Peart’s work is instantly recognisable as it oscillates between abstraction and landscape.
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His work goes well with the exhibition’s main theme of re-imagined landscapes.
The work presents us with a rhythmic pattern of red hills across a vast space.
The expansiveness is in part due to the physical size of the painting.
Our bodily relation to the work gives us the feeling that we can enter into this other world.
The spatial quality is also enhanced by the way in which the mounds appear to continue beyond the edge of the picture, giving us a glimpse of a place beyond our frame of reference.
Peart invites us in and allows us to complete the world beyond the work. We become active participants.
The surface textures are layered and complex, ranging from thin stains to gritty lumps and drags.
Peart infused his materials with the physical qualities of the landscape it describes, building up many layers.
There is something geological about his painting method and it’s interesting to note that the work took him thirty years to complete.
Peart was excellent with colour. Some of the hills appear to radiate heat. He knew how to offset those fiery crimson and ginger pigments with greenish greys.
Look closely and you’ll also see what looks like Viridian and Hooker’s green coming through from the underpainting.
These colours sit at opposite ends of the colour wheel and tend to amplify one another, giving this work a dynamic and dissonant quality.
The repetition of the hill motif creates a unifying pattern throughout which holds it all together.
Unlike much of Peart’s work, Red Hills is a semi-abstract work which makes clear references to landscape.
Usually, his paintings are elusive and defy easy categorisation.
The titles of his works sometimes suggest that he was drawn to transient things like shadows, reflections and memories.
They cannot be said to be simply landscapes, although qualities of the Australian landscape have seeped in through a kind of osmosis.
The gallery is open every day from 9am to 5pm (except Christmas Day). Entry to exhibitions is free.
For more information contact the Gallery on 6393 8136 or visit our website www.org.nsw.gov.au
