Guy Warren

7 The fact that Warren imagines the Nullarbor in shades of blue shows how unwilling he is to submit to the abiding stereotypes of Australian art, with the red, unforgiving expanses of the Outback being top of the list. Warren’s watercolour technique can be epigrammatic, laying down lines and shapes as quick notations on a blank page. In a work such as Emu Nest, Tibooburra, the distinctive marks made by a brush are partnered with a series of blurry splotches. The shapes denote a liberal use of water, but their pictorial role is to suggest a searing heat in which trees and bushes lose their outlines and their solidity. Moments of Refection 1 , is virtually a diagram of the landscape, with a mountain reduced to a single, meandering line of paint, while plants are daubed in like Chinese characters. All the elements of a conventional view are present but Warren would like us to consider them one by one. He is not merely painting the physical components of a scene, he is evoking the space in the landscape and the way it insinuates itself into the viewer’s consciousness. In typical fashion he is reaching beyond preconceptions and beyond appearances, in search of the metaphysical. John McDonald (Art critic for The Sydney Morning Herald) December, 2017 Two men in a boat (Shoalhaven series) 2004 watercolour on paper 38 x 57 cm www.johnmcdonald.net.au