Paintings of the South West

Selected Images

In April, 2000, Brendon exhibited these paintings and others at the
Margaret River Art Gallery, in conjunction with paintings by Ingrid Widram

The joint exhibition was entitled "The Landscape in Essence"
Gallery details here
read Brendon's Artist's Statement for this exhibition here

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Artist's Statement

As my studio overlooks the Blackwood River, I never tire of exploiting that solid
strip of colour running through the very scratchy, scruffy, textured landscape.

To broaden mu scope, I spent some time driving throught the south-west.
One observation was of more strips of solid colour, in the form of roads, running
through this naturally abtsracted landscape. I find this a very useful compositional
tool, especially punctuated with very unsubtle road signs.

It was generally the practice of landscape painters, myself included, to avoid the
influences of contemporary construction (Jeffrey Smart would disagree), but as most
of our observations of the bush are through our windscreens, I wanted to document this.

I've recently returned from Europe and couldn't wait to get back to the Aussie bush.
No one would dispute that Europe has wonderful scenery, but you can't imagine going
for a walk in the European "bush", the forest is just too neat to be called "bush".
In contrast, to describe the Australian landscape is to describe the typical Aussie,
"non-conforming, confrontational, unpredictable and full of surprises".

I hope I qualify.

Margaret River Art Galleries
83-85 Bussell Highway, Margaret River, Western Australia
Phone/Fax: (08) 9757 2729
Fax: 61 (08) 9384 0966