"10% of people like a picture? Then it must be bad " - George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)
< Back to The Australian Paintings

The Checkerboard Watertower on a Gippsland Farm

The painting is an accurate description of a watertower in an area of the Victoria state in Australia. Most of these cattle farms relied in the past on rain water storage in galvanized iron cisterns during frequent periods of drought. It would be, often, the only source of potable water The graphite drawing on which Matthew Moss based the painting shows that the haybarn on the right had, by then, assumed the architectural inclinations of the tower of Pisa. One can see that the entire structure, including the two lean-to sheds, is rigorously composed of corrugated iron, an ante-litteram Frank Gehry. The beauty of these farm buildings was the skill with which the builders integrated hardwood timber elements into the overall iron structure. In 'The checkerboard watertower on a Gippsland Farm' Matthew has brought into relief the timber elements by using red and yellow ochre pigments in place of the cobalt blue of the landscape's dominating colour. The green oxide colour used to add contrast is the only other colour that features in the canvas. The remaining elements, the sky, timber footpath and railing and gate use the cobalt blue to create an effect of 'false colour' - mostly encountered in infrared colour photography - to strip out any too naturalistic artistic elements.

The Australian Paintings are available for book illustrations, annual reports, paper and packaging, giftware, related products. You can license them in the following format: Original transparencies in 6 x 6 cm. (2¼ in.) format, high-resolution RGB drum scans on DVD or efficient and quick E-Mail or FTP upload.