The life of the Western Treatment Plant.
Gratia De Profundis.
Oil on Plywood. 183cm x 60cm.
Gratia De Profundis – The life of the Western Treatment Plant.
Gratia De Profundis is a series of paintings based on my interpretation of the open plains landscape of the Western Treatment Plant which is situated approximately 30km from Melbourne’s CBD. This area is a wetland sanctuary for bird and aquatic life with large skies and flat grasslands and marshes that run to the horizon. To the North the You Yangs stand omnipresent marking the skyline with their ancient granite outlines. The weather rolls across the giant sky, constantly changing. Standing alone in this vast landscape with the heavy clouds sweeping across the plains, there is no shelter as the wind and rain beats down on you, then the storm clears and the touch of the sun warms your skin, leaving you with the sensation that you are at one with your environment.
Gratia De Profundis.
Oil on Plywood. 122cm x 90cm.
In my art practice I use traditional materials and techniques, yet I inevitably bring a contemporary sensibility to my subjects. The emptiness I portray in my paintings addresses existential themes such as the isolation of the individual soul experiencing the vastness of the landscape. Like many artists I experience life as separate from society, looking in at the world from another perspective.
I create contemplative works, rich in colour with a luminous quality that captures the elemental forces of land and sky, and dramatic but transient meteorological moods. These mirror and become metaphors for human feelings and emotional change: uniting the external with the internal.
Gratia De Profundis- In Flight
Oil on Plywood. 120cm x 35cm.
Gratia De Profundis.
Oil on Plywood. 183cm x 60cm.
“I came to a point where I needed solitude and just to stop the machine of thinking and enjoying what they call living. I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds.”
Jack Kerouac
Gratia De Profundis.
Oil on Plywood. 122cm x 90cm.
Gratia De Profundis.
Oil on Plywood. 183cm x 60cm.
Gratia De Profundis.
Oil on Plywood. 122cm x 90cm.