WARWICK FULLER
Divine Light
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 xx), 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 xx) 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 sympathycard connotations of hope. Instead, what Fuller gifts us is a breathtaking, anything-but-trite 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 xx), 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 xx) 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 much-needed 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 2024
Divine Light oil on canvas 100cm x 100cm 2024
Quiet Corner, Great Mackerel Beach oil on canvas 61cm x 81cm 2024
Through the Casuarinas, Guerilla Bay oil on canvas 61cm x 46cm 2024
Bursting Wave in an Overcast Dawn oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Sunset Rain, Gulargambone oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
Evening’s Last Kiss of Light, Coonabarabran oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
Red Gums tracing the Namoi River, Walgett oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm 2024
Light on Barrenjoey Lighthouse oil on canvas 30cm x 58cm 2024
Durras Lake Reflections oil on canvas 100cm x 120cm 2024
A Season of Abundance, Kanimbla (study for) oil on canvas 90cm x 90cm 2024
Azure Day, Lincoln’s Rock, Wentworth Falls oil on canvas 100cm x 180cm 2024
Morning Stroll, Pittwater oil on canvas 23cm x 23cm 2024
Harlequin Sky, Fuller’s Earth oil on canvas 61cm x 91cm 2024
Light Caught in Gilmore Creek Riffles oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
Subdued Light, Tinkers Hill oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
Photo: Neil Stevenson
Blue Plateau (sketch for, 1 of 3) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Blue Plateau (sketch for, 2 of 3) oil on canvas 30cm x 35cm 2024
Blue Plateau (sketch for, 3 of 3) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Blue Plateau (study for, 1 of 2) oil on canvas 61cm x 61cm 2024
Blue Plateau (study for, 2 of 2) oil on canvas 80cm x 120cm 2024
Blue Plateau oil on canvas 200cm x 400cm 2024
Opalescent Cut, Lunatic Hill, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas 46cm x 30cm 2024
Down in Glory, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
In Creeps the Day, Gilmore Valley (sketch for, 1 of 2) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
In Creeps the Day, Gilmore Valley (sketch for, 2 of 2) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Sheltered Water, Guerilla Bay oil on canvas 30cm x 61cm 2024
Glitter in Morning Sea Mist, Durras oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm 2024
Bathurst Awakes, from Mount Panorama oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
Farm on Mount Panorama, Bathurst oil on canvas 61cm x 91cm 2024
Leftover Riches, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm 2024
Morning Shadow Retreating, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Photo: Neil Stevenson
Warrumbungles in a Winter Guise oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
A Golden Moment, Warrumbungles oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Frost and Fire, Warrumbungles oil on canvas 25cm x 30cm 2024
A Season of Abundance, Kanimbla (sketch for) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
A Season of Abundance oil on canvas 160cm x 160cm 2024
Katoomba Cockatoos oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm 2024
Through the Casuarinas, Guerilla Bay (sketch for) oil on canvas 46cm x 30cm 2024
Moody Blues, Glen Davis (sketch for) oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
End of the Road, Gilmore Valley (sketch for) oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
Shadows across Mackerel Beach oil on canvas 90cm x 90cm 2024
The Arms of Dawn, Mount Panorama oil on canvas 20cm x 30cm 2024
Borderland, Wales oil on canvas 61cm x 91cm 2024
The White Cliffs of Dover, UK oil on canvas 61cm x 40cm 2024
Jacarandas, Nepean River oil on canvas 61cm x 61cm 2024
Look How They Shine (Yellow), Warrumbungles oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm 2024
High Ground at Sundown oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Bathurst Sunrise (sketch for) oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Sun through Morning Atmosphere, Gilmore Valley oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm 2024
A Reach of the Murrumbidgee River near Jugiong oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm 2024
Idyllic Winter Morning, Coonabarabran oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
Shaded Path, Coonabarabran oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm 2024
Burrill Beach from Dolphin Point oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm 2024
Durras Lake Reflections (sketch for) oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm 2024
End of the Road, Gilmore Valley oil on canvas 61cm x 91cm
Escarpment Shade, Katoomba (sketch for) oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm 2024
Shadows Devouring the Day, Kanimbla oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm 2024
Tranquil Sunrise, Georges River oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Sunlit Cove on Pittwater, Mackerel Beach oil on canvas 61cm x 91cm 2024
Rock Pools, Guerilla Bay oil on canvas 46cm x 46cm 2024
Rare Rain, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024
Morning Shade on Opal Mullock, Lightning Ridge oil on canvas 46cm x 30cm 2024
Moody Blues, Glen Davis oil on canvas 61cm x 91cm 2024
Murrumbidgee River, Gobarralong oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm 2024
Morning’s Light Veil, Limekilns oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2024
Creek-line through the Warrumbungle Ranges oil on canvas 46cm x 61cm 2024
Garden Wall, Breenhold, Mount Wilson oil on canvas 61cm x 46cm 2024
River Carved Landscape, Cataract River oil on canvas 61cm x 46cm 2024
On the Winter Vine oil on canvas 46cm x 30cm 2024
Roses Are… oil on canvas 30cm x 35cm 2024
Billowing Cloud over Coutts Crossing (sketch for) oil on canvas 30cm x 46cm 2023
Arcadian Tranquillity, Gilmore Valley oil on canvas 61cm x 91cm 2024
Artwork photography: Silversalt Photography
Catalogue Design: Geoff White Mountain Ash on the Escarpment oil on canvas 30cm x 30cm 2024