William Robinson

(born 1936)

Morning Tallanbanna, 1998

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Purchased from the artist in December 1998

LITERATURE:
Lou Klepac, William Robinson - Paintings 1987-2000, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2001, pp.132-133 (illus.)

In 1984 the Robinsons moved to a property in Beechmont in the Gold Coast hinterland, approximately 100 kms south of Brisbane. Part of the attraction was the close proximity of the Springbrook and Lamington National Parks, two sanctuaries of unspoiled natural beauty where the artist could explore his growing fascination with the rainforest.

From the late 1980s onwards it had become clear that Robinson was charting new territory in these rainforest paintings, which showed an Australia that was more than just a dry, dusty outback. It wasn't only the subject that was new - Robinson invented an entirely new way of seeing the landscape that captured the vertiginous feeling of walking among the trees. In these pictures one could look up and down simultaneously, experiencing day and night on the one canvas.

Tallanbanna is a part of the Springbrook National Park where the rainforest meetsthe eucalypt forest. In this painting the threads that connect these different environments are drawn with light, with the rays of the morning sunfiltering across a deep valley still bathed in the darkness of evening. As the light hits the trees, illuminating the old growth and the new, we feel the drama of this diurnal resurrection. The forest wakes from its slumbers and the world is made afresh.

John McDonald