This blog post introduces the latter three articles in a series of five, first published in The Artist magazine, that describe Raymond’s impressions, experiences and artistic challenges as he continues his travels in Australia before returning home via the tropical islands of Fiji and Hawaii.
Continuing his exploration of the dusty Australian outback with his son, Raymond ventures, against all advice, away from the security of tarmac highways and onto the red dirt road of the Oodnadatta Track into a landscape where occasional place names, often represented by little more than a few shacks and a petrol pump, were all that interrupted the vast spatial continuum. In the galleries in Alice Springs and the museum in Darwin he encounters the various expressions of Aboriginal art and begins to discover the meaning behind these native art forms. He finds similarities between his own style of painting in which he explores the more formal qualities and abstract patterns of the landscape and the symbolic approach used in Aboriginal art to express the integral part played by the native inhabitants in their own landscape.
Returning to a more distinctive and paintable landscape near Cairns and along the Queensland coast Raymond finds a lot more subjects for his sketchbook. In the final part of this travel diary he continues to collect impressions and sketches as he encounters the friendly people of Fiji’s tropical islands and visits Hawaii on the homeward leg of the journey.
A gallery featuring work based on his experiences in Australia and Fiji can be found in the Showcase section of this website.