“For many years I have been painting the landscape surrounding ‘Essington Park’, my home in the Central Tablelands, west of the Blue Mountains. In making this body of work I was thinking about how important it is as a landscape painter to learn a place – to revisit the same tree, river, creek bed, paddock and horizon until it is indelibly known. Through this honed observation, the interpretation of the visual structure in the landscape becomes second nature, liberating the artist to layer a deep emotional response on the work.
This exhibition is a culmination of painting born out of both visceral recollections and sharp observations. Earlier this year I moved to a new home on an island off the coast of Maine, in the northeastern United States. ‘Heartland’ is a homage to Essington and the surrounding landscape, to celebrate all that it has offered me, and to preserve its memory as I move forward into new worlds. For me a future in a new environment raises profound questions about the degree to which our sense of artistic self is entwined with the landscape around us, and about how we evolve from a view of a particular place to the universal.”
– Joanna Logue, 2017
