Document Type
Book
Publisher
Western Australian College of Advanced Education
Place of Publication
Perth, Western Australia
School
Department of Art and Design
Abstract
This book is like an anthology of Australian landscape painting; it brings together for the student a range of works by artists of diverse backgrounds and different levels of commitment to the landscape as a source of imagery and it invites consideration of the paintings from a number of points of view.
The vigorous descriptions of the works together with the interesting black and white illustrations of them will focus the reader's attention on the particular quality of each. Armed with the insights and detail provided a student should find the works more accessible and more intriguing. In other words the book is an invitation to further study and to encourage this useful list of references and biographical information about the artists has been provided.
Bill Hawthorn brings a painter's eye to the often exuberant descriptions. At the same time he raises many issues (of conservation and exploitation, of relationship to the land, of the increasingly urban flavour of Australian life) which must be addressed not only by painters, but by everyone who lives in Australia. In choosing works which reflect such different attitudes to the landscape and to painting from artists of diverse ideological positions he has shown something of the scope of landscape painting in Australia.
Comments
Hawthorn, B. (1987). Ideas and perceptions of the Australian landscape. Perth, Australia: Western Australian College of Advanced Education.