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Maxienne Tritton Young has been a practicing artist for 25 years since she finished her Diploma in Art and Design at Monash University, Caulfield – formerly Caulfield Institute of Technology - in 1977. She has expertise in various fields within the visual arts that have been traditionally used by artists for the expression and proliferation of art: photography, printmaking, drawing and painting. Maxienne draws her inspiration from the Surrealists, who vehemently objected to constraining the free creative spirit to any medium or art form. The artistic spirit totally unhampered by any rules or conventions, in its ‘natural’ state is the inspiration which gave birth to Surrealism.
Under the Dada banner, Marcel Duchamp broke away from all traditional conceptions of art to endow artistic significance on a ‘found object,’ ie. the infamous Bottle Rack, 1915. The underlying unity in Maxienne's diverse work comes from following the Surrealists in taking on the notions of chance and automatism. Needless to say that the diversity in her work is not only limited to using varied visual mediums for the expression of her art, but from imbibing the philosophical ideas that guided the Surrealist movement, not only in letter but in spirit. The spontaneous creation of images are unhindered by constraints of style or mediums.
Maxienne started her career
as an artist by enrolling for the Diploma in Art and Design in 1973 with
an aim to specialise in painting, though she had taken to drawing in her
childhood. She learnt painting in her first year at Monash, but her
free spirit was not to be constrained by the conventions. She ended up
with a major in printmaking and a minor in photography. The impetus
to move towards print-making came from the
earlier Surrealist influences
and tendencies she had gathered in her school life. In print-making
she found a way of juxtaposing ‘recalled-images’ like some collected photographs
of Luna Park, people in her life, the Duomo (the famous cathedral in Florence).
These vivid impressions attracted her intuitively, but the thoughts were
crystallised in her use of the double-images while experimenting with this
new medium which allowed for creative happenings by chance. Her works
completed during that period were exhibited at the Susan Gillespie Gallery,
Canberra in 1978.
With the completion of the Diploma at Monash, Maxienne emerged an individual who saw herself as a practicing artist seeking an environment to prove her skills in the art world. She was accepted at the Victorian Arts College for studies in the Graduate Diploma in Fine Art with an aim to specialise in printmaking, however she moved to photography. The early exploration of photography started during Maxienne's time at Monash, but her serious engagement with this medium came from its popular use in recording significant events and experiences in life. In beginning to use photography as a medium for her artwork, Maxienne used it to record her experiences. Her personal life was shared between being a mother, a wife, a daughter, student, friend and a nurse. She produced a photographic series of self-portraits Monday to Monday that was conceived of as being representative of a week for a working woman.
She usedphotography as a medium to record the experiences of her essential being as a person embedded in, but disjointed from her social being. This series was significant in several ways. The perspective was an enigmatic combination of personal experiences and wider concerns for working women who were struggling to find their identity among the trial and tribulations of family, work and society. While fulfilling her duties in familial and social spheres, Maxienne, the individual, had begun to discover herself essentially as an artist. But the fragmentation of a working woman’s life left her unable to establish her essential identity as an artist. The creative spirit combined with her artistic skills in photography in an innovative manner, led to the crystallization of this perspective in the evolution of the ‘blur’ in her photographic work. The blurred self-portraits not only represented her internal struggle of being in the social world and her own being-in-the-world simpliciter; it also was a struggle to discover the essential artist in within. She discovered the artist in the process of experimenting with a camera in the middle of going on with her everyday life. Using slow film, small aperture and three set time exposures to create blurs, she captured the sense of her being in the social world without being essentially constrained by being there.
The Surrealist process of automatism was an important contributing factor in the process of discovery: the chance was never discounted. A part of the Monday to Monday series was published in LIP (1980):a Feminist Journal of Women in the Visual and Performing Arts. The theme in these images was taken up in feminist writings, for example, Catriona Moore in her book Indecent Exposures makes mentions of the image of Maxienne doing the washing in the laundry as a blur which was part of the above series. The newly discovered artist Maxienne was recognised by the arts community and the confidence she needed to develop the artist in her. She was awarded the Murdoch Travel Grant in 1983 to travel to Italy to study and work at the Santa Reparato Studio where as a confident practicing artist she took photographs to record her experiences of the world around her. These works were exhibited at the Pinocotheca Gallery, Melbourne in 1983.
Renaissance art had influenced
Maxienne early in life but her exposure was very limited. She read
about it and had seen reproductions in art history books, but the trip
to Italy brought her face to face with the real works in their magnificence.
The stark contrast between
‘the real’ and ‘the representations of the real’ troubled the philosophical
sensitivities of the artist in her. This period led to a new transformation
in her personality and she became more academically inclined.
Maxienne enrolled part-time
for a Graduate Diploma in Education at
Melbourne and an Arts Degree
at Monash while simultaneously enrolling in a Graduate Diploma in Women
Studies at Deakin. She studied feminist philosophy and existentialism
in the Philosophy Department at Monash, both of which were instrumental
in shaping her personality and art. Since her engagement with photography
as a medium for her art work, Maxienne as a mature practicing artist never
lost the urge to use art as a medium to document individual experiences,
irrespective of the medium. She did some paintings and drawings of
people and events in her life during this time, which reflected her experiences
now as a more aware woman.
The artist in Maxienne matured with a sense of existential responsibility of experiences and beings around her. The relationships and people in her life were part of the inspiration and content of her work during that time.
She went through a crisis
in her personal life, which diminished her
confidence, but fortunately
it was only a temporary phase. She was focused on rediscovering her
essential self: the practicing artist in her by enrolling and successfully
completing a Masters Degree in Fine Art at Monash in 1998. The search
continues: Maxienne is in the process of enrolling for a PhD in Creative
Arts. While she was indulging in her academic pursuits and struggling
to settle herself in a new life she continued her art work. Constraints
of space and time have drawn her back into drawing again as a medium to
express her artistic urges, ‘irritations’ as she calls them.
Her works simultaneously represent the continuing fascination with animals that she has had since her childhood in unison with her engagement with people around her life.
These works were shown at an exhibition at the Aardwolf gallery, Melbourne, 2000.
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