Painted in 1981, they were hanging in a large room in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne when I visited (wish I'd spent longer there...)Iron-ore deposits in the Pilbara region, in the extreme north west of Australia, make the soil red. Williams went there in 1979, as large-scale mining was just getting going. This article talks about his experiences and the genesis of the paintings:
"Williams was fascinated by the spindly vegetation of the Pilbara. Trees in Australia, he once remarked, looked as if they sat on the earth rather than grew from it. While in the Pilbara he spent quite some time, he said, “trying to work out a kind of symbol for the fascinating white trunked small gum”. The calligraphic shorthand that he developed to describe the tree occurs several times in Red Landscape, where it takes on almost anthropomorphic qualities, like a struggling figure. The rest of the vegetation is painted as smudges or blots and at the line of the horizon these become actually detached from the land, as if to suggest the vulnerability the painter saw in the landscape."
The 18 gouaches (some of more than 100 Williams made on the spot) and 13 paintings (done in his studio) were donated to the gallery by Rio Tinto.
I'd really like to get the book, which is out of print ... will try to find it in an art library first.
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