Idris Murphy

n Australia there is an ongoing tradition of landscape painting that goes back for more than two centuries. There is also another tradition in Australian art that can be termed “painting country” that goes back millennia and is still thriving today. The Western European landscape tradition, that was imported to Australia, involves observing and recording a view in front of the artist, or a view as imagined by the artist. It can be a record of mood, a response to the sublime or the beauty of the scene, or an expression about the ownership of the land, the wealth that it harbours, or even a plea of concern for its threatened ecosystems. The landscape is something that is outside the artist that the artist captures through the chosen medium to express a particular sensibility. It may be highly representational or literal in its transcription, or abstracted and largely non-figurative. Where the painting country tradition fundamentally differs from the Western tradition of