IT’S a suburban street much like any other found in countless towns Australia wide, except this one captured the attention of artist Keith Burt long enough to decide he liked the way the road disappeared over a small hill and into the horizon.
The road is the upper reaches of Park Street in Boonah.
The painting is an oil colour in green and gold hues.
This ‘artist’s eye’ view of one of Boonah’s residential streets will be on exhibition in the Art Gallery of New South Wales from May 6 to September 3.
Late last week, it was announced that this painting will hang in the gallery featuring those selected as finalists in the prestigious Wynne Prize art competition.
The Wynne Prize is awarded annually for the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oil or watercolours, or the best example of figure sculpture by Australian artists.
Mr Burt says he is forever dissecting and reimagining how reality would look painted in short, broad brush strokes across a muted canvas.
He lives in Brisbane but often visits friends who live in Boonah.While there are certainly more spectacular scenes to be immortalised on canvas like mountains and rolling farmlands, Mr Burt said it was the simplicity of Park Street that ‘spoke’ to him.
“Park Street has a beautiful way where it heads up into the hill and disappears into the horizon,” he said.
“It reminded me of paintings I’ve seen in the past that I like, and the street fits well into the landscape.
“When I came back [to Boonah] on a painting trip I was pretty keen to paint there and I got lucky because it’s right outside a school but when I went it was school holidays.”
He said he parked his car outside the school, set up an easel and began painting.
“Painting on site is called doing it ‘en plein-air’ which is a French term for doing it in the plain air,” he explained.
“That’s why I titled the picture ‘Boonah Plain Air’.
“The whole painting was done on site within an hour and a half.
“Painting this way, well sometimes it works out and others it doesn’t, but I could tell when I painted that this one just worked.”
He said the canvas is approximately 20cm long and he enjoyed painting on smaller canvases using a large brush as that way he was “less distracted by details”.
“I have a little field easel that I can set up anywhere and there is a little palette and place for me to put my paints in,” he said.
“I think with painting and art, if you make things simple then the viewer has room to project their own thoughts onto it.
“It was the simplicity of this road in Boonah that attracted me.
“I saw it and I liked it not just for the lay of the hill but also the combination of nature and man-made structures.”
Mr Burt is also a finalist in this year’s Archibald Prize with his painting of fellow artist, Sam Leach.
“I’ve entered the Archibald Prize a few times but this is my first time in the Wynne Prize, so that’s quite exciting.”
This is the fifth time Mr Burt has been selected as a finalist in the Archibald Prize, which is a portraiture art competition.
Finalists in the Wynne and Archibald Prizes will be exhibited at the Art Gallery of NSW from May 6 to September 3.
The winners will be announced on Friday (May 5).