The term borrowed scenery refers to the incorporation of the existing landscape into the design of the domestic garden or home. This phrase frequently comes to mind when I look out past my scraggly garden at the borrowed hills of undulating trees that line Forest Creek on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, and it comes to mind again when I encounter the paintings of Greg Wood. Hills, forests, mountains, valleys and bushland are the focus of his paintings, borrowed from family walks along Chewton’s Forest Creek. Wood’s scenery is deliberately ambiguous, there are no recognisable landmarks or identifiable features. It is this ambiguity that invites the viewer to stay longer, to linger as they search for an anchor of familiarity within the landscape.

 

Where Wood once painted from photographs or en plein air, he now chooses to paint from memory. And with this shift, the sensory impact and emotional register of a place become the source material; the feeling of twigs cracking underfoot, the density of trees giving way to an expanse of horizon, the luminosity of clouds, and shafts of sunlight like a revelation. Foregoing a literal depiction of landscape, Wood instead communicates the sense or feeling of a natural space. The effect is akin to entering one’s own memory, where forgotten experiences lie dormant. As I turn these spaces over in my mind, I recognise these as the kind of paintings I long to get lost in.

 

His latest body of work, Luminous Remnants, includes closely observed formations of light, colour, and atmosphere. Viewed collectively, the eye journeys through these various landscapes. Recognisable features carry across from painting to painting, a smear of red earth here and a glimpse of dense foliage there, but each contains a world unto itself.

 

 

Amelia Wallin

Djaara, June 2024