Layered Landscape, Yarra Glen

During lockdown, this landscape was created from memory and a stock of my photographic images. It concerns the theory of painting practice more than an actual place.

I am familiar with a layered landscape and high horizon line living in the hills.

Using the triadic colour scheme of green, purple and orange, I played with the suggestion of depth using softened distant verses strong foreground colours, and a layering of fields, forests and roads.

A contrast of organic and man-made shapes is typical of most of my work.

Simplicity was the aim, but the execution was not that simple. Layers of neutrals softened the strong tube colours, creating texture. The neutrals were made only from the 3 colours plus white.

For the first time, I concurrently painted 3 studies of this subject on 3 canvases. Each are of different size and shape, so are unique in their format. They took ages, but each helped resolve problems in the other. This work is the largest of the three.

For those interested, the subject is based on the view from a commercial tourist precinct near Yarra Glen which inspired me only to retreat from the crowds inside and study the distant landscape. It is symbolic of the views of much of the area.