"The paintings in this show are not of any one particular place although many have been painted from studies, sketches, and photographs made during my travels. They are an amalgamation of visions, recollections, memories, and dreams. While there is an undeniable ode to the history of Australian (western) landscape painting, do not read it as a romanticisation of Australia, the great lacuna. Instead, this exhibition endeavours to unite, or at least lay bare the distinction between our history, our mythology, and our existence on the landscape.

If you stand back and look at these paintings as one you will notice a kind of Freudian psychoscape emerge. It is a personified landscape in which our mammalian bits turn to trees and valleys infested with snakes and flowers. In it exists biblical references and allusions to the 4 elements, along with pine trees and eucalypts as a recurring motif. For me these two species represent a pertinent metaphor for dualism. They often live together, one phallic, one yonic, European and endemic, hard and soft. Both survive in almost any condition. This dichotomy that is so prevalent in this body of work is the umbilical cord which tethers us to the world of mortals. These landscapes are metaphysical manifestations that portray entropy, theatre, duality, and the pleasure and pain of life and death.

In the past I have searched for human narratives in the landscape but slowly I am becoming aware that our narrative is part of the landscape. This show is undoubtedly a self portrait – perhaps you could call it an elegy. We Europeans have long sought mythology since arriving in this country, and for that art has been especially useful. Through it we can find an orienting story that connects (and attempts to entitle) us to a place. The mythology we devised has outlived its purpose, so now, in a time of monumental change (climatic, technological, and social), we must find a new one. It is only in this moment that we can be truly self reflective and come face to face with ourselves. This is our Zeitgeist. This is the spirit of the times."

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Sam Field