Venus, Mars and a cloudy day on planet Earth is the upcoming exhibition by Ōtautahi Christchurch artist Francis van Hout. Ahead of the exhibition he spoke with City Art Reader editor Cameron Ralston. Venus, Mars and a cloudy day on planet Earth opens 5.30–7pm Tuesday 20 May and runs through to 9 June 2025.
Cameron Ralston: Where does your titling ‘Venus, Mars and a cloudy day on planet Earth’ come from?
Francis van Hout: Well, it came about because of the colours I was using at that time and after my previous show at City Art Depot, Portraits, Idols and Robots. I was looking at the colours, the red especially, that reminded me of the colour of Mars, or the pretence of what the colour of Mars is meant to be. Mars is always ‘the red planet’, because of the red oxides on the planet’s surface. That’s basically where it started. Then the other colours I was using were very similar to pictures I’ve seen of Venus because of the atmosphere. It has a carbon dioxide atmosphere and sulphuric acid clouds – it’s pretty toxic. I wanted to represent those planets. ‘Cloudy day on planet Earth’ came along because I needed three paintings and I wanted a representation of earth somehow. The cloudy days is like a joke in a way, but it has a serious side as well. If you want to paint Earth you paint it without clouds – you paint the sea and land. I’m not painting Earth, I’m really painting clouds.
After I came up with that idea of planets, I started watching a TV series called The Planets. Then I watched another one called The Solar System. They reinforced what I was doing.
Did you come up with the idea for the planets while you were painting them or was it something you had in your head before?
No, that’s how it started out. But there were a lot of other things going on as well. Like that Paul McCartney and Wings song Venus and Mars. I remember the cover of that album, which was basically two balls, one red and one yellow. That song kept in my head for so long. I also remembered that book from the early 1990s, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. I just remember there was a whole lot of stuff going on about it at one stage in my life and that brought those memories back. But then as well I think about all the artworks that are based on the Greek myths of Venus and Mars – the obvious famous one is The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. It’s funny how they came up with the names as well for the planets, way back in the Greek times, based off two gods. Venus is the goddess of love and Mars is the god of war. And good old Earth was stuck in the middle of them.
Venus, water based paint on canvas, 1200x1200mm, 2025
Are you using the same pigments as your last show?
The same pigments, from the same area up in the hills. Then taken home and pounded to death and turned into paint. It took me a lot of testing to get the paints that I wanted and the look that I wanted, depending on what I mixed the pigments with.
Were you mixing it with other pigmented things?
No, just a clear acrylic or PVA binder. Really quite thinned down. I tried several things. I tried oils, shellac and other mediums. A lot of them just didn’t give me the look I wanted which is a quite a dull un-shiny look.
What’s the appeal of that look for you?
Because I wanted the most natural looking colours. I wanted the colours to be what they are in nature.
There is obviously a long history of using earth, whenua, as pigment. These colours naturally come up a lot in indigenous art from Aotearoa New Zealand and around the globe.
Yeah, that’s another thing. They’re the most basic colours from indigenous and primitive art, basically red, black and white.
Is the planet Earth artwork painted using chalk?
Well, a chalk base, it’s gesso actually. A mixture of the yellow from Venus, charcoal and gesso. It took a lot of work to get that paint. With Mars there is a red, and then there’s a charcoal pigment on top to dull it down and darken it. I didn’t have to add anything to the Venus painting.
When you’re painting, is it quite a wet pigment?
It’s really wet. Really thin layers. Layer over layer. Probably brushing on a couple of layers every day. It’s just the way I started them and I had to keep going. The way it mixes and layered gave me the look that I wanted.
You build up a lot of texture that way.
Yeah, I went through a lot of brushes with that texture. They wore my brushes down.
There is an earthy, rough texture to the works. Did you have to do any testing or apply the paint in a certain way to achieve that?
No, that just that just happened really. It was a good accident. As well ,when you start layering things over, you get thicker and thinner areas, which is something that I like because it gives you a texture and patterns. It took a while. I had to work out a way that they wouldn’t drip. I was originally leaving the drips but thought it didn’t look good to me so took them all out.
Mars (detail), water based paint on canvas, 1200x1200mm, 2025
I think they look more composed.
There’s something funny about leaving drips in paintings to me now. I wanted a softer edge on these artworks. To smooth them out. To add something to it. Give something more for people to look at. I like the edges on and a cloudy day on planet Earth. There’s something interesting about it. It looks like it could be iced over.
The edges also act as framing devices, is that part of the intention?
I didn’t want to do an all over flat colour, it just didn’t work well – painting without the frames, they didn’t look like paintings at all. They just looked like a test pot. The frames are also a good way of focusing people on looking at the work rather than perhaps thinking it’s just a colour on a wall. You can look at them as though looking in through windows – frames have come up a lot in my artwork.
I remember your painted frames in your exhibition The Rolling Moon (2020).
