During the 2021 Covid lockdowns, I travelled 8,000 km through Outback Queensland with my wife and fellow artist, Lyn Graham. The ‘Enormous Vastness’ series is inspired by the beauty of the landscapes we saw.
The series title is a line from the song 'Droving Woman' by Australian Aboriginal singer-songwriter Kev Carmody. He wrote: 'The enormous vastness of them inland plains gives a lonely contentment to which you can't put a name, it’s satisfied glow city folks seldom attain, they spend life on a right rigid rail'. This became the theme song for our journey.
Outback Queensland is hard but beautiful. Years go by without rain but 2021 was a wet year so there was abundant vegetation and birdlife.
Vehicle tracks were ubiquitous but people were scarce, even more than usual due to Covid. Sometimes we would drive all day and not see another car.
We took lots of photos and painted most days – there was always something beautiful to see if we slowed right down. We would quietly paint in watercolours near a creek or waterhole. After a while, the birds and animals got used to our presence. One day, 2 emus came in for a drink only metres away. These photos and watercolours became the basis for our oil paintings completed over 18 months in our Brisbane studio.
I kept thinking about the vehicle tracks, and ridiculous ads for 4WD vehicles crashing through creeks, over sand dunes and atop mountains. I started including a stylised 4WD and rifle in many of my paintings, a modern-day Ned Kelly roaming the landscape, as hard, dangerous and inscrutable as Sidney Nolan’s outlaw.
This painting is called ‘Waddy Tree’. It is set in the hard country north of Birdsville. These endangered trees are very slow growing and their timber is incredibly hard. They are real survivors.
I hope these paintings give you a feeling for the other-worldliness and fragile beauty of Outback Queensland.