A sense of place dominates the work of David Weir, as if he remembers the long line of a bitumen road curving through the Australian landscape. Melbourne born and raised Weir spent some ten years in the Australian outback where the colours settled themselves, adhered as dust to the clothing, areas of deep shadow contrasting with blazing patches of light. The land has the capacity to bury itself into one’s subconscious, to underpin the conscious intent, the imagined with the ingrained.

In these current paintings Weir is still mapping that landscape, still searching its vastness, its hills and hollows, remembering, discovering, being taken back, rediscovering the meaning and the spirit of the place through its colours and forms.

 

Abstract painters in Australia have often cited the vastness of the landscape as a point of reference to their work, the colours that can dominate an artist’s palette will often point to and be taken from a particular region. So it is with David Weir, but there are references back to tonal painters like the French Pierre Soulages who used darker shades to illuminate the absence of light. “When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens up a mental field all of its own".

Weir sees light as matter to work with, the striations of the dark surfaces of his paintings enable him to make the light reflect as if from a rock face or as a shadow falling upon the earth.

Rex Armstrong (Gallery Director)