Christopher McVinish 2021 Recent Paintings
Recent Paintings
In this, my sixth, solo exhibition for Maunsell Wickes, I have drawn on two divergent landscape themes.The first group of paintings is from my ‘Garden Series’. These are paintings of the Shangri-La that is Mount Wilson, 40 minutes drive from the Blue Mountains, and the stunningly beautiful gardens that arise out of volcanic soil there. This subject has been so rich and varied in compositional interest for me with its mix of romantic European trees, quintessential grand Australian bush and ravishing blossoms.
The second group of paintings, ‘The Silverton Paintings’, take their inspiration a thousand kilometres to the west of Katoomba, painted from a recent trip to Broken Hill and the nearby mining town of Silverton, just north of there. I’d never spent much time in the Outback but it was a revelation : I found the landscape in and around Silverton breathtaking in its colour and almost lunar terrain - ancient, peaceful and mysterious. These works continue my long-standing interest in documenting time-weathered buildings of small town architecture. Silverton’s heritage as the birth place of the Australian mining industry with its abandoned stone miner’s cottages proved to be particularly affecting and engaging to me in its ‘Mad Max’ splendour, its palpable traces of human endeavour and dreaming.
These two very different groups of works depict how extreme the Australian landscape can be, but are to my mind more akin to portraiture - portraits in praise of the spirit of place.