DALE FRANK ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING

"If people broadened their perceptions of what landscape is, and the history of Australian landscape painting, they would be able to embrace what is non-representational art as landscape instantaneously and simultaneously," says Frank.





"Landscape is non-representational, it is an abstract concept to all people. It always was a meaning separate from image. The word itself, 'landscape', is too historically and emotively loaded to have contemporary significance as a word, for one thing, let alone an attitude to style."






Frank's landscapes are a far cry from the old tradition of plein-air painting, rendering the bush on site with some semblance of realism. In fact, his paintings, while ostensibly conceived in his immediate geographical environment, make no traditional visual reference to the vista at all. Both the paintings and the attitude to their subject are unique.






One has to look at the nature of landscape painting, says Frank.






"It is only through the arbitrary and aesthetic use of visible techniques of, say, horizon lines, or a blotch to imply a tree, where people can say a Fred Williams is a landscape or a John Olsen is a landscape.






"If John Olsen had never interpreted his work as landscape they would not be landscape, they would be European-inspired abstractions. It would be just as valid to interpret Olsen's early paintings as abstractions, but here we use the language of landscape to establish them.






"It's a mechanism by which their work is attached to both the market and to the Australian audience and art history."