
John Baird’s exuberant still life and seascape paintings unite expressive brushwork with strong simplified design.
John Baird’s exuberant still life and seascape paintings unite expressive brushwork with strong simplified design.
The skies are overcast in palest purple with a lemon horizon as I drive down Studley Park Rd towards Abbotsford.
It’s after lunch and the light is in the western half of the sky, but low on the horizon shooting a warm yellow haze over the suburbs. There’s a long low shape of a warehouse painted in orange which sets off perfectly the blue distance of the city beyond. It’s May and the air is brisk, crisp, making you move more quickly but not yet to the sudden-intake-of-breath cold we will get to in July.
I am in the final stages of a landscape painting which will be called A Quiet Day in Northcote. Perhaps Arthur Boyd was right when he said …all Australian paintings are in some way a homage to Tom Roberts … as Roberts’ own work A QUIET DAY ON DAREBIN CREEK, has been much in my mind as I worked on this picture.