Artist’s Statement 2021

I have a passion for the landscape and landscape painting. I feel ‘enlivened and connected’ to the ‘energy and spirit’ of the places I paint. The paintings become more than what I physically ‘see’.

To the landscape I bring my own marks, my colours and my ‘energy’ and passion. The act of creation brings life to a painting and over the course of a series of related works momentum and insight carry me through the work involved creating and completing the artwork. The physical work of building up a surface, multi layering of paint and marks and the ‘resolution phase’.

I have been fortunate in my life to have been able to experience much of the vast and beautiful wilderness in this country. The landscapes of Kakadu and recently Arnhem Land in NT, the Kimberley and Pilbara. Cape York, the Gulf Country, Winton and western QLD. The vast expanse of the Lake Eyre basin following flooding. Closer to home, the landscapes inspired by the stunning Coast Walk/Bundeena and the Hacking River south of Sydney.

Much of my recent work has been centred on my series of ‘billabong paintings’. These billabongs are scattered across the landscape of northern Australia and have great significance to the aboriginal people.   

I have been ever inspired by the great landscape artists of this country who have proceeded me and their struggle to relate their visual experience and inward perceptions of the landscape into a visual form. The beauty, lyricism and visual poetry of John Olsen. The spatial dynamic, calligraphic simplicity and marks of Fred Williams. The vibrance and passion for his subject in Arthur Boyd’s river landscapes.

           Janis Stapleton