Last weekend I returned to Biggenden, a small town in Queensland, Australia, for a school reunion.
I grew up on a farm outside the town and travelled into Biggenden each day for primary and lower high school. One of the landmarks that was always there was what we called the Bluff—the Biggenden Bluff, properly Mount Walsh.
As a child I didn't think very much about it. It was simply part of the landscape by which I knew where I was.
While I was back in Biggenden I photographed the Bluff, and a couple of days later I began this watercolour.
What caught my attention was the mountain sitting beneath an enormous bank of cloud. In the photograph the mountains were a beautiful luminous blue, darkened by the cloud above them. As I painted, they became darker and more substantial, with some of the pinkish-red granite appearing through the blues and greens.
But gradually the cloud seemed to take possession of the painting.
I wouldn't describe it as ominous, but it has a weight and a sense of enclosure. Beneath it the Bluff remains very present, separated from the cloud by only a narrow strip of lighter sky and a small patch of blue.
There is something strange about returning after many years to a landscape that was completely ordinary when you were a child. The place hasn't simply become unfamiliar. You also discover that you are looking at something you once knew without really seeing it.
Perhaps we all have places like that.