Leigh Camilleri
Relationships develop over many years and mine with the Redlands is one that was generated from memory. Memories of a childhood full of boating, holidays, oyster banks carefully staked-out in the sunshine, wild storms and everything else that goes with the bays and estuaries of this area. These memories are a positive place to start when looking for landscape concepts.
Although I am drawn to the water and the waters edge, it is the things under the water that amaze and delight me, hence water is the link between both the past and the present in these works.
The everyday, unglamorous, nature of most of the subject matter combines to make the narrative accessible to the viewer and always to me as an artist, to find a subject around every corner.
This body of work is a part of an ongoing theme that draws on the relationship between the figure and the landscape, a theme that has been the inspiration for many Australian artists. The physical relationship between the human and the land and the inhabitant’s use of the land, are the main aspects. The relational features can be fragile and transient or obvious and potent. No matter how obscure this spatial/relational connection is, it is pivotal to the work.
The sheer joy of using the medium, whether it is charcoal, watercolour, oil or pencil is also a characteristic of my work. Whether the paint is thick and viscous or thin and veiled, it relates directly to my response to the memory and its application to the piece. Often, a combination of visual memory and one or more events become overlaid as an idea translates into a finished piece.
This confirms to me that the artist is part of the landscape, always an observer, often a participant and forever the instigator of the narrative. As the narrative progresses with the artist adding the personal experiences, it becomes almost autobiographical by nature. A genuine freedom to develop the work in a variety of ways draws from the combination of fact, myth and memory as well as the interplay of materials.