I wanted to have fun with this landscape, injecting some of my favourite Australian native trees into the scene. I remember some of those long drives along the way to the Gold Coast hinterland. Lots of rolling hills, with lonely Queenslander homes, and native trees. Always golden. The light was always golden. The sky would be scorching blue.
Actually I don’t know of all these trees bloom at the same time, ah, but with art, I can take some liberties.
The jacarandas are magnificent trees with boughs twisting into graceful shapes, they only bloom once a year around September and October. The local myth is that if you didn’t start studying by the time jacarandas bloomed, you would be doomed to fail your university exams. If a bloom fell on your head, you would be doomed to fail as well. In my day while at University of Queensland, students would flatly refuse to sit under these trees for fear of doing badly. Lots of people would detour around these trees rather than risk it. The purple and lilac blooms would cover the entire tree. Many parts of Brisbane would be covered in purple. In fact, this is such an iconic tree that recently, an old tree at the University of Sydney collapsed from age, and people actually mourned for that tree and placed a memorial for it.
The golden wattles are smaller bushy trees. But they would still put on a showy display of bright yellow pouffy blooms. They grow very commonly along hillsides and roadsides. The colour is so cheerful and I REALLY like them.
Gums are integral to the Australian landscape. They are literally everywhere. I almost always pick a leaf to crush, so that I smell the eucalyptus scent. Of course, and they are food for the koalas.
So here’s a whimsical piece, acrylic on canvas 20″ by 20″, I call “Bush Beauty”.
