Artist Painting Explanation

Hadyn Wilson Statement. Incidental landscapes. 2015 This group of paintings titled; ‘Incidental Landscapes’ represents a particular approach to ‘landscape’ which looks at the way this genre has changed and the cultural shifts that have occurred, particularly in relation to concepts of nature and land use within Australia. The paintings therefore sometimes borrow imagery from that tradition and comment playfully on the way these references have perhaps changed in their reception over a century or more and particularly in relation to environmental considerations today. ‘The artist and the listener’ The confluence of Tom Roberts, ‘The artists camp’, 1886 and Fernaud Khnopff’s ‘Listening to Schumann’, 1883 represent for me the sufficiency of music and art in life and how that idea is perhaps now regarded as romantic and impractical, especially within the context of Sydney mortgages and other contemporary encumbrances. Certainly a tent in Sirius Cove would not be welcomed by Mosman Council. ‘Yearning hill’ A reference to Andrew Wyath’s painting ‘Christina’s world’ and refers to the feeling of impotency in our attempt to imaginatively connect with the past. ‘The alchemical recipe in history’ A reference to Streeton’s ‘Grey day on the Hawkesbury’ 1895, making a poetic link between landscape and process. ‘Incident approaching Mirmande’ The image is based on a painting by the Australian artist Dorrit Black called Mirmande, 1928, which was painted in Europe when she was living there. I responded to the abstracted quality of this painting in particular and a fondness for her work generally. My painting imposes a‘disquiet’ on any sentiment that might be evoked by ‘old Europe’ and what that might stand for. ‘Floating coast near Kiama’ This work channels the paintings Lloyd Rees did in and around Kiama and Berry south of Sydney in the 1950s. The three floating figures represent the disembodied nature of yearning and also three points of compositional triangulation that Rees used so often in these paintings, usually expressed with a sweeping Rd from background to foreground and something which influenced Brett Whitely’s compositions much later. ‘White shift over old Ballarat’ This painting references Hugh Ramsay’s Two girls in white (the sisters) 1904, which was possibly the last work he completed before dying of consumption that year. This ‘Whistler’ like painting is as much to do with the billowing satin dresses as a double portrait and hints at the objectifying reflex that, like Whistler’s later work, anticipates the coming of a more abstract sensibility. The addition of the swan in my painting where its iconic s-shaped neck is hidden, parallels this idea. The background also refers to Von-Guerard’s painting Old Ballarat as it was in the summer of 1853-54. This work was painted in 1884 in Germany, some 30 years after returning home from Australia and was referred to in my painting as an example of imaginatively evoking the past and in his case, distant landscapes in order to better apprehend your own environment. ‘Birds rise over Templestowe’ The reference is David Davies Moonrise. 1894 which was described by some at the time as being “grey and misty” and generally “dark and depressing of the spirit”. I have always liked this work as it avoids the convention at the time of having a ‘subject’ like a figure or a distant cow or homestead somewhere in the background. For me, it evokes a world of ‘invisible biota’, of bugs and insects and hidden nests. My painting has added birds as an imaginary resurrection or symbolic addendum to what I believe was Davies original response. ‘Allegro Con Brio with synchrony’ Based on Tom Roberts famous painting Allegro con Brio, Bourke St west. 1886 His painting with the musical reference meaning ‘quickly with spirit’ was a celebration of street life in 19th century Melbourne. My painting is a facsimile of that work with a contextual mixing of that city today. ‘The coming storm’ This work refers to Walter Withers painting of the same name, made around 1898. In my painting, the title can be read ambiguously as a threat from nature or perhaps culture. Unlike the 19th century, a climatic threat today is driven by our own decisions and actions, a concept that would have been unthinkable in Withers time. .

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