This is a painting of the majestic Konomie Island (also known as Great Keppel Island) of the Woppaburra people. Completed in 1993 and reworked to this present state in 2024. From my series of miniature landscape panels, including The Other Alexandria and Sacred Versus Profane, inspired by the history of European Plein-air painting. Particularly the late eighteenth to the first half of the nineteenth century, when, as part of their education, many budding artists travelled to Rome to paint studies of the ancient city and the surrounding countryside. The vocabulary of photorealism here is not coincidental but a deliberate reference to this era of innovation when the conventions of painting influenced the development of modern photography. And visa versa. In his book, Before Photography, author Peter Galassi explores this brackish interface in depth and informed my approach to this body of work.
See related works Sacred Versus Profane, Konomie Dulce et Decorum and Landscape Machine.
