Nicola Dickson, Tales of the Southern Boobook, 2025, oil on linen, 76 x 122 cm. Photo: Brenton McGeachie,
Not so long ago, the Australian art world was divided between the landscape artists, who were considered as the traditionalists, and the modernists, who painted anything but landscapes.
Now the pendulum has completely swung around and, while there may be a few traditional gum tree painters who may also attempt the occasional academic portrait, a major thrust in contemporary art practice focuses on the landscape and more broadly the environment.
In recent decades, the idea of ‘landscape’ has also changed from recording a picturesque scene that is pleasing to the eye, to interrogating the environment of which the artist is a part.
The country that surrounds us is ancient and carries the memories, stories and scars of people who lived here before, of natural and man made disasters, and is of inspirational beauty. Increasingly, when faced with the horrors reported in the daily news and the mundane banality of everyday life, many people are turning to the landscape as a place of refuge.
The two new exhibitions opening at the Grainger Gallery in Fyshwick bring together artists who, in different ways, look at the landscape. Nicola Dickson is a Canberra-based artist who over a couple of decades has established a very exacting and peculiar style of painting in which she frequently combines the principles of natural science illustration with landscape painting.
Nicola Dickson, Woodland resident – Flame Robin, 2025, oil on linen, 46 x 46 cm. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
Her oil paintings, including Tales of the Southern Boobook, 2025, and Woodland resident – Flame Robin, 2025, combine an ornithologically convincing depiction of the selected bird with a landscape setting and abstracted patterns. Native plants encounter introduced exotic weeds as we are provided with a glimpse of a fragile environment. Some of her designs are realised as digital prints that are applied to fabrics and wallpaper.
Dickson appears to love the environment and is eager to explore the impact of European settlement on the Box Gum Grassy Woodlands within which most of her landscapes are located. Her exhibition occupies the upper gallery and forms a discreet immersive installation.
Mariana del Castillo, The accuracy of silence 1, 2025, recycled linen on marine ply, hand stitched with wool, clay paintwork, 60 x 60 cm. Photo: Grainger Gallery.
In the gallery spaces downstairs, 12 different artists express their thinking about the environment. The artists included in this exhibition are Alex Asch, Millie Black, Mariana del Castillo, Anna Fitzpatrick, Lynne Flemons, Cate Maddy, Matilda Mitchell, Li Priestley, Rebecca Rath, Kasey Sealy, Miranda Joy Summers and Sarah Waghorn. Many of these artists are well-known to Canberra audiences and some had previously exhibited with the Beaver Galleries that closed its doors at the end of last year.
Asch and del Castillo employ the materials found in the environment to present an authentic portrait of the environment as the elements employed in their pictures already carry the scars of years of exposure to the environment being depicted.
The artist is almost like a collaborator who encourages the landscape to create a self-portrait. The accuracy of silence 1, 2025, by del Castillo, is made of recycled linen on marine ply that has been handstitched with cotton and realised with clay paint. It is a focused and highly evocative piece that seems to effectively convey a sense of place.
Cate Maddy, Leopard tree Fowler’s Gap, oil on canvas, 110 x 130 cm. Photo: Grainger Gallery.
Melbourne-based artist Cate Maddy, in her Leopard tree Fowler’s Gap, while employing the heightened colour palette initially introduced by the Fauve expressionist artists about a century ago, produces a wonderfully evocative canvas that breathes of light, heat and the sparse vegetation of a landscape that she knows well. It is a wonderful painting into which one can dissolve and explore from the inside.
Millie Black, Morning at Cullerin, oil on Linen (Oak Float Frame), 94 x 54 cm. Photo: Grainger Gallery.
The young Canberra artist, Millie Black, who I know more as a textile artist, in her oil paintings including Morning at Cullerin, perfectly captures the misty dawns that we have been experiencing in Canberra. It is a landscape of romantic daydreaming.
As much as some in the art world have been trumpeting the demise of landscape art, these rumours have been greatly exaggerated. Landscape art in its many glorious manifestations is flourishing in a gallery in Fyshwick.
Nicola Dickson: Under-Stories and Group exhibition: The land remembers is at Grainger Gallery, 21 Building 3.3, 1 Dairy Road, Fyshwick. It is open from Wednesday to Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm and closes on 3 August.
