Lagoon Landscapes
This series focuses on the shifting conditions of water, reflection, and surrounding terrain within selected lagoon environments.
The paintings develop through direct observation and studio translation, exploring how still and moving water structures perception of space, light, and form. Reflections and surface disturbances become compositional devices through which landscape is continually reconfigured.
The works examine the lagoon as a site of spatial ambiguity, where boundaries between land, water, and atmosphere are in flux.
This work extends an investigation into landscape as a site of perceptual instability, where reflection, obstruction and inversion disrupt a fixed reading of place. The composition is structured around the surface of water, which operates not as a passive mirror but as an active field that doubles, distorts and reconfigures the image.
Darkened trees form a threshold at the foreground, simultaneously framing and limiting access to the lagoon and sky beyond. This creates a tension between invitation and resistance, where the viewer is held at the edge of the scene rather than fully entering it.
The reflective surface produces a near-symmetry that unsettles orientation. Sky, foliage and water collapse into one another, allowing the image to oscillate between clarity and dislocation. The landscape becomes ambiguous—less a stable location than a shifting perceptual experience.
While grounded in Glenbrook Lagoon in the Blue Mountains, the work reconstructs an internal state rather than documenting a specific view. It engages with moments where perception falters and the familiar becomes uncertain, shaped by memory, reflection and psychological space.
Medium: Oil paint on stretched canvas
Location: Glenbrook Lagoon, Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia
Subject: Reflections of trees, sky and clouds in a lagoon
Colour palette: Ultramarine, indigo, phthalo blue, yellow-green, burnt umber, black, white
