WARWICK FULLER
WARWICK FULLER
Photo: Neil Stevenson
FOREWORD
Warwick Fuller, a landscape painter and Blue Mountains local, has been a practicing artist for over 45 years. With a stellar exhibition history in Australia and London, his CV boasts innumerable accolades, including three assignments as Official Tour Artist with [then] HRH The Prince of Wales. Yet it isn’t this that drives the painter.
Instead, it is the landscape itself, or rather, the ceaseless challenge of transforming the intense emotions evoked by the natural world into paint. To craft this into something transferable to a viewer who has no connection to that specific place, but in whom the painting may draw out those same emotions, a shared human experience of awe. And it is something Warwick Fuller achieves in even the smallest of his oil paint sketches.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Fuller took on a new challenge. Armed with five small works painted plein air, and logistic help from removalists and custom framers, a 4-metre wide, 2-metre high vision soon came to life. The result is a homage not only to the landscape that inspired it, but to all the best attributes of humanity: creativity, empathy, ambition, aesthetic sensibility, and love.
Mitchells Ridge Lookout, a lesser-known Blue Mountains vista, was the location of the original outdoor sketches. Fuller returned several times to capture, distil and explore, before producing the enormous work in his studio, with these smaller paintings - not photographs - as reference. Titled Blue Plateau (page 27), the work is the centrepiece of Fuller’s 2024 exhibition at Katoomba’s Lost Bear Gallery. This artwork singularly proves that he is an artist who continues to surprise and impress.
Smaller in scale, though not in impact, is the painting that gives the exhibition its name. Divine Light (page 5) was painted from the artist’s verandah. It is dedicated to the whimsy of light and weather: Fuller’s main muse. Dedication is a fitting word in more than one sense: Fuller’s lifetime of painting has been devoted to capturing light’s beauty and vagaries; how a slight shift changes the landscape’s colour, form, and mood. He does this with near-unprecedented skill. In Divine Light, the sunlight parting the grey sky, could, in the wrong hands, be trite with sympathy-card connotations of hope. Instead, what Fuller gifts us is a breathtaking, anything-buttrite celebration of life with a simplicity of paint that could only come from many decades of commitment to craft, matched with a lifetime of human experience.
The Arms of Dawn, Mount Panorama (page 49), a smaller study painted outdoors, is as concise as a six-word story. It captures the precious seconds of sunrise in confident brushstrokes. Never overdone, Fuller is a master at allowing the paint to speak to us: hymns to the light, but in English not Church Latin. And despite their realism, Fuller’s paintings are symbolic: an internal as well as external landscape, into which each viewer can individually enter and find respite.
Red Gums tracing the Namoi River, Walgett (page 11) is less assuming than the works previously mentioned, but its quiet strength should not be overlooked. A patch of red trunk - light or moss or bark? - draws the gaze to the left, from where it can circle endlessly, entranced and at peace, guided skillfully by colour and composition.
As a whole, Divine Light, Fuller’s nineteenth exhibition at Lost Bear Gallery, in his 77th year of life, is, like the artist himself, full of vitality. In these times of multiple wars and economic distress, these paintings are a muchneeded reminder of how beautiful the world is, and humans can be.
Caterina Leone Arts Writer
In Creeps the Day, Gilmore Valley oil on canvas
90cm x 90cm
$14500
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Quiet Corner, Great Mackerel Beach
oil on canvas
61cm x 81cm
$9000
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Through the Casuarinas, Guerilla Bay oil on canvas
61cm x 46cm
$5250
Bursting Wave in an Overcast Dawn oil on canvas
30cm x 30cm
$2950
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Sunset Rain, Gulargambone oil on canvas
30cm x 46cm
$3500
Evening’s Last Kiss of Light, Coonabarabran oil on canvas
30cm x 46cm
$3500
the
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Red Gums tracing
Namoi River, Walgett oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm
$4500
Light on Barrenjoey Lighthouse oil on canvas
30cm x 58cm
$4500
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Durras Lake Reflections oil on canvas 100cm x 120cm
$19500
A Season of Abundance, Kanimbla (study for) oil on canvas
90cm x 90cm
$14500
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Azure Day, Lincoln’s Rock, Wentworth Falls oil on canvas
100cm x 180cm
$32500
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Harlequin Sky, Fuller’s Earth oil on canvas
61cm x 91cm
$9500
Light Caught in Gilmore Creek Riffles oil on canvas
30cm x 46cm
$3500
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Subdued Light, Tinkers Hill oil on canvas
30cm x 46cm
$3500
Photo: Neil Stevenson
Plateau (sketch for, 1 of 3) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm
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Blue
$3250
of
Blue Plateau (sketch for, 2
3) oil on canvas
30cm x 35cm
$3250
