“The thrill of a welcome, to be traversing country that it’s custodians have opened to you is a delight all its own. When the farmers, indigenous owners or key holders give a painter carte blanche to run in any direction and respond to any old place they please, the sense of embrace is most keenly felt. To find an affection for and an intimacy with a landscape is to learn it and to observe closely it’s most particular nuances and I realise more and more that the making of picture postcards gleaned on the side of the road just doesn’t cut it. There has to be time spent in places and usually repeat visits over varying seasons to truly be able to wrest an image that is about a place rather than just of it.
To see a place through the eyes of the people who know it best and to then make an attempt at painting it is leavened by the information and permission given by its occupants who more often than not hold a particular fondness for and pride of the subject.
This exhibition is dedicated to those friends.”
– Luke Sciberras
