Landscape Paintings

Gallery 9, Sydney
August 2023

Photographs: Andrew Curtis, Simon Hewson

'Landscape Paintings’ is a series of works on ceramic and linen that continue my investigation into the relationship between the 2D and 3D. Developed out of a series of drawings made whilst visiting Tjorita/West MacDonnell National Park last year, this body of work sees the energy and approach to painting transcend the linen surface onto ceramic structures.

A trip last year to the Northern Territory allowed me to experience an environment that was very different to those that have informed recent bodies of work. Familiar ideas of colour, light and movement were at the forefront of my thinking whilst walking in the landscape. However, it was the enormity of the spatial environment, both physically and psychologically, which demanded my attention. Ideas of scale and expanse transcended my drawings made in the landscape and have become key ideas explored in this body of work.

The drawings came back to Naarm/Melbourne with me and began to inform a series of oil paintings on linen. I found an approach and directness in these works that felt very connected to my experiences in the desert. Not wanting to lose this energy I began making clay structures that allowed me to explore a non-linear relationship between painting, sculpture and material. The box like ceramic structures provide a three-dimensional surface to refine my approach, explore mark making and reveal and conceal in ways that stretched linen does not.

I would like to acknowledge the Anangu and the Arrernte people as the traditional owners of lands where the drawings and ideas for this body of work were seeded. I would also like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people as the traditional owners and custodians of the lands on which I live & practice.