If you could do it all again

This is one of a series of large-scale paintings from the 2025 "There, there" exhibition in Wangaratta Gallery, Victoria.

Each painting is a conversation, a negotiation, yet with persistence and time, a shift occurs, something clicks and the painting speaks back. There is connection and arrival, and this moment is there.

The phrase There there carries a dual weight: it soothes, it signals, it seeks. It can calm, distress or call attention to something just beyond reach. These works offer the viewer the space to step into a moment where the world seems to stop, when one’s breathing comes to the fore and one lives precisely in the present.

Just as they are created, they offer space—both physical and emotional—for the viewer to slow down, to stay and to get lost. As touch offers a physical sensation, one’s interaction with line, form, colour and scale can lead to a metaphysical sense of comfort.

Oil on canvas
Size: 200 x 175cm

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Mat Vaughan is a visual artist living and painting in the alpine village of Wandiligong in Victoria, Australia. Each day he draws inspiration from the environment and people that surround him. Mat's work investigates functionality of art, space and objects, and where the three intermingle, and how they all shift when one wiggles. Mat graduated with a BA Fine Arts (Honours) from the Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne in 2015. When he’s not in the studio or working the farm, he is lost, having adventures in the mountains of the Victorian high country.