exhibition — luke wagner: rhyming couplets
Luke Wagner revisits his beloved Norfolk Plains and returns with transcendent paintings of sublime beauty. Arguably, the new landscapes in his Rhyming Couplets exhibition are among Luke’s best works.
The countryside around Brickenden Estate, in the Northern Midlands, is a magnet for Luke. A place he has painted many times. “I like the idea of repetition,” he tells us. “Every time the land reveals a different face. Different light, different perception and a different season.” The verdant greens of spring, and a late summer palette of red and ochre come to life in his latest collection.
Luke’s oils on linen are not loud, “they whisper and carry a quiet, considered social dimension. I try to evoke, rather than tell.” His agricultural landscapes draw attention to places long shaped by human use. “These are lived-in, worked environments that carry histories of Aboriginal custodianship, colonisation, and ongoing rural life.”
In the lush spring tableau, Light Insists, Dark Replies, Neither Wins, we sense “people have been here for many generations” with a majestic bunya tree holding court over a dense grove of foliage. In the ethereal, Questioning Voices, we gaze across the Macquarie River as light fades over the sweeping vista. “This whispers the history of all the people who have been here before us.”
Luke Wagner’s Rhyming Couplet Exhibition opens at Handmark this Friday and runs until March 9