Light, dark and the painted landscape

IMPRESSIONIST painters have been fascinated by the relationship of lightness and darkness for centuries.

This theme is explored within visual artist Steve Sedgwick’s latest solo show, Between Light and Dark, at Soldiers Hill’s Old Butchers Shop gallery.

Within his practice, Sedgwick heads out to paint realistic representations of nature on site. When he returns to the studio, he produces abstract landscapes inspired by the smells, sounds and sights he’s experienced outdoors.

“I don’t like predictable. It’s got to be an exciting process,” he said.

The paintings in the exhibition have been created within the last three years, some just before the Black Summer bushfires of the 2019 to 2020 season.

Sedgwick said he often knows what a painting is about only after it’s been completed.

“One painting in the show is monochromatic, quite melancholic, and probably the most abstract, called Charcoal landscape,” he said.

“It was painted two days before the bushfires. There are a lot of people who love the land, love nature, and were really nervous about that coming summer, and I was perhaps one of those people.

“When the fires became what they became, I was wowed by how paintings can tap into our subconscious.”

Sedgwick is a former remedial masseuse, a yoga instructor, and a surfer, but has always been a creative, coming through the University of Ballarat’s art school in the 1980s.

He said he continues to be inspired by the knowledge of his lecturers, painter Doug Wright and the late Peter Blizzard, a world-renowned sculptor.

“They took us out on all these amazing camps and painting trips. We went to Flinders Rangers, down to the Otways, camping in the Grampians, and that’s when the true learning occurred,” he said.

“They’d go out on the landscape, work really hard, and that’s a model I followed. That connection to place is really important.”