Job's whirlwind Print

I live on the southern coast of Australia, on the “western tongue” of the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne. Many people from Melbourne have their summer beach homes down here. In warm weather, the bay-side “front beach” has swimmers and sunbathers; the ocean beach, or “back beach” has surfers. It is beautiful and very pleasant. But, side by side with it is an aspect that is very different. The ocean beach can have violent rips, strong, unpredictable currents and huge waves crashing against sharp rocks. It is wild and dangerous and can easily kill you. And the woodland and scrubland adjoining the ocean is very different from the well-tended gardens of people’s holiday homes. Much of it consists of ancient-looking, writhing, grey ti-tree with shreds of dry bark hanging down. Vines and creepers grow over these snake-like tree-trunks, and hang down in curtains, or completely envelope the tree. Sometimes they form a canopy over bent trees that looks a shelter. The effect to me is like the remains of some ancient garden that has been neglected for centuries. There is, I think, something faintly unearthly and funereal about it. Then there are rocks and cliffs: sandstone, pock-marked and eroded in to fantastical shapes. They seem desiccated and immeasurably old. And, still lying in the sand above them, are the fossilised, limestone remains of ancient trees and roots. Walking about them it is easy to think this is how things might look on another planet. I certainly don’t have anything against the swimming and surfing beaches – they can be very beautiful. But as a painter I find myself more interested in the “other” aspect: the wild and dangerous sea, the ancient-looking scrubland and eroded rocks and cliffs. Some of my more recent work is not so directly linked to the landscape in my environment, but might perhaps be more accurately described as "imaginary landscape".