You can even go back to the Null & Void (2016) works as well.
So, having that frame makes them more relatable to painting as an idea or form?
There’s just something about it. It helps it become something more than what it is. It takes you away from a picture just hanging on a wall. It becomes something like a window. You could be in a spaceship above Mars, looking down.
They are incredibly abstract artworks in this show. But by adding titles, framing devices, even publishing an interview about the works, you give more to the works than a pure minimalism.
This is all my opinion about my work. People might look at them differently and even think they would look better with different elements.
Your work always seems to encompass these border interests, like sci-fi and a kind of sense of humour. They’re sort of steady themes that are often never the main theme. But they’re always there with you.
That’s just memories, history. It’s what you know and want to paint or show. Basically, what you enjoy.
I get the sense that you have fun with it.
You’ve got to have fun. What’s the point of doing something if you don’t have fun? I’m sure I’ve said that in lots of interviews. These are enjoyable to do. But also totally and utterly frustrating. I put a layer on and it starts to drip and it drips over a part that you don’t want it to drip on. I can get annoyed with it.
You create these puzzles or challenges for yourself.
I saw it as a game, playing with the drips. Who could get there first, the drip or me?
and a cloudy day on planet Earth, water based paint on canvas, 1200x1200mm, 2025
You often reference other artists in your work, the obvious one here is Rothko. Was there any intentionality to that?
It’s not intentional, it’s just the way I wanted to paint them. I totally admit Rothko has influenced me. I look at his work and I think it’s just amazing. I can see why people look at them and just go ‘wow’. I imagine at that size you’re walking into the painting. Basically, you become part of it.
I think that’s something your artwork achieves as well – that becoming with the work.
The artworks are more than what I’ve done. It’s about what the viewer is getting out of it as well. What they’re looking at and why they’re looking at it. When I look at Rothko’s paintings, I always think, what am I looking at? And every time I look at Rothko’s works, they remind me of windows and the way light comes through windows. That’s just me. Maybe because I like staring at windows.
Through a window you can view the changing of the life itself. Life goes past you day after day after day. Every day is different. It always changes colours. It’s the same with me in my studio. Most of the time I’m in my studio early mornings or late evenings, I’ve got a window above my work bench and I’m always watching the days change from light to dark or dark to light. The amazing colours that I see every day.
Do you witness the works change with that as well?
I see the works change every time I look at them. Even when they were on my studio wall everyday, I looked at them and I’d see something different in them. To me they’re never static for some odd reason. I don’t know why.
Your studio is reasonably small and narrow. You must get quite close and sucked into the artworks.
Yeah, I live pretty close to them when I’m in my studio. They were hanging around me.
Another influence was J. M. W. Turner’s paintings, especially with and a cloudy day on planet Earth. It’s pretty influenced by Turner’s skies and clouds – the movement that he gets in his work. One of the documentaries on Rothko, I think it’s about the Tate curator who was trying to get his work over to the Tate. Rothko was asking whether the Turner paintings would be next door or close by because he was influenced by Turner as well. Those weather paintings influenced me a lot. I always saw Turner as the first abstract expressionist.
Those artists you mention – Rothko, Turner and so on – they took themselves really seriously. I was looking at the Rothko Chapel website before you came here. The descriptors that they use are things like it’s a sanctuary, it’s sacred. Do you sit there and think these things about your own work?
They are precious to me. I did them for a reason. And I do them because I want to do them. It’s just something about them. They’re precious.
Painting takes up a huge part of your life.
Oh, definitely. Every time I do a painting it’s so meaningful to me. When you see a painting you’ve done but haven’t seen for so long, it’s just a magical feeling, because all those memories come back to you. Of what it meant to you and why you did it and what you were doing and thinking at the time. Are they a religious kind of experience? I’m not very religious myself.
I just hope people come in, look at the works and admire them and start looking for something in them that they can hook into. Abstract work becomes quite personal because people see different things in them.
Outside of end of year group shows, this is your 12th solo show at City Art Depot. Do you see some interrelation between all these bodies of artwork that you’ve created?
I have been thinking about that, especially if you think about the square works that I’ve done. Looking back to the first show that I did at City Art Depot, I painted a lot of things in pixels or squares. If you take an enlargement of one of those squares, you’d probably get what I’m doing now, magnified. I could actually put all these paintings together and make another painting out of them. But they mean a lot of different things and they have a lot of different meanings. I’ve always said that people will always find their own meanings within paintings anyway. I mean, what happens if you haven’t read this interview? Or don’t know anything about the artist? And you came into the gallery and looked at the works, what would that viewer think firstly? It depends on what their background is and what they know about the history of art. I think a lot of people with a background in arts might come in and see Rothko or abstract expressionism in the artworks.
Yes, that does influence the way that you view any artwork. It would be an interesting premise to say at the start of the interview to view the works before reading this.
