Moving further into abstraction, Fairweather’s paintings from the late 1950s and early 1960s are amongst his greatest artistic achievements. This painting, Kite flying draws its inspiration from the Chinese kite-flying festival, the Chung Yang, which occurs on the ninth day of the ninth month and celebrates the protection of the family from misfortune. Here, Fairweather captures upturned faces, sky, clouds, tussling kites and their strings. The work has a sense of balanced discord with occasional flashes of red and blue that disrupt its surface. Fairweather noted that his intention was to avoid melody: ‘one can get so terribly tired of melody if one hears it over and over again’, he once said. As viewers, our eye does not move rhythmically through the image, but darts from point to point, not unlike kites being buffeted by the wind.
Ian Fairweather is one of Queensland's most distinguished artists. Born in Scotland in 1891, Fairweather travelled through Europe and Asia as a young man, arriving in Australia in 1933. He eventually settled on Bribie Island, just north of Brisbane, where he lived a rudimentary and solitary lifestyle from 1953 until his death in 1974.
Fairweather painted and drew throughout his early travels, absorbing a myriad of influences to form a distinctive personal style.
Kite flying 1958, one of Fairweather's most significant works, exemplifies the artist's approach to painting. Lines inspired by Chinese calligraphy cross the work, exposing layers of underpainting. Figures, kites and balloons dance in and out of focus in a fusion of shapes and colours.
The work is based on a 2000-year-old Chinese kite flying festival, which celebrates the protection of loved ones against misfortune. The festival commemorates the story of Huan Ching, a man from the Han period in China, who was warned by a sage to take his wife and children to the mountains.
Taking this advice, he took his family kite flying, and so escaped the massacre that befell their livestock. The felicity of this occasion is reflected in the painting's joyous vibrancy.
