Nature Nurture

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery one
03 February / 10 March 2024

GREG WOOD
Nature Nurture

Greg Wood is a painter of the earthy and ethereal. The observation of atmospheric shifts in landscapes has been central to his practice for the past 25 years. He is attracted to observing the dynamic and subtle states of transformation enhanced by changing conditions, weather, and light.

In a recent residency in the ex-mining town of Queenstown, West coast of Tasmania,

Wood observed and created a series he describes as ‘resurrected landscapes’, images of places altered by human activity and in the process of regeneration. He describes these landscapes as occupying a liminal space between abstraction and realism, reminiscent of his style, that is, the physical abstraction wrought by human intervention and the shifting forces of atmosphere in the environment and the realism of nature’s capacity for remodelling itself as it heals. He describes the act of painting these wounded landscapes as acts of restitution and contrition.

Wood currently resides in one such landscape, the Central Victorian Goldfields, on Dja Dja Wurrung country. Described by local indigenous people as ‘Upside down country’ after the disruptions of the gold rush, this deeply disfigured landscape, marred and churned by mining, is in the process of reconfiguring. This singular landscape, with its saturated coppery hues and shadowy crenulations, impels Wood to create works that hold the unsettled beauty of a place both devastated and re-emerging. It is in this way that his art bears witness to the immense power of nature’s capacity for adaptation and repair.

For Wood, the specifics of place are not as important as the emotional and figural afterimages that endure. He paints places traversed through sensory impression, inviting the viewer to enter the felt sense of place, inciting flares of memory and emotion – landscapes of the familiar and unfamiliar. Wood describes his work as a ‘slow release’ –the nuance of his paintings gradually revealing themselves to the viewer. The art of Melbourne tonalist Clarice Beckett has been a formative influence for him, as revealed in his translucent, gestural layers of muted colour, flattened form, merging tones, and diffuse light.

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A Path or Track Laid Down for Walking

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery two
02 April / 08 May 2022

GREG WOOD
A Path or Track Laid Down for Walking

This collection of paintings was all made from Wood’s Chewton property, where he and his family now live and work, having relocated from inner Melbourne in 2021. With Wood’s studio located alongside Forest Creek that flows alongside the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Track, these paintings give a sense of traversing through a landscape. The use of visual cues such as meandering paths, steep tracks, and expansive planes invites the viewer to follow their gaze through rocky outcrops, dense shrubs and expansive planes, to snatch peeks at distant mountaintops. Here, the air is heady, at times shrouding forms as if in a dense haze or fog seen through diffused light. The Dja Dja Wurrung People, the traditional owners and custodians of this land are very much present here.

As is characteristic of Wood’s atmospheric landscapes, these paths could also be anywhere. The use of paths and tracks as a way to be with and in the landscape characterises an ancient and more immediate, deep and real connection to our natural world, a world that was travelled through on foot. Walking in one’s local area also recalls our own recent collective experiences during lockdowns, where we were forced to be in the moment, noticing the details of our walking paths and their immediate surrounds.

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Scene Afar

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery one
08 February / 08 March 2020

GREG WOOD
Scene Afar

Greg Wood’s series Scene Afar is a reflective response to spaces that he has negotiated as an inhabitant, visitor and artist. They are considered abstracted renderings from both macro and micro observations. The work draws him to evocative sites of geography where recognition and contemplation inform landscape experience. Via the act of painting, these works recollect memory and trigger an interaction with locations and subsequent painterly responses.

Influenced by growing up amongst a family of artists, Greg Wood has been an active landscape painter since the mid-90s. This has enabled him to live for a period in Tasmania, travel to Vietnam and Japan and undertake a residency in Brussels. Wood's work has been included in several important Australian award exhibitions, including the John Glover, Tattersalls Prize, the Fleurieu Peninsula Biennale Art Prize and the Kate Derum Award. Wood’s work is part of important private and public collections, including the Joyce Nissan and Peter Mac Art Collections.

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Slow Release

Stockroom Kyneton, gallery one
09 April / 08 May 2016

GREG WOOD
Slow Release

In this series of paintings, Melbourne-based artist Greg Wood draws inspiration from collected imagery. Works ranging from large to miniature-scale, Wood presents the viewer with a collection of gestural and dream-like landscapes.

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