Travelling West to Sunset Track

An account of the making of the painting 'Camel Gate: Border Track SA/VIC ' and other works by John Wolseley

'Think what it would be to have a work conceived from outside of the self, a work that would let us escape the limited perspective of the human ego, not only to enter into selves like our own but to give speech to that which has no language, to the bird perching on the end of the gutter, to the tree in spring and the tree in fall, to stone, to cement, to plastic.'


I've always wanted to make a painting of land by subjecting my paper or canvas to the same kinds of physical processes which the land itself experiences; the same forces of nature - drought, rain and fire - even dust storms, insect plagues and the peregrinations of lizards.

Last year I went some way to fulfilling this ambition. And one work in particular survived five complex rites of passage.