7th Feb – 12th Apr 2020
Simpson Gallery
The Mountain’s Quiet Heart is an artist’s tribute to the majestic landscape of Mount Buffalo, east of Benalla. Through watercolour and mixed media, Phillip Edwards translates the visceral experience of exploring the Mountain at different seasons, taking viewers on a journey across the snow blanketed plateau and gullies, following the streams and lake, exploring the landscape dotted with rock formations, wildflowers, scrub, and thick bush, and looking out across a region either shrouded by mist, or basking in glorious sunshine.
Edwards’ artworks are vibrant and expressive, with paint applied in multiple layers with a deliberately brisk stroke. Colour flows and overpainting draws out the landscape’s forms.
In exploring his fascination with Mount Buffalo, Edwards explains that, “When I hike in back country I’m totally present in the quiet solitude. Be it a snow drift or rivulet, I’m drawn in by the macro and micro of the mountain.”
“With Mount Buffalo, it was a slow attraction for ten years, driving up the Ovens Valley, always on my way to another high-country place. Dreams of city moves to Myrtleford and painting Buffalo daily in a Cezanne-like fashion from a studio window. Increasingly, and particularly over the past three years, Mount Buffalo has been the place I found myself drawn to.”
“This body of work documents that attraction to my ‘serene’ snowy place with its gullies, bogs and outcrops. All of my works are reflective, not just as an observation of beauty, but also how the seasons do often mirror one’s life. The ups and downs from one season of life, and moving into new chapters. The exhibition is landscape as a mystical personal metaphor.
Based in Daylesford in the Victorian central highlands, Phillip Edwards studied at the Victorian College of Art in the early 1990s, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting). A former secondary art teacher of 17 years and small business owner, he now dedicates his time to painting and sculpting while running Bullarto Gallery.
Edwards is known for producing large scale majestic watercolour landscapes of Mt Buffalo in Victoria, and was awarded the Trustees’ Watercolour Prize as a Finalist of the 2018 Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2019 he was also a Finalist in the Lester Prize at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Calleen Art Award at Cowra Regional Gallery, and was made a Member of the Australian Watercolour Institute (AWI).
