These works are the outcome of an enduring interest in the landscape of central Victoria. It is a region characterised by the amazing rock forms around Tooborac combined with the red oxides inherent in the old mining sites near Heathcote.

Over the past 160 years, parts of the Cobaw Range that seemingly emerge from the edges of the forests around Mt Alexander, have been quarried for their granite and mined for gold. The range is geologically ancient and the result of millions of years of subterranean movement and surface erosion. It visually presents us now with a unique landscape rich in colour and diverse in form. There is an overall harshness implicit in the jagged chasms of erosion and hydraulic sluicing of areas mined for their golden bounty. The resulting layers of silt and clay provide a stark contrast in colour and texture to the apparent random extrusions of various rock forms that by contrast have taken eons to emerge—the ephemeral and the enduring.

This is the essence of the structure of these landscapes; it is a dichotomy between the impermeable and the transient.

Please email the artist Pauline Mathrick for sales enquiries: pmathrick@bigpond.com.au 

Banner image: 'Old Flume Track', by Pauline Mathrick