"The Light Line – Evening"
Oil on Canvas
61x183cm
Signed Lower Right
Prov: Baker Galleries, NSW, Savill Galleries, Fellia Melas Gallery NSW
Private Collection Adelaide
$60,000-80,000
Situated within the artist’s most recognisable and critically established body of work, The Light Line – Evening exemplifies the fire-line motif that has defined his practice since its inception in the early 1980s. First conceived through the physical act of igniting a rope in the landscape, the image has since been refined into a recurring and highly resolved pictorial device, forming a central thread in his exploration of space, time, and human presence.
Educated at the National Art School and associated with a generation of painters who reasserted figuration in Australian art during the late twentieth century, he has maintained a commitment to a highly disciplined, illusionistic technique. This technical control underpins works that, while grounded in landscape, operate beyond descriptive representation, functioning instead as constructed images with conceptual intent.
The burning line itself serves as both compositional anchor and symbolic gesture. Its horizontal placement establishes a clear division between land and sky, recalling traditions of landscape painting while simultaneously reducing the scene to a near- minimalist structure. The act of burning introduces a temporal dimension, what is depicted is inherently transient, a moment that exists only briefly before disappearance.
Within the broader context of his work, the fire line can be understood as a marker of human intervention set against the enduring scale of the natural world. It is neither dramatic nor narrative, but instead operates with a measured clarity, allowing the image to carry a quiet but sustained conceptual weight.
As a result, The Light Line - Evening stands as a refined and authoritative example of a motif that has become synonymous with the artist’s career, demonstrating both the consistency and depth of his engagement with the Australian landscape.
