Scrub at Lilydale 1965 - 1966

Curator: This is Fred Williams' "Scrub at Lilydale," held in the Tate collection. It’s an etching, a small piece, less than 25cm on its longest side. Editor: It’s… bleakly beautiful, isn’t it? Sparse, raw. The lines dig in, almost violently. Curator: Williams often reduced the Australian landscape to these skeletal forms. The scrub becomes a symbol of resilience, of survival in a harsh environment. Editor: It reminds me of old photographs of war zones. The starkness, the sparseness. There's a vulnerability here, a sense of something exposed. Curator: Absolutely. The lack of detail forces us to project our own feelings onto the scene. It becomes a mirror reflecting our own anxieties. Editor: You know, I think that’s the genius of it. It’s not just a landscape; it's a landscape of the mind. It haunts you, doesn’t it? Curator: It does. It speaks to something primal within us, this elemental struggle against the odds.