Collection I: “WITHIN”
“Within” is a collection of acrylic paintings drawn from years spent working in the gardens of Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne — a world of flowers and foliage, of trees and plants that moved through light and weather on their own unhurried schedule, of one magpie who made a particular corner of the grounds feel less like work and more like company.
The paintings begin from photographs taken on site, a way of holding onto moments that would otherwise disappear with the day. A bloom caught at the exact right hour. The texture of bark in low winter sun. The garden as it actually was, not as memory softens it.
Original Painting: Post Stamp Poppies
Picture by Luke: A bed of red from early November
Picture by Luke: Last of the Buttercup bloom, well into summer
Original Painting: Late Ranunculus
Original Painting: Foxgloves from weeds
Picture by Luke: Towering purple inflorescence escaping weedy beds
Picture by Luke: Yellow paper flowers brought home
Original Painting: Paper flowers in the window
Original Painting: A vase with Reds
Picture by Luke: Flowers sitting in the vase while being kissed by the sun
Picture by Luke: A lucky Rose makes it home
Original Painting: Weekend Posy
And then the flowers came home. Cuttings brought inside, placed in rooms that weren't built for beauty but became more beautiful for having them. The same colours and fragrances that had filled eight hours of silence now filling the quieter hours of an ordinary evening.
“Within” holds both worlds — the garden as a place of work and immersion, and the garden carried into domestic life, living on in a vase on a table, in the particular way that nature refuses to stay outside when you've been paying close attention to it.
The work asks for slowness.
A willingness to look at something common until it becomes extraordinary. That is what the garden always required, and what these paintings try to return.