‘Flight of Fantasy’ – Paul Summerfield – the bid is at $100

‘I often think of my somewhat free childhood in Mt Barker. Bike riding adventures, friends houses on the same street, climbing high trees, cubby houses, visiting friends’ country properties, making hay-bale fortresses and exploring dams,’ Paul reminisces.

Some of my favourite memories are of surfing and going to the beach in Coffs Harbour.

‘I rode my bike everywhere and it gave me and my friends a lot of freedom.’

An admitted workaholic, Paul is always whittling away at something. Alongside his more personal pursuits, community oriented projects and collaborations are one of Paul’s lovely strengths.

A restless convivial creator, Paul can often be found working in different cafes around Canberra. He is also happily collaborative and has become a pillar of the arts and broader community in Canberra since his arrival in 2003. Some notable contributions include murals for Canberra Hospital and Garran primary, and branding for the National Folk Festival and Floriade.

Paul with his kite, awaiting its transformation.

Paul has a soft spoken, peaceful disposition, presenting as a daydreamer, always following the threads of his imagination into the clouds.

‘One of the most beautiful things I’ve seen is something which can be seen everyday – the rhythm of the wind moving through the world, the shapes of clouds and the patterns in the sky.

‘I see beautiful things every day in the world around me. I think noticing small, beautiful moments and things is something artists do.’

‘I often have shower daydreams,’ he said.’ I might dream up a process, or a work, or an idea, and it spreads its wings in my mind and encompasses my being, until I can put it down on paper or digital canvas.

‘Sometimes I feel like I’m channeling ideas from somewhere else.’

Paul’s artworks are like inter-dimensional portals, housing many narratives and tangents.

They are often designed on a grand scale, every inch intense with detail. As he largely works digitally, his computers and tablets are often overheating, complaining at the scope of his projects. Due to their scale, viewing Paul’s work as a mural, or wrapped around the circumference of a bus, is particularly satisfying.

Close up, it would be easy to feel one has stumbled upon an alternate, fantastical universe that one might possibly be able to enter. One of Paul’s intentions is to present people with an opportunity for escapism on paths through every day life, a moment to let the imagination breathe and expand.

‘My art is storytelling,’ he explains. ‘I want to allow a viewer to collaborate in a narrative by finding their own meaning in my visual forms and imagining their own worlds through my works.’

Paul is inspired by both cityscapes and nature depicting many of their commonalities and intertwining shapes. He references his stay in Tokyo as particularly inspiring, paired with the rainforests of his youth, this fits his recent description of his art direction as ‘solarpunk’. This is a concept that continues to appear in his work.

‘In my up-and-coming exhibition in March next year, titled Botanical Systems, I am exploring the systems around us in the natural world, but also linking them to machine-type systems.’

The artworks are multilayered, many organic and industrial shapes coexisting and blending, often in brilliant technicolour. Some examples include: ‘Cosmic Forrest’, ‘The Linn Garden’ and ‘Photogenic Atoll’.

‘This inner world building that happens when you read stories lasts longer than any film for me,’ Paul said. ‘Scenes from films like: Her, Ghost In The Shell (anime), Blade Runner 1&2 made an indelible impression. Seeing how futuristic earths are portrayed, really sticks in my mind. Films like these have inspired me to try and bring a metropolis’ to life with my 2D digital paintings and illustrations.’

You can see Paul at work in his studio, taking about his art, in a little interview I (Adelaide) did some time ago, by following this link (and after skipping the annoying ads): https://youtu.be/ngYEDGy4upY

The choice of a digital medium aids in this gradual layering, leaving room for adjustments as each work progresses. With the zoom capabilities of a tablet Paul sometimes finds himself working for hours on five centimetres of a canvas, becoming so involved in the process, that he forgets the actual proportions of a piece. Awe-inspiring works like ‘Oceanic Metropolis’ and ‘Magnificent Futures’, are wonderful examples of this, with mind-bending amounts of intricate detail.

Paul has a playful side, too. He admits that he loves to hide things in his artworks, and revels in the thought that a viewer will find something new in the artwork every time they approach it.

Paul also likes to merge oceanic and forrest themes, with repeated images of trees stretching out and whales swimming through the sprawling networks of branches. In his work ‘Ancient Ceremony of The Longest Day’, trees morph into jelly fish, roots mirroring tentacles and vice versa. Though Paul has a real love for Canberra, he sorely misses the ocean.

‘Canberra is a big city with a small city mentality,’ he said. ‘I like that you can choose to walk instead of drive, I like that riding a bike is easy. I like feeling a part of the Canberra art scene and community,’ Paul said.

‘I don’t love that we have to travel two hours to get to the ocean, though. Having grown up by the sea, I really miss it, and yearn to be able go to the beach anytime. Maybe that longing is what makes me create works about sea creatures and ocean-like places.’

Discovering Paul’s love for the sea, it is no surprise that his kite has become a fish-like entity, with a thick mane of rainbow scales and flowing ribbon tendrils.

‘This kite would need a gale to lift it into the air, So with that in mind, I named it, Flight of Fantasy,’ he laughed.

He remembers with pleasure that his parents took him to kite festivals and once, he was given a kite for a birthday.

‘It was a two string freestyle kite and pulling along the beach, I remember feeling that freedom of controlling the kite and also of feeling my feet digging into the sand and the wind through the vibrations of the strings. Zipping it down close to the sand and feeling the pull of the wind was really exhilarating.’

Now that the kite project draws to an end, Paul continues with numerous other endeavours: An illustrated cookbook job, merchandise and poster artwork for the National Folk Festival, two different illustrated storybook collaborations which are in various stages of production and his next solo exhibition in March 2025 in Canberra.