Joe Furlonger Grainfield cultivation, Moree

This is a landscape painted during recent trips I have been making into the grain-growing areas of Moree, Goondiwindi and places like that. In those flat lands, I have found the landscape to suit my painting style rather than the other way round. I’ve been working with wide brush strokes in horizontals, with a few daubs, to capture the grainfields and the tracery of access roads through the blocks of land.

Because it’s irrigated dry land, I have to paint from the dirt up to get that light feeling of the grass on top. I have a self-portrait in this year’s Archibald Prize painted in the same region.

- Joe Furlonger, 2014