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Australia is a beautiful country, its expanse is so great, a landscape artist may be inclined to overlook its monotonous beauty of repetitveness. We may see the ruggedness of rocks and scrubby trees of a flat landscape as repeated ugliness, we may only see boring foreverness. Expectations of today’s artists is to paint in a different style to the multitude who have gone before. It is equally important to find new subject matter and give it new interpretation. Like handwriting, every artist develops his own signature style of painting, avoiding similarities to the work of others. This is is most appreciated in watercolour painting because of the directness of the medium and its often, determined stubbornness to be difficult. Many artists ignore the challenge of watercolour because it can have a mind of its own and they are frustrated coping with its idiosyncrasies ‘Scrubby Country’ is a mid day painting, the landscape is flat and so is the light. The picture is determined by its textures and colour. The changes of texture and colour have created patterns meandering into the distance. The dark tones in the painting link to assist your eye to wander through the picture towards the horizon. Each mark has its individual importance to make a subtle statement in unison with the other marks and expresses the strong sense of perspective. Apart from the three patterned panels of texture there are no significant landmarks. It would be easy to feel lost in a landscape like this.
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