SALT LAKE DREAMING

Of all Australia's varied landscapes, I particularly love desert salt lakes, because the earth is red (in many parts of central Australia) and you can see white salt lakes, grey/blue salt lakes, or even pink salt lakes - what's not to like about such wonderful color contrast?

And the settings are so varied too. Some are surrounded by scrubby dark trees, some by blue waters reflecting the sky, and some, like in this painting, are backed by dreamy violet horizons in a hazy distance..

I like showing all the detail in what many people would regard as a dead and boring landscape. The salt lake itself carries evidence of life, bits of decayed vegetable matter, bones, fencing wire, even crayfish pots sometimes! - it's amazing what they can contain and hide. And then there is the red earth - this too is richly textured, covered with the tracks of small creatures, snake trails, burrows, scattered bones, ant hills, and bits of detritus of all kinds. So in this painting, I've tried to show all this variation and detail without taking away from the essentially dreamy scene. It makes it interesting to me, that you only really see the whole landscape at first glance, but then at your leisure, (maybe when you're on a sofa with drink in hand), you will find your eye will wander lazily over the artwork, and you will slowly discover all sorts of things that you didn't notice before. That's just how it is being in this country....

The artwork is technically Mixed Media, but it is largely painted with Professional Quality Acrylic paint together with a number of other artist grade mark making materials, crayons, inks and more, to give the layers plenty of depth and interest.