Colours of the Australian Outback with Rowdy Wylie
I would like to acknowledge and be respectful of the Ramindjeri & Ngarrindjeri Clans of the Coorong and the Southern Fleurieu Peninsula regions as Traditional Custodians of the land and oceans where I live and create works of art. John Rowdy Wylie
Today we are visitng The Shed where Rowdy has been creating compositions to show off the dusty...dry...amazing..."red earth" desert of the Australian Outback.
As you can see Rowdy believes in making a very comfortable environment in which to work... all the tools are placed where they can be easily found and used. All artists need their comfortable space in which to work and Rowdy's Shed is his creative go to place! Below is one of his latest paintings Head Frames in the Sky, Broken Hill/Silver City NSW in the final stages of production and part of his series on the Colours of the Australian Outback.
To the right of the easel (above) you can see one of the sketches used for the painting ... If we zoom in we can see Rowdy's drawings to aid in getting the correct structure of the head frame above the mine and also to place the surrounding buildings into the composition.
As a naive genre artist Rowdy Wylie's paintings always tell about the narrative of the land be it through human endeavours such as mining or through the natural landscape.
When we zoom in on the completed painting we can see the head frames and buildings peppering the red hill which is home in the Broken Hill area of south-west New South Wales to a treasure trove of precious metals and minerals.
Broken Hill is Australia’s longest-lived mining city. The city’s fortunes have come and gone against an extreme economic background of boom and bust which continues today. Most Australians know BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, but fewer people know that BHP actually stands for Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited. Broken Hill is where it began for BHP in 1885, when it began mining the massive ore body containing the world’s richest source of silver, lead and zinc. The ‘Syndicate of Seven’ – the men from Mt Gipps Station – put the city on the map when they discovered ore on an isolated ‘broken hill’ in 1883. That same ore body became the largest single source of silver, lead and zinc ore ever discovered on earth, generating over $100 billion in wealth.1
You can enter the world of Broken Hill by clicking the link below.
Rowdy works premoninantly with a palette knife using oil paints to create atmosphere and texture - two of the dominant features of his paintings. Combined with the vibrant contrasting colours of the landscape these paintings entice you into discovering the narrative - just like the way the miner's dug deep to discover the treasures of the earth.
As Rowdy explains: In this painting I have kept the palette simple so as to highlight the rich red earth which dominates over the man made structures... the earth even dominates the head frames which stand strong and proud against the brilliant sky ... where I have used several contrasting colours to show off the dramatic colours...
Rowdy's other painting so far produced for his series on Colours of the Australian Outback shows off the colours even more. Ancient Timeless Land, Barrier Ranges - Living Desert as the name endorses, illustrates the vibrant features found in this living landscape.
As we are drawn in closer to explore the details of the landscape we discover the amazing array of tones in Rowdy's palette - all arising from the richness of the red earth.
And even closer we can see the richness of the texture which he is able to create on his canvases. You can almost feel the texture and become part of this living desert.
Rowdy has also produced a painting to illustrate the Colours of the Outback Opal Fields - we will see and learn more about this painting in a few days.
Credit
1. https://discoverbrokenhill.com.au/broken-hill-mining/