You can almost smell the brine. You can feel the sea breeze and hear the waves crashing on the rocks. The sea and sky meet and the clouds billow in symphonic splendour. Welcome to the world – and the art – of Ralph Wilson.
Wilson’s latest exhibition at Philip Bacon Galleries is, on the one hand, more of the same. He has been painting the waters and islands of Moreton Bay for decades. But this time around things seem anything but the same.
There is a heightened beauty and mature appreciation that seems to have taken his work to a higher plane. Maybe it’s a time of life thing.
As we get older the little things seem to be more precious and our appreciation is enhanced. So, it seems with this show. Wilson has a big following and each exhibition (every two years or so at Philip Bacon Galleries) is highly anticipated.
This show is one of his best. The thing that struck me immediately was the waves. There are a few waves in this show and Wilson, who is a surfer and sailor, knows his waves.
Cylinder Head, shore break is one of them. Just looking at this painting makes you want to rush down to the edge of the sea and throw yourself into the water. Or just sit back and watch nature gently unfolding onto the beach.
Wave in a southerly gale is another. This one is more dramatic and the wave is crashing onto rocks with spray blown back from the lip as it breaks. It is perfectly composed. Land, sea and sky are in perfect proportion.
There are some gentler waves in Cliff, Hanson Bay, Kangaroo Island.
Wilson does cast his net wider sometimes but mostly he sticks to his patch, particularly North Stradbroke Island – Minjerribah or Straddie as locals know it.
Wilson and his wife Suzy, best known for many years as the owner of Riverbend Books at Bulimba, (she sold the store recently to her friend, Fiona Stager, of Avid Reader bookshop in West End) have a house on Straddie and spend a lot of time there.
It gives him time to survey the natural world, which he recreates in the most beautiful and poetic way. As well as waves, clouds feature strongly in this exhibition and there is one painting, February Cloud, 6.40pm which is almost metaphysical. It’s just a cloud but that’s all it has to be. It came to him in a dream, he tells me at the exhibition opening, and I can’t help hearing Joni Mitchell’s song Clouds playing in my head.
There are other paintings of beaches and bay and even a little Fred Williams-esque painting of trees – Hillside, North Stradbroke Island. This is Wilson at his masterful best and the exhibition is a joy to behold.
Wilson has written the most exquisite, poetic little vignette for the exhibition catalogue and I think I will have to share the whole thing with you:
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“In the dusk light, I am standing on the cliffs of the southern finger of rock which bounds North Gorge. Looking south down Main Beach I can just see a lone figure. She is bent over at the waist, straight legs, concentrating on the sand before her as the last wave slides back down to the sea. I can sense her concentration, even at this distance. She watches, waiting, waiting. And then she stands straight and lifts one hand high above her.
“I know she is holding her prize and is smiling but I can’t see that from here. I know that the metre-long creature will go into the small bucket on her belt and will serve as bait for our fishing early tomorrow morning.
“And I know this woman, alone on an empty beach, save for a few gulls and a hopeful sea eagle hovering above, is happy and would wish to be nowhere else on Earth.
“She is my wife, Suzy Wilson, and this show is for her.”
Enough said.
Ralph Wilson’s exhibition continues at Philip Bacon Galleries, Fortitude Valley, until August 24.
philipbacongalleries.com.au
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