1 July – 3 August 1986 Curated by Elizabeth Gower Micky Allan, Jonas Balsaitis, Peter Ellis, Keith Looby, Jan Murray, Geoff Parr, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Vicki Varvaressos Artists’ preparatory studies, Australia
Artist’s Statement 1986
Tasmanian Landscapes
A landscape image, like any other image of mine, must grow from an obsession with and in the local life I lead.
The only other landscapes I have ever done were of Sydney Heads which I viewed every day from my Manly house and studio. Only the initial paintings and some etchings succeeded from this too singular view.
My Manly Garden, done just before I left Sydney to live in Tasmania at the end of 1984, was a painting that ploughed the human figures from my work in the similarway I weeded the Manly garden.
For landscape to succeed for me I would have to be living where the landscape overwhelmed other interests.
The landscapes in this exhibition are from my present environment, around the Swansea area on the east coast of Tasmania looking over Oyster Bay to the Freycinet Peninsula.
These paintings are from my new situation where I view the constant changes in weather along with the ploughing and planting of a Botanical Garden ‘Kerigan’, similar to the constant act of painting. Characters of the environment in some cases replant themselves.