Rozelle Winter Light

Painted in 'plein aire' style, this is a study of winter daylight. The pale sunlight and rich blue winter skies are typical of inner west Sydney streetscapes. The street is rich with a mixture of old factories and housing blended with gardens and trees. The inspiration for this work comes from the early impressionists and I remain solidly influenced by 19th century painters of light such as Camille Corot and Constable. The medium for this painting is oil on paper.

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Australian painter Michael Cowdroy eschews the broad vistas and minimal colour palettes of many of his peers’landscape paintings, but his suburban streetscapes retain the same sense of sharpness in the air and intensity of light. Working with delicate brushstrokes and hues that evoke the French Impressionists, he portrays suburbs and homes surrounded by nature.

By opposing the pale and rusty tones of the streets and buildings to the vibrant, infinitely modulated greens of the surrounding foliage, Cowdroy suggests a delicate balance between man and nature.

This juxtaposition lends his compositions an incredibly tactile quality, the loosely defined structures and surfaces allowing viewers to invest the images with their own experiences. His dynamic framing of streets and landscapes puts a contemporary spin on classical perspective, with vanishing points often hidden around bends in snaking roads and many images dominated by enormous trees. The results are evocative images that use a familiar visual lexicon in new and exciting ways to convey a gripping and immersive sense of place.