are bold and profound. This one, which hangs on my wall at 450 Lygon Street, manages at once to evoke Noah's flood and the power of the Australian land (whose shape is gestured at). I haven't been keeping you posted on the bush fires, which seem to be under control if not out. I've also not mentioned that some regions had rain, and it led to floods - floods and drought seem like kin here. This is a climate of broad strokes, and here the artist 
has caught its raw power. Quite different but still full of movement this one, which reminds me of the windy tug-of-war between gum groves and canola fields I saw along the way to Shepparton before the drought dried everything up. (Remember my photo from the train?) The subtlety of the scenery here is nicely captured in the interpenetration of the colors: the animating heart of the green-blue is yellow, and vice versa. 
This third work shows the primary colors which, beneath the camouflage of dusty greys and greens, are the true colors of the Australian land. Sometimes the sky will call to the red of the earth and turn the whole world reds, peaches and corals (which at dusk may generate an underwater world of blues and purples), but much of the time the primary colors are concentrated in the flight of Australia's birds.The artist's newest work has gone in an almost disturbingly different direction. Gone are colors and the dynamic, almost terrifying momentum of their interactions.
In their place, as in this evocation - or memory? - of billabongs (I suppose), we find barest outlines, mere scratches on the surface of an earth which has turned away from us into a flat parody of green. No more mutual informing of surface and depth, just spaces you can never enter, since every side is outside.This is what drought feels like.
