Jindabyne artist Kerry Wooden has only been painting for about four years and has already developed a style of her own.

I found myself ‘stepping into her painting: ‘In the Scrub Country’.

I also found myself stepping back into the country of my first fourteen formative years of life.

The fringe Wheat Belt of Western Australia sits close to the desert, and scrubland abounds there.

It’s often referred to as Mallee Country.

With its arid climate, clumps of small struggling Mallee Gums and wide-open grassy plains, it offers up distant views that shimmer in the mirages of extreme summer heat.

What, apart from my personal recollections, makes this painting so enticing?

What gives one the sense that you could step into it and take a stroll, (a very long stroll) to that tiny speck on the horizon?

 In a nutshell it’s Kerry’s natural sense of perspective.

Speaking with her during the Lion’s Easter Art Show she was surprised at my comments on her use of perspective.

“I wasn’t really aware I’d done that”, she said.

“I just paint it as I feel it”.

There are other forces at work here too.

Her colour use has captured the mood of the scene with uncanny accuracy.

She has painted ‘the mood’. There are no detailed leaves and twigs here. It’s an impression of a scrubland scene.

I know from experience that once that speck on the horizon is reached, the scene would be repeated. Mallee country just goes on and on forever it seems.

The paint in the foreground is thick rich and bold, gradually thinning and bleaching as it recedes to that distant horizon.

'In the Scrub Country' by Jindabyne artist Kerry Wooden.

With the horizon set at eye level, large objects 'vanish' to a vanishing point in the distance. Colour too fades with distance. This gives a good painting extra depth.

Colours in the distance are viewed through more of the atmosphere and as such tend to appear paler to the observer. Technically this is known as ‘colour perspective’. Kerry has a natural sense for this too.

She tells me that her paintings are piling up in her house and she doesn’t know what to do with them all.

How about a Kerry Wooden exhibition? 

See past ART ZONES at www.pauldion.com