38 AJ Taylor

Sunshine Coast Art Prize 2016 – Finalist

[Image courtesy of the artist]

AJ Taylor | Weyba | 2016 | oil on board | 100 x 150 x 4 cm

Artist Statement

Weyba depicts the type of remnant coastal heathland of melaleuca, banksia and sedge that surrounds Lake Weyba on the Sunshine Coast and that has been classified endangered due to ongoing urban development.

There is a deliberate reference here to the Heidelberg painters, particularly McCubbin and Roberts. (You half expect a girl in blue and white to emerge from behind a tree or a couple of artists to pitch their tent and cook a chop!)

Far from being a traditional landscape, however, it self-consciously tests the essential paradox inherent in all representational painting in which two-dimensional abstract qualities of line, shape and colour compete with a sense of illusionistic space.