David Milddebrook- & Gallery Catalogue

David Middlebrook 24 Feb - 17 Mar 2024

David Middlebrook “This land is all horizons”, wrote Geoffrey Blainey, then part of the inspiration of Voss by Patrick White. That simple but profoundly complex phrase still resonates. I am obsessed by the horizon and its symbolism as the unobtainable, like the perfect painting. Everyday I tilt at windmills knowing the outcome will be different but never the perfect goal, the desired perfection, it’s a quest, it’s why I breath, it’s why I continue, as an artist I am compelled to the horizon.

I am not earth. Indigenous people are land, this land, I’m a stranger in this land, only an observer. My art practice is influenced by both Western and Eastern art practices that combine to create a narrative and platform allowing me to explore personal philosophies and political questions; indigenous rights to country, ownership, the stain of colonialism, guilt, looking at land, disconnected, fragmented marks, environmental politics, equality, kindness, isolation and alienation.

My art takes me to deserts, for in deserts I can think. The overwhelming subtleties of tone, colour, form, beauty, brutality, the silence is noise, shadows haunted, earth stained, unbearable heat or penetrating cold, but delicious isolation and stillness.

The desert, or area of arid land in areas of far western New South Wales, Central Australia and many remote parts of Australia is almost irrelevant for it’s the experience, the isolation and closeness of tone that I seek, the meditation. A crude contemporary explorer searching the physical landscape to understand the landscape of the mind. Other landscapes, in other countries bring their own palette and sensibility, but it’s the Australian Deserts that make me calm with possibilities, for someone who feels disconnected to any place, I understand the irony.

I never work from photographs, only small drawings completed in the landscape, I’m responding to what I’m witnessing, a sense of place, not a record of place. I need to spend time sitting, looking, to learn and to witness the landscape, to be seduced by its ‘quiet’ that drives my practice. These small drawings and studies made in the landscape are then further explored and expanded in the studio. The studio works are then teased, not from the drawings, but from memory of the drawings, an essence of place, condensed, simplified, etched into the subconscious from the drawings and reality.

I try to work eight to ten hours per day in the studio. Some of this time I would be sitting and looking, moving, changing and polishing, scratching out and repainting the image, alive with hope and wounded with self doubt. By this stage the original drawings and subsequent sepia works, created in the studio as the next step towards abstraction, have given way to a sense of place rather than a depiction of place. No particular place is at the base of the work, tone, textures and form and the horizon are always important. At some point the work takes over and I become the subconscious mark maker.

A meditation that calms, directs and simplifies.

My art is a further development of the alienation and isolation that I have been fascinated by and explored for 30+ years. I have been only once in 3 years, due to Covid, since I have been in the desert landscape that fills my art, this has changed my work, it’s become more about sky than land. The memory of land is always easy for me to conjure, but the desert sky, there I find a new challenge, vast, fleeting, unbalanced, cursory, memory.

- David Middlebrook David Middlebrook holds a PHD in Australian Landscape painting, researching crosscultural influences on contemporary art practices, with an emphasis on colonialism post Mabo. He has held over 38 solo exhibition in Australia and Asia, he has also exhibited in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China. His work has been acquired by numerous public and private collections in Asia and Australia , including The National Museum of Art, Beijing, China and The Ningbo Museum of Art, Ningbo, China, where he had his most recent solo exhibition of large paintings and studies. He has over 30 works acquired by Regional Public Art Galleries in Australia.

Sales: Julie Collins - Director gallery@djprojects.net 0417324 795 Free delivery and installation within Victoria.

Shipping arranged interstate and Overseas. & Gallery accepts Art Money www.artmoney.com 21 Morce Ave Sorrento, Victoria, Australia www.andgalleryaustralia.net & Gallery is part of the djprojects family of art related businesses. www.djprojects.net

1. Salt Lakes and Clouds Oil on linen 100 x 120cm $8,500

2. Field Beyond Mungo II Oil on linen 40 x 50cm $2,800

3. Yellow Field Oil on linen 100 x 120cm $8,500

4. Field Beyond Mungo Oil on linen 40 x 50cm $2,800

5. Desert Field Oil on linen 100 x 120cm $8,500

6. Haze near Mutawintji II Oil on polyester I76 x 102cm $4,800

7. Winter Light I Oil on linen 45 x 60cm $3,000

8. Midday Field Lake Mungo Oil on polyester 137 x 273cm $19,500

9. Winter Light III Oil on linen 45 x 60cm $3,000

10. Haze near Mutawintji Oil on polyester I76 x 102cm $4,800

11. Yellow Blue Field - Golden Summer Oil on linen 154 x 198cm $15,500

12. Colour Memory Oil on Linen 40 x 50cm $2,800

13. Field Desert Near Mungo Oil on polyester 90 x 120cm $5,800

14. Towards Dawn Oil on linen 40 x 50cm $3,000

15. Pilbara Morning Oil on linen 154 x 198cm $15,500

16. Flooded Desert Oil on polyester 120 x 148cm $12,000

17. Twilight Oil on linen 46 x 66cm $3,400

18. Desert Field and Salt Pans Oil on linen 120 x 150cm $12,000

19. Paroo Darling Overflow Ink on cotton 61 x 78cm Framed $2,000

20. Desert Before the Rain Ink on cotton 61 x 78cm framed $2,000

21. Desert Before the Rain #2 Ink on cotton 55 x 67cm framed $1,800

22. Field Near Broken Hill Ink on cotton 55 x 67cm framed $1,800

23. Field Ink on cotton 44 x 53cm framed $1,100

24. Range at Dusk Ink on cotton 44 x 53cm framed $1,100

25. Salt Lake Ink on cotton 44 x 53cm framed $1,100

Other available works not in exhibition

26. Observations of Solitude II Mono type, oil on cotton paper 78 x 60cm framed $2,800

27. Observations of Solitude III Mono type, oil on cotton paper 78 x 60cm framed $2,800

28. Observations of Solitude IV Mono type, oil on cotton paper 78 x 60cm framed $2,800

29. Observations of Solitude V Mono type, oil on cotton paper 78 x 60cm framed $2,800