Small Views – intimate images 1996-1997
Small Views is a series of intimate paintings depicting urban locations and the lives led by the inhabitants of those locations that the artist has encountered both in his own locale – the southern Australian city of Melbourne- and in locations where he has been a visitor. The series includes encounters with a Russian wedding party, shoppers on Venice beach in Los Angeles, the skyline of inner city Melbourne as well as a scene of his cousin’s service station near Santa Rosa in California. In painting these personal impressions of places in which he has been both as a traveller and an inhabitant, he attempts to democratise his memory of imagery and to keep alive a memory for these ‘ordinary’ but richly diverse locations.
When making these paintings I was aware that I was drawn to some locations more than to others. I considered the resemblance of certain locations and the power of the seductive imagery and the elements of sameness and difference. I was also struck by the power of the seductive images in travel brochures and magazines, images of places that, in the personal experience, can take on an everyday, even homely appearance.
