At this stage all the paintings in my RedBubble site were inspired by the sometimes traumatic experience at Kingfisher. Some of the more alarming experiences included losing the river pump to flood, the solar power station suffering a direct lightning strike, major plumbing problems, wild horses and stray cattle. A good challenge for city dwellers!
Kingfisher Camp is an outstation on 900 square miles of cattle station in the far North West of Queensland’s Gulf Country. Working as caretakers, my wife and I spent a 6 month wet season there.
Once the wet really started we were cut off from the homestead at Bowthorn Station and the rest of the world for weeks on end. Somehow, this made Kingfisher the perfect place to capture the feeling of this challenging part of Northern Australia. Every day I was inspired by the raw space and remoteness and over the months we were there I painted and drew daily, coming to terms with the landscape. It proved to be an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration.
The observed landscape in these paintings is a starting point. The paint and lines splashing and scratching about on the paper are what the paintings are all about. Sometimes it makes a painting work and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes accidents work and sometimes they don’t. The randomness of this appeals to me. I like watching the paint run and mix with other colours and then imposing a line over the result. It makes the paintings feel alive and that makes me feel happy.
Chris Bull. Sydney, 2009
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