Hillside 1927

Tom Roberts made this painting, Hillside, with oil on canvas. Can't you just imagine him outside with his easel? Look at how he’s built up the layers of paint to conjure up that rolling hillside. I wonder what he was thinking as he made it. Maybe he was thinking about how to make the landscape feel alive? I like the way the brushstrokes capture the light dancing on the leaves, and how the colors shift from cool greens to warm yellows. See how the strokes are thick and juicy in some places, and thin and transparent in others. It’s all about texture and surface, and how that shapes our experience of the painting. He was probably also thinking about other landscape painters, those artists in the past he learned from and argued with in his head. Because that’s what artists do, you know? We’re all in this big conversation, riffing off each other across time. And it’s not about getting it ‘right,’ but about embracing the mess and seeing what emerges.