The Afternoon Mile represents a wandering through these landscapes of the mind and the memory. I am seeking new ways of interpreting/revealing the landscape through paint. The work is entirely about a compulsion for seeing the environment anew and finding new ways of being immersed into the Australian landscape.
Click here to view the Afternoon Mile Exhibition Statement
Australian artists Arthur Boyd, John Percival and Sydney Nolan demonstrated a long tradition of en plein air practice that involved processes of transferring the rural experience encountered in the Australian setting into a defined visual narrative through sketches and paintings completed in the artist’s own studio. There is still much to be explored in interpreting the immediacy of contemporary landscape through this approach and impacts of studio environments upon individual artist’s experiences.
The original paintings and ceramic works in The Afternoon Mile solo exhibition are a direct response to making work in a rural setting. The works generated resulting in implementation of studio paintings that continue to explore ways of reinterpreting light within landscape painting as a point of departure provided by the en plein air approach. Working within the studio environment the paintings represent reflective processes that explore way of extending beyond en plein air traditions through approach and representations of the landscape through abstracted imagery.
This exhibition has been well received with attendance of approximately 50 viewers at the ALG pop-up gallery space with further invited exhibitions being subsequently held at Alexandra Lawson Gallery in Toowoomba, and Latrobe Gallery Space in Brisbane in 2020 and 2021. These exhibitions contributed to being invited to be part of the Western Sydney University initiative, the Paint the River Project, in Moree, with an invited group residency and exhibition. This is an ongoing research project from 2021 to 2023.