Rainforest to desert: In search of the sublime
Over the last twenty years Sylvia Ditchburn has established a reputation as a leading regional artist with her very consumable landscape paintings of desert and rainforest scenes. Throughout this time, she worked prolifically as the consummate professional artist and backed this up with tertiary studies, ultimately completing a Doctorate in 2000.
While some of the works in this recent exhibition dated back ten years, most were created over the last four years. These more recent works document her fascination with the Australian landscape and her journeys outback to capture its essence in situ.
As we have come to expect with Ditchburn 's artworks, when entering the gallery we were immediately struck by the predominantly bright orange and purple colours of the paintings. The works are principally gouache on paper with a few oils and acrylics on canvas and are, as always, confident pieces and very, very vibrant. There is no doubt, though, that many of the landscapes are indeed saturated in these intense colours in real life and that Ditchburn is merely accurate in her rendering of them. In some instances, visitors to the exhibition were able to recognise the sites depicted.
Several of the works were based upon locations from the Townsville region, but the majority were the result of Ditch burn's travels across Australia. As gallery director Frances Thomson outlined in the catalogue: 'Ditchburn, the peripatetic artist, has spanned the continent from Townsville to Broome'.
As there were about sixty paintings from roughly eight locations, Ditchburn divided the exhibition into series of works from the different regions. However, without the labels having the corresponding series title, and with some works not being hung within their series, it was