Solilioquy - Tasmanian Highlands (Finalist Glover Prize 2012)

Travelling through central Tasmania in the gentle Autumn light I stopped at the many lookouts to take in the views. As the day waned and the rolling forms of the mountain chains began to recede into the distance it was easy to feel the ancient and yet timeless quality of the Tasmanian landscape. Immersing myself in the moment I began to understand what John Glover had experienced in the 1830s trekking the mountain passes around Ben Lomond and Mount Olympus sketching from the scenic vantage points as he went. Each day as I travelled the winding roads of the Tamar Valley, and the sun started to set, the evening vistas spread out before me down disappearing valleys and I watched as the fading evening light held onto the misty purples and blues until the last colours vanished from the landscape. At this time of day the lack of foreground light often threw into silhouette the angular pine trees, contrasting with the soft forms in the distance. Inspired by what I saw I realised that after twenty years of painting the Australian landscape I was only now beginning to perceive the unique quality of light and colour of nature in Tasmania. Being English by birth, I brought with me the European tradition of landscape painting and the challenge for me since that May trip has been to render in oil on canvas what I had felt when captivated by these moments on the road in the Tamar Valley.

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Julie-anne Armstrong-Roper was born in Exeter, England and immigrated to Australia at the age of six, later to become an Australian citizen.She spent her formative years in Frankston (a suburb of Melbourne) later moving to Mt Eliza on the eastern shores of Port Phillip Bay.Although Julie-anne was rebellious at school she excelled at art and at an early age enrolled in Life Drawing classes at the local Grammar school, at the age of sixteen she returned to Europe for six months spending time on an art tour of Italy and France. She continued to develop her art mainly in the drawing discipline for many years until she enrolled in painting classes at Prahran College in the 1980s under the tutorage of Howard Arkley. This period caused a re-appraisal of her work and she moved though the genre of the surrealist movement and figurative painting. Her fathers death in 2000 was a cathartic experience that led her to find her own style.For the past six years, she has been exploring human emotions and spirituality though the use of landscape. Her works are not purely landscape in most cases they are abstractions where she has used the weather as a metaphor for the emotive changes we experience through our lives. Using the sky and all its moods, not only to communicate her own emotions, but also to invoke an emphatic response from the audience.