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Blue Plateau (sketch for, 3 of 3) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm
$3250
of 2)
Blue Plateau (study for, 1
oil on canvas
61cm x 61cm
$7500
Plateau (study for, 2 of 2) oil on canvas 80cm x 120cm
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Blue
$17500
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Blue Plateau oil on canvas
200cm x 400cm
$135000
Opalescent Cut, Lunatic Hill, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas
46cm x 30cm
$3500
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In Creeps the Day, Gilmore Valley (sketch for, 1 of 2) oil on canvas
30cm x 30cm
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Sheltered Water, Guerilla Bay oil on canvas
30cm x 61cm
$4500
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Glitter in Morning Sea Mist, Durras oil on canvas
46cm x 46cm
$4500
Bathurst Awakes, from Mount Panorama oil on canvas
30cm x 46cm
$3500
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Farm on Mount Panorama, Bathurst oil on canvas 61cm x 91cm
$9500
Leftover Riches, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas
46cm x 61cm
$5250
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Morning Shadow Retreating, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm $2950
Photo: Neil Stevenson
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Warrumbungles in a Winter Guise oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm $3500
A Golden Moment, Warrumbungles
oil on canvas
30cm x 30cm
$2950
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Frost and Fire, Warrumbungles oil on canvas 25cm x 30cm
$2750
A Season of Abundance, Kanimbla (sketch for) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm
$2950
Season
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Katoomba Cockatoos
oil on canvas
46cm x 61cm
$5250
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Moody Blues, Glen Davis (sketch for)
oil on canvas
30cm x 46cm
$3500
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End of the Road, Gilmore Valley (sketch for) oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm $3500
Shadows across Mackerel Beach oil on canvas
90cm x 90cm
$14500
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The Arms of Dawn, Mount Panorama oil on canvas 20cm x 30cm
$2750
Borderland, Wales oil on canvas
61cm x 91cm
$9500
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The White Cliffs of Dover, UK oil on canvas 61cm x 40cm
$4750
Jacarandas, Nepean River oil on canvas
61cm x 61cm
$6750
High Ground at Sundown oil on canvas
30cm x 30cm
$2950
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Bathurst Sunrise (sketch for) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm
$2950
through Morning Atmosphere, Gilmore Valley oil on canvas
Sun
46cm x 46cm
$4500
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Idyllic Winter Morning, Coonabarabran oil on canvas
30cm x 46cm
$3500
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Shaded Path, Coonabarabran oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm
$4500
Burrill Beach from Dolphin Point oil on canvas
46cm x 46cm
$4500
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Durras Lake Reflections (sketch for) oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm
$5250
End of the Road, Gilmore Valley oil on canvas
61cm x 91cm
$9500
e. info@lostbeargallery.com.au t. 02 4782 1220
Escarpment Shade, Katoomba (sketch for) oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm
$5250
Shadows Devouring the Day, Kanimbla oil on canvas
46cm x 46cm
$4500
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Tranquil Sunrise, Georges River oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm
$2950
Sunlit Cove on Pittwater, Mackerel Beach oil on canvas
61cm x 91cm
$9500
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Rock Pools, Guerilla Bay oil on canvas
46cm x 46cm
$4500
Rare Rain, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas
30cm x 30cm
$2950
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Morning Shade on Opal Mullock, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas
46cm x 30cm
$3500
Moody Blues, Glen Davis oil on canvas
61cm x 91cm
$9500
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Murrumbidgee River, Gobarralong oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm
$5250
Morning’s Light Veil, Limekilns oil on canvas
30cm x 46cm
$3500
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Creek-line through the Warrumbungle Ranges oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm
$5250
Garden Wall, Breenhold, Mount Wilson oil on canvas
61cm x 46cm
$5250
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River Carved Landscape, Cataract River oil on canvas
61cm x 46cm
$5250
On the Winter Vine oil on canvas
46cm x 30cm
$3500
Roses Are… oil on canvas 30cm x 35cm $3000
Cloud over Coutts Crossing (sketch for) oil on canvas
Billowing
30cm x 46cm
$3500
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Arcadian Tranquillity, Gilmore Valley oil on canvas
61cm x 91cm
$9500
Mountain Ash on the Escarpment oil on canvas
30cm x 30cm
$2950
14 SEPTEMBER – 27 OCTOBER 2024
Published: 5th September 2024
Artwork Photography: Silversalt Photography
Lost Bear Gallery
98 Lurline Street, Katoomba NSW 2780
Ph. +612 4782 1220 Open from 10am daily info@lostbeargallery.com.au
lostbeargallery.com.au