Ghost Gum, Glen Helen 1950

Albert Namatjira made this watercolour, Ghost Gum, Glen Helen, with fluid strokes and soft washes of colour. I can see him working en plein air, trying to capture the light, the air, and the texture of this landscape, all at once. I’m thinking about how the act of painting itself is like a form of translation. The colours are muted, soft blues, greens, and browns, but they still pack a punch, right? I can imagine him, trying to find the right hue, the right shade, mixing the colours on his palette, and then applying them to the page. Look at how the blues of the sky fade into a pale horizon line. It reminds me of other painters, of course, of Cézanne and his landscapes, or maybe even some of the early American landscape painters. Painters are always in dialogue, you know, in this ongoing conversation across time. Each one is responding to what came before, while also pushing the boundaries. It’s a conversation that’s never really over, always evolving, like the colours in a landscape.