Patrick Grieve, one of Tasmania’s most notable landscape painters is renowned for richly coloured renditions of his home of the North-West Coast. His textured and gestural works suggest his methodological toil—a ploughing, a planting, a flooding of seasonal change—a performative replication of the agricultural work that shapes and changes the earth that surrounds him. Fields of green rest over fields of ochre, scratched back or spread over and then cut across by the horizon, pressed down on by the brilliant blue sky.
Grieve’s works have an illusory abstract, perhaps even minimalist quality, but only to those who have not seen the Tasmanian wilderness open out on to the sprawling plains of its unique North-West region. Acutely aware of the fragility of the fertile and productive fields that dominate his visionary works, the artist addresses a fine balance that is both ecological and painterly through the severing horizons that dominate the picture plane. There is an undeniable tension in these works, as Grieve captures these not-so natural wonders vividly and with intuitive precision.