Untitled #8 (Barker's Creek, Yapara) , 2006
oil on linen
122.0
x 366.0
cm
signed, dated and inscribed with title (on the reverse)
SOLD
Provenance
Kaliman Gallery, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney
Melbourne born artist Andrew Browne brings delicacy to saturated monochrome in this large panoramic image drawn from the landscape at Barker's Creek, Victoria. The strong silhouette of a Gothic tree is imparted with spectral majesty, the result of Browne's longstanding rumination on the formal power of the nocturne, where tonal relationships draw closer as contrasts of light adjust.
A gnashing of branches unfurls: foregrounding, and lit immediately as from the headlights of a car. Suspended in this state of prostration the branches give way to a soft configuration of lights, clustered in the formation of a distant horizon. Between these two localities is struck a tension between abstraction and description, and the disparate forms and light sources belonging to the natural and manmade.
Browne works with both painting and photography; the latter expanding to include the digital, photogravure and lithographic mediums. In this image we can come to understand the artist’s dual practice of photography as serving his painted work in the manner of a drawing apparatus.
With any painted work, the details that make their way to the canvas by hand will tend to multiply beyond that which would be captured by the lens of a camera. Browne uses this lens to edit observed information, and to strengthen compositional relationships. The artist explains 'the texture that remains is a by-product of this process'.
