Far away country

GALLERY: Having looked at the original of this painting, I have to say that the photograph does not do it justice. In the original there is much more variation within the darks of the trees. This is probably one of the most immediately accessible paintings in the exhibition due to the shear strength and drama of the trees on the hillside. The artist has achieved a magnificent control over space in the work and you feel as though you could walk down into the valley, across the bridge and up the winding track over the hillside into the trees and who knows where. Somebody once said that you should be able to go into a landscape and walk about. I think that Holton has achieved this combined with a sense of drama and design. ARTIST: "Like so many of my paintings, this work evolved. It started with a hillside capped with dark trees along the Toodyay Road. I was attracted to those trees and wanted them to dominate the work. The track really wound its way up the hillside but I began to feel the need for something dark across the centre of the painting as well. This gradually became a valley and then a stream started to flow in the valley and it was necessary to have a bridge across the stream. In the real world the track disappeared into the trees on the hillside but somehow it became necessary to glimpse the track further up leading the viewer into some distant unknown."