactment of animals. You do not hang the paintings in some or to give him a sense unit. A whole strand of my work is based on that. Paddock For example, one of my favorites, was painted from above. It represents the paths and fields by my house that led to the sea. It is a map and a story at the same time.

About history. How to relate with the European culture Australian artists?
Experience art in Australia is very difficult. The Australia is a nation heavily urbanized. All inhabitants, or almost live in large cities along the coast and focus on human activities. My art instead comes from what was the first and still is located outside the city. The population also is not large and the number of people involved is very limited art. And this is also the reason for this visit to Italy: I want to expose my work to new audiences, with a background different from mine.

SEMANTICA OCEANICA by Nicola Zanella (continued)
Return for a while to the culture of beach. We know that you grew surfisticamente precisely in the years of short-board revolution. As has changed from the Gold Coast quado the frequent?
In the 60s Jack Kerouac liked to call surfers "throw-forwards of society" that is a fringe advanced society. When I heard this phrase in the early 70s I suffered there are mirrored. At along the Gold Coast there were very few surfers. When incontravi someone with a surfboard was a pleasure to make friends and share the waves. I spent days watching huge waves waiting for someone to come to me in the water company. Until the early 80s the people there looked like Martians. Young people today do not believe when they hear stories of the 70s. The Gold Coast was a freak zone, everything cost little, there were flowers, incense and natural food stores on every corner. There were many Europeans at the time, fleeing from the stress of life in the old continent, and everyone is dressed in sarong and helped each other. Then suddenly, with the end of the 80s life is changed. The population of Coolum Beach is gone from six hundred to thirty thousand inhabitants. Today thousand people a week come to live in Southern Queensland. Everyone is very aggressive, even in waves, and that sense of community that is breathed in coastal communities is lost. Many people my age think that surfers today are wrong sport! Their competitiveness and violence show that water might be better suited for football players or pilots motorcycle racing! I was in California at the end of the 90s and I was afraid. In Los Angeles, I saw the future of my coast. Now along the Gold Coast cementizzazione is under the eyes of everyone. It is becoming a highly industrialized area with rich districts, skyscrapers and parts degraded.

In fact frameworks your documents change the coast stressing environmental destruction.
Yes, in the artistic community, however, are famous for being an artist optimistic. I do not like to underline the gloomy tone of change, I prefer documentarli with precision but without inflict pain. The same can not think of a better future without first analysing our past. For this use, for thirty years, even photography. This bond over time can be seen in a painting as Blueprint which I painted in'86 and moved on canvas only recently. It is a view of the coast from the house where I grew up, a story of change and persistence. The buildings you see white paintings were recently constructed completely blocking the view of the sea from our house (my have sold almost immediately). The buildings are, as in Aboriginal painting, as ethereal ghosts. The trees instead of the famous Norfolk island pines, despite have been killed, are painted in purple and intense are the heart of the framework. These history-has been exhibited in a major exhibition documenting the changes in my town in the last thirty years. The population has responded very well to the works, the elderly cried seeing glimpses that no longer exist and the Aboriginal community showed me respect in this work between history and art.

Your art is based on values proactive. I would be interested to know what are these values and the technical means by which their vehicles.
Despite my optimism are very attentive to the quality of life and how its level is being lowered in Eastern Australia. I think the first environmental degradation hurt people. With urbanisation came the mania for power el'avarizia. Now we are spreading the private quarters, with magnetic keys to enter and armed surveillance of all kinds. All now want to possess, not to be! How trascrivo on this canvas? First, I must say that I do not know anything, at the beginning, as the work will be finished. Using several different techniques, but often from birth layers of acrylic color. It is a colour that dries very quickly and lends itself to my painting emotional. A painting usually begins with a hand of fund which started a narrative. Hands subsequent color highlight specific details of the design. Continuous so even twenty times and eventually the original idea, as expressed on the first layer of color is completely changed. Often working on series of paintings on a single instead. Seascape 1-5 is an example of this technique. As soon as I reach the emotional intensity I try I will stop and start another glimpse.

SEMANTICA OCEANICA by Nicola Zanella (continued)
In this case the scenes revolve around the large sedimentary rocks that are on the beach. The call Coffee Rocks and are the last survivors of past eras in which this was all swamp. I like to see how they are covered by sand and discoveries every season and how people avoid or walk over there depending on the tide. It is an experiment in "morfing" between people and nature in which I, as the author, sparisco almost completely. I am not at all egotico with my art. The ideas are out for themselves in three dimensions as in dreams Aborigines. I am just a channel through which the art materializes, I am a brush that manages other brushes. I myself I am amazed! It's like when you have to take a wave and decide whether to go right or left. The movement happens in an instant and has to be perfect otherwise lose the wave or, in my case, the energy of the picture.

And how do you think that Italy can help in this search your art?
An American friend of mine who lived in Ravenna I spoke of Cooperativa of Mosaic, its restoration work and his artistic production. Their techniques would be well on my works so I started a collaboration with them that I hope mature since my months in Italy. I often being contacted by individuals or institutions to set up large works. The fact that you can count on me specialists Italians opens new horizons. They are at a time when I am turning the page artistically, and I need to explore different media. Another thing that fascinates me of is the fact that much of the artistic production, it is still made by groups of people, such as craft shops. I attracts art without "signatures", the one made to improve the lives of many people and not for glorificarne one and I think that Italy is the perfect place for this. If the waves continue to be entertaining today as I touch their stay longer than three months budgeted!
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