25th October 2010 – Reflections on Mallee Memories
Mallee Memories is about the area where I was born and brought up as a child.
Beulah was the little town in the North West of Victoria. My parents workeda grain (wheat, barley) and sheep farm. Both were fantastically creative and Ienjoyed a wonderful childhood.
The painting depicts the wild sweetpeas in the paddock behind our main dam. There were wattles and mallee gums in a natural, uncleared area around thedam. Some times the farmers burned-off the land and there would be twigs andthin mallee scrub blackened against the golden wattles of the following season.
Each year the land that was not sown with grain was fallowed several times tohelp hold moisture and to kill weeds. The colour of the fallow was the colour ofthe base of the painting. The mallee can be very hot with a clear dry heat which issuggested in the blue sky with the white line.
The painting will look more blue in some lights and more mauve at other times. This change in the blues and mauves has fascinated me for years.
I view the life and movement of colour as something deeply spiritual and I oftenfeel my experience and investigation of music and painting is spiritual.