“I was at a very emotional and difficult artistic turning point between 2018 and 2019. The history and power of the You Yangs has been expressed in two very different works; showing the tension I was feeling. My painting has never been more subject to the unconscious as it is today. Witnesses will tell me, I could be painting quietly and concentrating for several hours, acting sporadically with intense physicality, or crying my way through a work, a vast departure from several years ago where my plan for a piece would be effected. Nowadays I literally have no control over how a work will end.

Both works were made in the Boom buildings, to which I feel deeply connected, after an extensive tour of the You Yangs National park. I had not been to this ancient natural site since childhood and I mediate on how these two works show the preservation of that original childhood vision, and the naturality in which they came together in the Boom studio for me.”

“I approach the Australian Bush at face value, and from inside it. There’s no hidden meaning to my work. It is the Australian Bush.

My studies en plen air are ten-fold since moving to Wangaratta in Regional Victoria. I also frequent Castlemaine and to this end, many new elements of the bush have revealed themselves to me and I have tried to include them in these new scenes. First and foremost the life, sound and movement of the ‘solitary’ landscape. Being in it, I have witnessed bark exploding off trees after the rains to reveal fluorescent pink trunks, belting heat and bitter cold, all varieties of limb arrangements and floor scenes, and all matter of Australian wildlife. My recent works look to the Australian Bush to inform the way sticks rest off trees, their spoil. The bush floor matter and its balance against the lines of trees, weeds, disused fences that have grown back into the irregularity of the bush all interest me to no end.”

To see a full listing of Andy’s latest work for You Yangs click here.

You Yangs runs from March 28th – April 28th.