As with the other oil paintings that comprise my body of works, under the series title: Brasfort/Heroes, this three panel painting has as one of it’s central theme or indeed the main element in each artwork, a Blue Mountains historical landmark that falls upon the original colonial exploration trail, together with scavenged images of nudes or film actors from the internet, and occasionally members of the artists family (scavenged from family outings).
This painting depicts in the left hand panel (the panels form scenes like a short film), the current Alexander Hotel in Leura, as seen from Leura Train Station. I wanted to convey to the viewer what a wonderful building the now burned down Weatherboard Hotel must have looked like in 1836, and to symbolise Australias reliance on fossil fuels from the industrial age to the end of the 20th Century. My thumbprint acts like a dark sun, as the hotel seems to move forward like a locomotive engine.
The middle panel shows in its background, an evergreen oak, planted in 1936, exactly one century after Darwin visited the Weatherboard Hotel (in situ), at Wentworth Falls, a walk nearby is also named in his honour. I wanted to replicate René Magritte’s trees or vegetation that he paints like screens, in many of his artworks. This explains the treatment of half the oak. The scavenged image of a pregnant woman, leaning against a mossy rock (the same model in the last panel), in addition signifies Darwin’s species tree, she seems show a look of ironic humour on her face. An image of my brother in law standing behind my families property near Mittagong as yellow bushfire smoke fills the atmosphere and woven gum branches, is inserted as a painting within a painting. The woman is either applying or taking off a mask, that is a self portrait (stolen from Snapchat) of the artist as a woman. What does this mean in terms of the Corona Virus?
In the right hand panel, the same pregnant woman is a giantess and places her hands upon Leura’s railway station platform. Should we not, as a sensible nation, take heed of these disasters and meld our will to the iron horse? Or the power of the untrammelled elements?
