Michael Zavros Weeping

When I was ten, my parents took me to oil painting lessons at Mr Scott’s house on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Together with many older ladies I learned Australian landscape painting on a Saturday morning. I wanted to paint willow trees but Mr Scott said they were too difficult and un-Australian. I sometimes feel a little this way myself.

Always elegantly mirrored on some body of water, willow trees such as the magnificent specimens surrounding Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin fascinate me. They are the illegal alien of the Australian landscape and an icon of romantic melancholy. I like them especially in winter.

- Michael Zavros, 2015