If you can’t kick it you can’t count it and if you can’t count it it don’t count.
It’s easy to view the environment solely as a set of resources. Indeed, throughout our history that has been the dominant way of looking at the world. Potential mineral deposits, food sources and building materials were catalogued and fought over by our ancestors for empire or for survival.
A landscape painter needs to deal with the fact that a pretty view is all well and good but digging it, cutting it, or burning it is way more, well, useful.
The bush around Ballarat is a palimpsest of environmental uses. From the knife-edge desperation of the gold rush diggings to the complacent adrenaline of 4×4 and trail bike tracks, my current work focuses on the evidence of the uses to which the environment is put.
Man, the last thing I think of when offroading is “art” I think you’ve convinced me to look twice!
Cheers man
There’s a lot to work with here, that tension between a pretty landscape and useful resources.
I like your 4×4 tracks painting.
Thanks for your comments Annerose.