Artist’s Statement
Rob in his Stanthorpe studio
Rob Raymond - Artist’s statement
Decades ago, a College teacher, William Robinson said to me that to paint the landscape, I had to understand the environment. These words have stayed with me. Three very different locations, whilst not overlapping in my thoughts, have provided my most intense painting experiences. A range of painting techniques remained throughout this journey providing a consistency of outcomes. Landscape as a subject matter has supported my wonder in what nature gives me. I am its observer, not an intellectual.
“Painting for me is trying to understand my place in the world, a journey I undertake to satisfy my need and desire to communicate. William Robinson also said that maybe it is wrong to seek an effect and I try to avoid them. I am seeking visual truth.”
The Stanthorpe Pictures
After camping at the Granite Belt National Parks for many years, we bought a small converted winery. This became our home for sixteen months while our Toowoomba house was built. As subject matter the ancient landscapes in the National Parks gave me a visual sense of stillness, of massive granite tors with little sky, a place providing metaphors coming from my observations – transience, time, relationships, and a grandeur of subject.
Rob in his Pittsworth Studio
The Silver Ridge Pictures
In 2016 we built a new house on the escarpment at Silver Ridge near Toowoomba. My beautiful studio, made from shipping containers, offers me panoramic views as far as Tamborine. It is early days yet as far as understanding the environment again. I need another forty years to gain control over what I observe – the light and the fragility of the environment we seem hell-bent on destroying. I see myself as the chronicler of that destruction.
Pruning the vines - Stanthorpe