Blackwood Creek

Blackwood Creek is an area that nestles itself under the Western Tiers in northern Tasmania. I spent many hours of my childhood tearing around the parched, cracked and rocky ground around Musk Valley Rd on my BMX; my grandparents had a property there, and my grandfather still resides there now.

The image conjures the presence of this space, the bracken fern, the occasional gum tree, acacia, the dry Bullock Holes creek bed – which sometimes flowed with enough rain – broken machinery, chickens, pigs, old trucks and the odd sheep or two. This was never a working farm per se and the sprawling ramshackle quality of the property serves an unknown purpose… maybe other than to afford eccentricities breathing room. Now, nearby, there are logging operations and plantations. The surface of this painting plays with depth and the trompe l’oeil (trick of the eye) representation of relief space. Occasionally the illusory textures break out into actual texture and it is with this push and pull of haptic expectation that I have intended to describe something of the topography of the subject matter.

The work is an evocation, of time and energy spent, of movement and matter and the specifics of this location.

Josh Foley

2018

oil and Acrylic