Cows in a paddock at Yarra Glen

Chromacolour acrylic on MDF board. 20x26cm. Completed 30th June 2009. Time taken – 18 hours.

I moved to Yarra Glen in late 2007, and stayed for two years. I was constantly delighted with the beauty of my surroundings. I decided to make a series of contemporary, realist, landscape paintings. As a teenager the school I attended had a subject called ‘art appreciation’. At the time I thought I could be learning something more important, but now when I look back I realise it provided me with a lot of insight into art and has had a profound effect on me as a contemporary artist..

Early Australian landscape painters struggled to communicate the unique flora and fauna, as well as getting the harsh Australian sunlight correct. It took artists like Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton (who were the main painters of what is known as the Heidelberg school) to get an Australian landscape down on canvas correctly. Our sunlight is distinctly different to that of the northern hemisphere.

In creating ‘cows in a paddock’ I used a source photo that was taken at the height of a long drought. The grass was quite dry and yellow. I was wanting to make a ‘happier’ looking painting, so I deliberately made the coloring more greenish than yellow and therefore making the painting appear to from a more ‘lush’ time of the year.

I lived just up the road from this vantage point and if you are familiar with Yarra Glen you will realise that this landscape features parts of the local cemetery.

Bernardini

Chromacolour acrylic on MDF board 59x77cm. Completed 1st October 2009.

This painting is of an American racehorse named Bernardini. The original image came from a magazine on racehorses (Bluebloods May 2009) after someone asked me for a photorealist painting of their favourite subject.

One of the difficult aspects of duplicating an image such as this is the abstract and often chaotic ‘passages’ or areas which can be extraordinarily complex; both the ‘shapes’ and colors can present a huge challenge to the artist if he is to succeed. This is the key to good photorealism. To get the colors to blend sometimes you have to use the ‘side’ of the brush or a cotton bud and for this work I must of ruined 5 or 6 good brushes trying to get that effect.

Due to the depth of field issues of the original photograph the background is rather blurred and non-de script which I think works quite well in that it forces the viewers eye to look at the detail and the ‘surface of things’. Like the silks on the jockey and the sweaty, muscular horse.

The person who commissioned the work made excuse after excuse for five months about paying a measly $200 after it was finished (I had asked for $700). This person also had the gall to insist I paint out Bernardini even though he’d approved the source image! I spent 4 hours painting out the name. I rang him numerous times in early 2010 and tried to arrange a time for him to choose a frame and pay me and three times there was an excuse. Well actually the last time we spoke I had arranged a day and an approximate time, so I took it with me to work (which is just down the road from the framers) and all day I waited for his promised call and heard nothing. Well I have a rule – three strikes and your out! It is not the lack of payment that hurts its the fact that someone can request you to do something very specific for them and when you’ve spent 70 hours and around $50 worth of materials they show utter indifference. I will never speak to this person ever again. I think this person is an absolute disgrace and a pathetic example of a human.