It was during last summer that I was walking my cat, Alice, around the backyard. As soon as we walked out of the back door, I noticed how strange the colour of the grass was, a tint of orange washed over the green. I looked up at one point and stared directly at the sun and saw a yellow disc with a red ring on its perimeter. How was this possible I thought? But it was the smoke from a distant bushfire making its way across Ballarat which acted as filter so I could look directly at it.
After our walk, I went into the studio and painted the sun and some clouds while my memory was still fresh and the next day I began to add more clouds and a hill which was painted en plein air. The small group of trees was something I also saw peering just over the hill so I put those in too. Sometimes, when painting en plein air you can notice something that you would not necessarily have imagined, like those trees. I added more colours over time, trying to choose the colours that would express something of what occurred that day.
Like all of my paintings, the images that you see are constructions of what I saw and experienced based on memories, imagination and observation. You could never record them with a camera because they never existed.
Bushfire Smoke, 2024, oil on linen, 35.75 x 50.75 cm
